"No Inappropriate" Contact

UPDATE: As you may recall, initially The One said I had no contact. Refresher below***Barack Obama says his team says had "no inappropriate" contact with Gov. Blagojevich. Tribune:

"There was nothing in the review that was presented to me that in anyway contradicted my earlier statements," Obama said.

The Feds requested he not release the report for a week. Interesting. The AP has more:

President-elect Barack Obama had no direct contact with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich about the appointment of a Senate replacement and his aides had "no inappropriate discussions," a spokesman for the transition office said Monday in disclosing the results of an internal review.

The spokesman, Dan Pfeiffer, said the review itself would be kept confidential at least until the week of Dec. 22 at the request of federal prosecutors "in order not to impede their investigation of the governor."

Controversy has swirled around the president-elect and his incoming White House chief of staff, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, following Blagojevich's arrest last week on charges he schemed to trade Obama's Senate seat for personal gain.[snip]

Yet the brief statement left several issues uncovered.

It did not say whether Emanuel was heard on a wiretap providing the governor's top aide with a list of names that the president-elect favored. Nor did it say who, if anyone, on Obama transition's team had made contact with the governor or his aides concerning a replacement for Obama or whether Craig interviewed people under oath, or to whom he talked.

And did the notoriously foul-mouthed Rahmbo use inappropriate language? Just some of what we want to know.

Did your incoming White House counsel interview you under oath Barack? Just asking. (Is that an inappropriate question?)

P.S. Wasn't Greg Craig Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyer? You never know when he might come in handy.

RECALL from Dec. 9th:

Tapper on the Obama-Blago relationship--questions arise:

Asked what contact he'd had with the governor's office about his replacement in the Senate, President-elect Obama today said "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening."

But on November 23, 2008, his senior adviser David Axelrod appeared on Fox News Chicago and said something quite different.

While insisting that the President-elect had not expressed a favorite to replace him, and his inclination was to avoid being a "kingmaker," Axelrod said, "I know he's talked to the governor and there are a whole range of names many of which have surfaced, and I think he has a fondness for a lot of them."

Barack Obama lies again. He should just say I don't recall, a la Hillary. But then he is supposed to be even more brilliant than she is.

Blago mentioned Rahmbo's name yesterday. I would think Obama and his transition team might be sweating just a teensy bit. The Chicago Way hasn't quite made it to Washington yet--they don't have their defenses quite in place. These guys think they are masters of the universe--but even they must have been caught off guard some by Blago's naked greed.