Hmm, Mr. Transparency himself looks like he may have yet another skeleton in his closet. It must be getting pretty crowded in there.
After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client -- a longtime political supporter.
Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell's firm that eventually totaled $112,000.
A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.
Read it here
A Robert Blackwell of Blackwell Consulting Services also appears as a bundler for Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Equally interesting is that a Robert Blackwell also appears on a list of fundraisers in an article by Lynn Sweet entitled Obama Secretive About Fundraisers He Will Be Attending dated January 8, 2008
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