Shocker: Obama’s AG Pick Was Appointed By Blago To Investigate Corruption, Didn’t Find Anything

He was paid $300,000 for the appointment, and he conveniently forgot to list the entire event on his publicly-disclosed application to be Obama’s AG:

Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich’s pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois’ long-dormant casino license.
Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder’s role as “special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board” — a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000.
Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week — an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry, Obama’s transition team indicated late Tuesday.
“Eric Holder has given hundreds of press interviews,” Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said in a statement. “He did his best to report them all to the committee, but as he noted in the questionnaire itself, some were undoubtedly missed in the effort to reconstruct a list of them.”

You’d think it’d be kind of hard to forget about getting paid $300,000 by the state of Illinois. You think it’d be especially hard to forget right after the guy that hired you was arrested:

Holder signed the questionnaire on Sunday — five days after Blagojevich’s arrest for allegedly putting Obama’s U.S. Senate seat up for sale. The Judiciary Committee asked him to provide lists and “copies of transcripts or tape recordings of all speeches or talks delivered by you” and “all interviews you have given to newspapers, magazines or other publications.”
The March 2004 Chicago news conference where Holder and Blagojevich spoke was widely covered because of a controversial 4-1 Gaming Board vote earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont. That vote defied the recommendation of the board’s staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino’s developer.

Another moment of hope ‘n change brought to you by Barack Obama and the Chicago political machine.
Discussion question: How many members of Obama’s administration is Blago going to take down with him? I thinking two, so far: Holder and Emmanuel who it has just been disclosed participated in no fewer than 21 phone conversations with Blago about the Senate appointment.
Maybe Obama shouldn’t have been picking people based on their basketball skills.