Update | 5:35 p.m. President-elect Barack Obama said Monday that an internal review has found his advisers were “not involved in inappropriate discussions” with Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich or his staff, but Mr. Obama has agreed to a request by federal prosecutor’s to withhold the review until next week.
“There was nothing that my office did that was in any way inappropriate or related to the charges that have been brought,” Mr. Obama told reporters in a late-afternoon news conference in Chicago.
As Mr. Obama sought to press ahead with his transition to power, announcing new nominations to his Cabinet on energy and environmental positions, a question about replacing Mr. Obama’s Senate seat – the issue at the heart of the Blagojevich case – was raised.
Mr. Obama asked for patience, saying he was asked by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, to hold releasing the internal review. “Those facts will be forthcoming to all of you in due course,” Mr. Obama said. “We want to make sure we are not interfering with an ongoing and active investigation”…
…"Those facts will be forthcoming to all of you in due course," Obama said at the news conference. "We just want to make sure we’re not interfering with an ongoing and active investigation."
Fitzgerald released a statement backing up Obama’s account that a delay had been requested.
"After the president-elect announced an internal transition team investigation, the United States attorney’s office requested a brief delay of the release of a report of that investigation to conduct certain interviews," Fitzgerald said in the statement.
Maybe in time journalists will learn from him about knowing the right things to say. But they’ve got a ways to go. I ate dinner tonight in a cafe where I couldn’t avoid the TV screen, and Wolf Blitzer was doing the news. This wasCNN — not even FOX News — but they couldn’t stop speculating about the motives behind all this. Even “what’s Firzgerald up to, with this delay; what’s he got up his sleeve?” But they spent even more time on how this delay was going to allow Obama to release the internal review on Christmas Eve, when no one would be paying attention. And did Fitzgerald really make it that specific as to how many days to wait, or did the Obama folks ask him to say that, so they could release when it would make the least news?
Obviously they’ve been trained to be suspicious and cynical by past experience with politicians, especially in the Bush/Rove years. I just hope Obama releases the report and there’s nothing in it of any concern whatsoever. News people need to have repeated experiences of winding up with egg on their faces from trying to make something out of nothing.
Problem is that, when the newpeople create smoke, people begin to believe there’s a fire. Now they’ve even done a poll and found that nearly half believe that Obama or his aides were involved with Blago and his crimes.