Is Scandal-Ridden Rahmbo Chicago's Next Mayor?

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel left his job at the White House last week to run for Mayor of Chicago.

According to The Washington Post:

President Obama… announced his highest-level changing of the guard, naming a longtime aide of few words, Pete Rouse, to replace on an interim basis the irrepressible Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff.

In an East Room event attended by senior staff and Cabinet members, Obama called Emanuel, who resigned to begin an expected run for mayor of Chicago, someone “I could count on day and night to get the job done.”

Obama might have added, “at all costs.” Given that the liberal media will gloss over Rahm’s record in the Obama White House, just as they did when he was installed there, let’s take a look at his terrible record of corruption.

After all, Emanuel didn’t earn the nickname “Rahmbo” for being a mild-mannered shrinking violet. He served as Bill Clinton’s chief money-man at a time when the Clinton campaign was corrupted by foreign money. He defended the “worst of the worst” Clinton scandals, and, in fact, earned his reputation as a ruthless political combatant by fiercely defending President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky investigation. (Notably, Emanuel also served on the board of Freddie Mac when the company was involved in fraudulent activity.)

The bottom line is that when the Clintons’ dirty work needed to be done, Emanuel did it and apparently without question.

And that didn’t change under Obama.

Remember when the Obama White House wanted to manipulate Democratic primaries earlier this year? They tapped Rahmbo to do the dirty work.

Emanuel teamed with his Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina to allegedly interfere with Senate elections in Pennsylvania and Colorado by offering federal appointments to Rep. Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff. Sestak and Romanoff were not Obama’s favored candidates, so Emanuel and Messina attempted to unlawfully persuade them to abandon their campaigns.

Our complaint, filed on June 15, 2010, tells the story:

As widely reported in the media, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, on behalf of the Obama Administration, have both used their position and influence as highly placed federal employees to affect the outcome of federal elections in direct violation of the Hatch Act, which states that an employee may not “use his official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

And then, of course, there’s Emanuel’s connection to the Blagojevich scandal.

According to sworn testimony during the “Blago” trial, which was covered by our own JW blogger Irene Garcia, Emanuel served as Obama’s chief negotiator with the Blagojevich team as the former Illinois Governor attempted to illegally sell Obama’s former Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Folks in Illinois (and elsewhere in America) were absorbed by the controversial and very public trial. Emanuel’s participation in the Blagojevich scheme will certainly not help him in Chicago, where he already faces an uphill climb.

Remember, it was just two weeks ago that Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s political future was sent into a tailspin by new evidence that the Illinois Congressman offered Blagojevich a $6 million bribe to secure the Senate Seat (among other more salacious charges).

Now the government is preparing to retry Blagojevich. And if the government decides to present a real case this time around, instead of the watered down version designed to protect White House officials, Rahm Emanuel will have some explaining to do.

Of course, it is not clear whether Rahm can even run for Chicago mayor as he may not meet the resident eligibility requirements for that office.

(By the way, if you want some more details regarding Emanuel’s reckless and ruthless behavior, check out this Update piece I wrote when Emanuel was first tapped to serve as Obama’s Chief of Staff. It includes some pretty frightening stuff.)