Monday, January 26, 2009

More on the subpoenas

The Associated Press covers the subpoenas of Obama staffers and Tony Rezko. See here.
Sweeping federal subpoenas of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration include requests for records involving David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisers to President Barack Obama.

Among 43 subpoenas released by the Blagojevich administration Friday, one from Dec. 8 seeks notes, calendars, correspondence and any other data that relate to Axelrod, Jarrett and 32 other people and organizations.

That was the day before the FBI arrested Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat, on charges that he tried to trade his appointment to replace Obama in the Senate for campaign contributions. Wiretapped conversations show Blagojevich thought Jarrett was interested in the seat and he wanted campaign money or a high-paying job in return, according to a sworn statement.
Axelrod was not mentioned in the original Complaint.

Other news organizations are starting to cover this development. The Chicago Sun-Times:
The subpoenas also seek information about any contacts the governor's administration had with two top advisers to President Obama, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.

"It's clearly beyond matters in the criminal complaint, which was sweeping in its own right," said Jay Stewart, executive director of the Better Government Association, whose legal fight forced Blagojevich to make the subpoenas public late Friday. "It demonstrates the feds have been looking for a long time. And, up to a relatively recent time, they've been gathering more information."
The Confluence is covering this, of course. The screenshot reproduced here (originally reproduced on The Confluence) refers to an Obama/Blagojevich meeting which Obama denies ever occurred.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let's not leap to conclusions not in evidence. This seems a bit misleading.

The Obama staffers are the SUBJECTS of subpoenas, but not themselves subpoenaed (as I read it, and that is the exact reading of the headline, after all).

That is, **Blogo's** calendar and appointment records regarding those parties have been subpoenaed (but not those parties).

This is consistent with the prior released information from Fitzpatrick's office to the point, as quoted in the article, that "Prosecutors have said Obama is not implicated in the case, and none of his advisers has been accused of wrongdoing."

One might add, 'yet,' but this information doesn't get us a lot closer to that supposed denouement, either.

XIslander

Anonymous said...

Joe - those banners on the right-hand side are blocking out the right-hand words of the main text of your blog. (I'm using IE6 but guess you want this place to be browser-neutral).
b

Joseph Cannon said...

The format prob is probably due to a problem with one of the posts, but I do not know which one.

Anonymous said...

B,Lower your text size and you'll be able to read w/out "commercial interruption." I'm also using IE6.