Obama: True and False

Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald interrogated convicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko and others intensively about then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune said on television last week.

Jim Warren, now a political commentator for MSNBC, told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Fitzgerald questioned Rezko “very aggressively” about possible involvement of Obama in alleged political scandals in Chicago, and came away “with nothing.”

Warren said, “They have come away with zilch.”

This item, lost amid furor over newly released Justice Department torture memos last week, came out April 14. Warren was at the Tribune from 1984 until August 2008, according to the newspaper, going to the Tribune from the rival Chicago Sun-Times where he began in 1977. Warren was Washington Bureau Chief for the Tribune for eight years beginning in 1993.

Warren emphasized that his own viewpoint on whether Fitzgerald’s investigations included Obama has changed.

-snip

So, my notion that they took a passive attack toward Obama for a variety of reasons, I now have to admit, according to my sources, is simply wrong.

WSJ