Landmines Within the Nuggets of Truth

While Obama was vacationing in Hawaii, while Congress was on Christmas recess, and while Rahm Emanuel was on his way out of the country, the long-awaited internal report on contacts between the Obama team and corrupt Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was released.

It is no coincidence that the report was released at just the right time for it to receive minimal attention from the American public and little reaction from politicians.

Under normal conditions this would be a major indication that something was in the report that is embarrassing and/or damaging to Obama and company.

As it turns out there are numerous potential landmines in the report that could spell deep trouble ahead for the President-elect, although the report claims that no inappropriate contact took place.

We must remember that this was an internal review conducted by the Obama team's legal counsel. The report is not an official investigative analysis conducted by the federal prosecutor.

Thus, in essence, the report is nothing more than the Obama team exonerating itself.

Yet the report had to contain enough factual information that can be corroborated by the federal prosecutor so as not to appear too eager to claim innocence in the midst of enormous guilt and so as not to lead to charges of perjury.

And there are plenty of nuggets of truth in the report to suggest that something is terribly amiss within the Obama camp.

For example:

...Obama and several aids were interviewed by the federal prosecutor concerning possible connections between the Obama camp and the scandal involving Rod Blagojevich...

...Obama claimed that he had no contact at all with Blago concerning his vacant Senate seat, and in fact stated that he would take a 'hands off' approach to his replacement in the Senate. Yet the report admits that Obama authorized Rahm Emanuel to suggest the names of his preferred replacements to Blago and/or his staff...

...Federal prosecutors played for Emanuel a segment of their surveillance tapes of conversations between Emanuel and Blagojevich, suggesting that the Feds needed to remind Emanuel that they had significant evidence...

...Although the report states that Emanuel had 'one or two' conservations with Blago and 4 more conversations with Blago's aids, earlier reports from the Feds suggest that Emanuel actually had 21 separate conservations with Blago and his staff.

The transcripts of those taped conversations have not been made public, nor do we know for sure if they will ever be. It would be assumed that once a formal indictment is issued against Blagojevich the transcripts of the tapes could then be made available.

But once again it has become abundantly clear that until we see the full transcripts of the tapes and are made aware of all of the evidence the federal prosecutor has amassed, we are no closer to finding out the real truth than we were prior to the release of the report.

In fact, each time the Obama team issues a report or makes comments about the entire matter, we are left with nothing but more questions.