A bombshell was dropped in the courtroom trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
According to CBS Chicago:
Jurors in ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial got a purported look Thursday at a short list of candidates President Obama favored to replace him in the U.S. Senate.
Federal prosecutors played a tape that revealed the first official message from the budding Obama administration about who the president supported for the Senate seat.
In the call, Blagojevich’s chief of staff, John Harris, tells his boss that Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s soon-to-be top aide, had called him to give him a list of four people that Obama would find acceptable as his successor in the Senate. They were Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.; injured Iraq War vet Tammy Duckworth; U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Illinois State Comptroller Dan Hynes.
Harris tells Blagojevich “He doesn’t want to say who he doesn’t like,” adding that if a person Blagojevich was considering was not on Emanuel’s list, “he’s not high on them.” Harris explained that the message from Emanuel was that Illinois Senate President Emil Jones was not a favored candidate for the U.S. Senate spot.
Harris also testified that Emanuel told him that no one else in the Obama camp was authorized to talk about the Senate seat. That seemed to be an indication that previous messages from a union official that Jackson Jr. was not one of Obama’s preferred candidates were unauthorized.
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