Free Republic

Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose "God damn America" sermon set off a firestorm during the 2008 campaign, agreed not to publish an account of the episode until after President Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, according to an interview Wright conducted with the author of a new book on Obama. Wright said he made the decision at the urging of a friend and mentor, the prominent University of Chicago emeritus professor Martin Marty. In the interview, Wright told Ed Klein, author of The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House, that he keeps a cardboard box of documents and notes detailing his experiences...

The University of Chicago is deflecting inquiries about Eric Whitaker, the University Chicago Medical Center doctor and close friend of President Obama's who was linked to pastor Jeremiah Wright in Edward Klein's new book about Obama. In a recorded interview for Klein's book "The Amateur," Wright claimed that he was offered $150,000 to stop preaching during Obama's 2008 campaign due to his increasingly high-profile, controversial status as the race wore on. Yesterday, Klein played a recording of an interview in which Wright appeared to confirm that the person who initiated the alleged payoff was Whitaker, one of Obama's closest friends....