(Imported) Will the FBI Allow a Criminal Into the Whitehouse??

(Hot Air props)

The FBI conducted a raid on the offices of Larry Walsh, Will County executive and former Illinois state senator, as part of a probe into corruption tied to earmarks and lobbyists. The raid comes after the FBI met with the county auditor to investigate his complaints about one of his aides taking money from lobbyists for favorable treatment. Walsh endorsed Barack Obama this year, and Obama supported Walsh in his current position:

The FBI on Wednesday raided the county offices of a former Illinois state senator who is a poker-playing buddy of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

According to Chicago authorities, the FBI visited the offices in Joliet, Ill., of Will County executive Larry Walsh, a longtime friend of Mr. Obama’s, and his chief of staff Matt Ryan.

Mr. Walsh, who served in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2005, was endorsed by Mr. Obama in his county executive election bid. With the support of some of Mr. Obama’s U.S. Senate volunteers, he easily defeated incumbent Republican Joseph Mikan.

Will County auditor Steve Weber confirmed that his office had been asked by the FBI to assist in an investigation, but he did not elaborate on the specifics.

No one will be terribly surprised to find corruption in Illinois politics, and this looks like garden-variety backscratching, at least for the moment. Weber suspects that Walsh and/or Ryan have been getting kickbacks from the lobbying firms hired by Will County to pursue federal earmarks. If true, it demonstrates the corrupting influence of Congressional pork all the way through every level of government. When millions of dollars can be had, people will throw thousands at the people who can get it for them. It’s an entire industry in and of itself, and that’s not good for truly representative government. It’s also terribly inefficient; instead of wasting all that money in getting taxes to Washington and then sending it back to local communities, it would be much cheaper for everyone if the money just stayed local in the first place.

So far, this particular bit of corruption doesn’t appear to have any direct connection to Barack Obama, but that’s not really the point. Obama endorsed Walsh and played poker with him on a regular basis. In the 2004 election, faced off against Alan Keyes in a walkover, Obama sent his campaign volunteers to work for Walsh’s election. It makes a farce out of Obama’s claims to be a reformer. He didn’t do anything in Illinois to reform politics, a place that needs much more reform than Washington.