One of the more interesting new details in the Blagojevich indictment was the allegation that the former Illinois governor held up the state funds for a publicly supported school, in an effort to pressure an unnamed congressman who supported the school to have his brother hold a fundraiser for Blago.
Who, we wondered, was the congressman? And who was his brother?
Well that mystery got solved pretty quickly. The White House publicly confirmed last night that the congressman was Rahm Emanuel, who’s now President Obama’s chief of staff.
The brother, of course, is assumed to be Ari Emanuel, the high-flying Hollywood agent who’s said to have been the inspiration for this guy.
It’s worth noting that Rahm has another brother, Ezekiel. But given that he’s a health policy wonk — he currently works in the White House under Rahm — rather than a Hollywood power player, Blago probably wasn’t counting on Zeke to bring in the bucks.
The fundraiser was never held, according to the indictment.
But the twin facts that this information appears to have come to prosecutors since December, when he laid out the initial allegations about Blago, and that the White House was so quick to confirm that Rahm Emanuel is the unnamed congressman, suggests that Emanuel and the White House have been getting friendly with Pat Fitzgerald’s probe.
