Nothing criminal about The One’s behavior here — to this day, there hasn’t been a single accusation that he considered a quid pro quo with Blago to appoint his candidate of choice — but this does suggest that Team Barry’s report on all this in December 2008 was a sham. The claim that Obama had spoken to a middleman about the seat had been made previously, but not until now did the middleman himself step forward to confirm it. Meet Tom Balanoff of — ta da — SEIU:
“Tom, I want to talk to you with regard to the Senate seat,” Obama told him.
Balanoff said Obama said he had two criteria: someone who was good for the citizens of Illinois and could be elected in 2010.
Obama said he wasn’t publicly coming out in support of anyone but he believed Valerie Jarrett would fit the bill.
“I would much prefer she (remain in the White House) but she does want to be Senator and she does meet those two criteria,” Balanoff said Obama told him. “I said: ‘thank you, I’m going to reach out to Gov. Blagojevich.”
That call was made the night before the presidential election; that’s how important it was to Obama, evidently. I highlighted the last bit just to emphasize that he was under no illusions whatsoever that Balanoff was acting as a conduit to Blagojevich. Why does that matter? Because the “internal audit” conducted by Obama’s then-lawyer, Greg Craig, in December 2008 conveniently neglected to mention any of this in the report that came out, er, two days before Christmas. Here’s the entire section on contacts between Obama himself and Blago’s team:
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