Willie Brown 12/21/08 SFGate article on Blago’s innocence (don’t laugh... he’s serious) after a recent chat with Blago.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/21/BAG314QRPO.DTL
Interesting take on this here, e.g. Blago was being forced to take 0/Rahm’s candidate Jarrett instead of IL AG Lisa Madigan who Blago wanted.
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/7428
Valerie Jarrett was born in 1956 in Shiraz, Iran, about 570 miles south of Tehran. ...
Most thread emphasise whe was raised in CHicago.
Lawyer, “the other side of Obama’s brain”, business woman
Valerie Jarrett: Chosen for: White House Senior Advisor and Assistant
According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.) Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis
.....
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage...In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.” Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.
"I got a call from Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich the other day. The first thing I said to him was, "You know, this call is probably being taped." Blagojevich said he had read my column in The Chronicle last week, in which I raised questions about the "pay to play" charges being leveled against him in connection with his pending appointment of someone to fill Barack Obama's now-empty U.S. Senate seat. I think he liked how I raised questions about the timing and manner of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's decision to charge him over what appears to be little more than loose conversations he had with his staff. He laughed, we talked, and all in all he seemed in pretty good spirits for a guy looking at federal charges. I wouldn't bet on him stepping aside anytime soon. If anything, his hand is getting stronger by the day. I can't go into details, but my impression is that the whole mess started because the governor had been considering appointing a political rival, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, to the Senate so she wouldn't be able to run against him when he went up for re-election in 2010. Apparently, Obama's people weren't happy about the idea of Madigan coming to Washington, and there were some pretty heated conversations between Blagojevich and Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, which I understand will burn your ears off.
“Well, it wouldn’t make sense if Team Obama was being pressured by a crooked governor to pay something for a candidate they preferred. But it does make sense if Team Obama is the one that was applying the pressure. If it is true that Team Obama was in contact with Team Blagojevich to pressure Blagojevich to dump his own preference and defer to Team Obama’s directives the whole thing turns around.”
Makes sense to me