NY Post Reports Obama Spoke To Blago Re: Senate Seat
Obama Publicly Denied any Contact at The Time

April 27, 2010 -- The New York Post, per an article by Charles Hurt, notes that "secret" papers filed in by former Governor Rod Blagojevich and inadvertently made public, reveal that he and then-Senator Barack Obama indeed had a conversation at the time of Obama's election to the Presidency. But just one week later, Obama -- in responding to reporters' questions during a public meeting with Al Gore and Joe Biden -- specifically denied he had ever had a conversation with then-Governor Blagojevich about filling his about to be vacated Senate seat.

WASHINGTON -- Sections of court papers filed by scandal-scarred former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich that were mistakenly made public show a deeper involvement by President Obama in picking his Senate successor and call into question the president's public statements on the case.

According to passages in the papers filed Thursday by Blagojevich's lawyers -- which were blacked out under a judge's order but made visible by a computer glitch -- Obama, then president-elect, spoke directly to the disgraced governor on Dec. 1, 2000.

But just one week later -- on the day Blagojevich was indicted -- Obama told reporters flatly, "I had no contact with the governor or his office, and so we were not -- I was not aware of what was happening."
. . . .

Check the Fox News video on YouTube containing that quote. (ht, Newsalert, found here, posted by radiovice.)

He was holding a press event with Al Gore and Joe Biden when the questions came up. His specific response about no contact whatsoever with Blago comes at about 3:02 minutes into the clip, or so.

In fact, you'll note that Mr. Obama went out of his way to deny having had any contact with Blago! As the reporters were firing questions, he interjected as follows:

"Hold on, hold on, hold ... hold on a second guys ... I'll just answer this one question. Uh ... I had no contact with the Governor, uh ... or his office, and so we were not ... I was not aware of uh ... what was happening. And, as I said, it's a sad day for Illinois. Beyond that I don't think it's appropriate to comment. Okay?"

(You may have to jigger just a bit with the progress bar on the time line to get it to load past 2:39, but it will load and play the key portion of the clip if you click your cursor at just before the 3:00 minute mark.)


Ooooops!

According to the article by Charles Hurt,

"[t]he allegation is just one of a host of thorny claims about Obama that were apparently inadvertently revealed when a blogger found it was possible to read the redacted lines by simply copying and pasting them into a regular text file."

Given these developments, it's even more understandable why the White House is refusing comment on the case.