Via the NYT: Investigations Into Senator Burris of Illinois Are Begun
The United States Senate Ethics Committee and a local Illinois prosecutor began investigations on Tuesday into the recently appointed junior senator for Illinois, Roland W. Burris, over Mr. Burris’s shifting, inconsistent descriptions of how he came to be named to the seat vacated by the election of President Obama.
I must confess, my initial reaction to the Senate’s initial opposition to the Burriss appointment was that it was justified given the serious nature of the allegations against Blagojevich vis-à-vis the seat, and stalling until Blago was impeached was a smart tactic. Over time I became comfortable with the notion that the legal thing to do was to seat Burris, although I was somewhat surprised that the Senate didn’t do a better job of stalling said seating.
It is starting to look like the initial impulse, i.e., that any Blagojevich nominee deserves extra-special suspicion was warranted. Not only has Burris forgotten to mention some back-channel communications from Blago, now we also learn:
In the month or two before Mr. Blagojevich appointed him, Mr. Burris, 71, tried, without success, to raise money for the governor, he acknowledged, at the request of the governor’s brother.
[...]
In the latest disclosure, which came Monday night during questioning from reporters after a Democratic dinner in Peoria, Mr. Burris said that around last November’s election, he approached people “to see if we could put a fund-raiser on” for Mr. Blagojevich’s campaign fund. People were reluctant, he said.
Mr. Burris recalled then telling Mr. Blagojevich’s brother, who had asked him to set up the fund-raiser, “Well, look, Rob, I can’t raise any money from my friends.”
Given that part of the allegations aimed at Blagojevich about the Obama Senate seat was that he wanted possible nominees to do some fund raising as a quid pro quo, this doesn’t look very good.
There are also serious questions about how truthful Burris was in testimony before the Illinois legislature and in an affidavit provided to that body.
It does seem that had Burris in fact revealed his contacts with Blagojevich’s brother and the requests for fund-raising and the attempts to do so, that he wouldn’t be a Senator at the moment.
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February 18th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
He looks like a black Oscar-the-Grouch!! Look at him!