Saturday 13 December 2008

Did Obama or Rahm Emanuel discuss the Senate seat with Blagojevich?

I guess the world knows by now that Governor Blagojevich of Illinois is under investigation for allegedly trying to sell the Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

From the Chicago Tribune, December 13th:

"Obama said Thursday he had never spoken to Blagojevich about the Senate vacancy and was "confident that no representatives" of his had engaged in any dealmaking over the seat with the governor or his team. He also pledged Thursday that in the "next few days" he would explain what contacts his staff may have had with the governor's office about the Senate vacancy.

Emanuel, who has long been close to both Blagojevich and Obama, has refused to respond to questions about any involvement he may have had with the Blagojevich camp over the Senate pick. A spokeswoman for Emanuel also declined to comment Friday."


However,

"One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps."

Chicago Tribune 13/12/08

So, there are apparently tapes from wiretaps confirming that Emanuel discussed the Senate seat with Blagojevich. What of Obama? Well, I have come across two cached web pages today, which are said to have disappeared, but which someone took a screenshot of and which I reproduce here. One is an article from the KHQA (Tri-States news web site.) about a planned meeting between Obama and Blagojevich to discuss the issue. This is dated November 5th 2008.
The third paragraph reads, "He's meeting with Governor Rod Blagojevich in Chicago this afternoon to discuss it."

Planned

The next screenshot is an article which states that the proposed meeting took place.

Large cropped


I have had to make the second screenshot extra-large so that it can be read! It is dated November 8th and states that, "Now that Barack Obama will be moving to the White House, his seat in the US Senate representing Illinois will have to be filled. Obama met with Governor Rod Blagojevich earlier this week to discuss it."

So, did he or didn't he? Did Barack Obama, in spite of denials, meet with Governor Rod Blagojevich to discuss the Senate seat? And why have these pages been 'disappeared' from the KHQA web site and even the cached pages have now gone?

There could be some very interesting developments here.