Say Anything Blog

Basically Obama and his people are declaring themselves innocent, and the media is apparently going to accept that.

Because Obama said it.  The media believe it.  That’s all that matters.

President-elect Barack Obama’s aides plan to release a report this week absolving incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel of any impropriety in his contacts with the disgraced Illinois governor’s office, Democratic sources tell Politico.

The report is expected Monday or Tuesday. Obama said last week that he was delaying it at the request of federal prosecutors.

The complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, whose conversations had been secretly taped by federal investigators, tested the smoothly running Obama transition, with some Democrats fretting that the case presents a distraction that could last into the new administration.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, host of “This Week,” said during the roundtable on his program Sunday that the Obama legal team’s review of contacts with Blagojevich found that Emanuel had only one phone conversation with the governor, and it was a “pro forma” conversation.

“I have been briefed on the review that Obama has done,” Stephanopoulos said. “The sources I talked to say that what it will show is there were actually far less contacts than we had heard — that Rahm Emanuel only had one phone call with Gov. Blagojevich. It wasn’t even really about the Senate seat.”

Over the weekend news broke indicating that Obama was probably going to exploit legal loopholes to keep from having to actually present to the public records of communications between his transition team and Governor Blagojevich.  So who wants to bet that this report to be issued by Obama will be little more than his and his lawyers’ characterization of those communications with no actual records, or incomplete records, to back up those assertions?

And that the media will be more than happy to gobble that up and declare themselves satisfied?

If this were President Bush we were talking about this scandal would never be over.  But Obama?  He gets to declare himself innocent.