DENVER POST CALLS OUT ANDREW ROMANOFF

Obama is quickly finding himself in the eye of a perfect storm. The Joe Sestak stonewall is beginning to crumble; the Blagojevich trial starts tomorrow; now the Denver Post has broken its relative silence since September of 2009, on the other alleged White House job offer - this one to Senate candidate and Colorado state house speaker, Andrew Romanoff. This storm doesn't even involve the oil disaster.

Via the Denver Post:

The Denver Post last September quoted unnamed sources that said Obama's deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, contacted former state House Speaker Romanoff, who hadn't yet announced his candidacy, with specific suggestions for Washington jobs in exchange for his staying out of the race against appointed Sen. Michael Bennet.

The White House denied any such offer, but sources told The Post's Michael Riley: "Romanoff turned down the overture, which included mention of a job at USAID, the foreign aid agency."

Obama endorsed Bennet the day after Romanoff formally announced he was in the race.

The piece goes on to reference the subject matter of one of its own writers - Mike Littwin, a columnist with a distinct leftwing bent. Former U.S. Congressman from Colorado Bob Beauprez, who is doing interviews on these scandals, forwarded me Littwin's column and amazingly, Littwin appears to be getting quite frustrated with Romanoff, not because he thinks quid pro quo job offers are wrong but because hiding the details surrounding them is. Here is Littwin relaying an exchange he had with Romanoff's spokesman:

The question comes up because The Post's Michael Riley wrote a piece last September in which it was suggested that Jim Messina, the White House deputy chief of staff, did offer up job suggestions to Romanoff for just that purpose.

But Romanoff won't answer the question. And it's worse than that. According to Romanoff spokesman Roy Teicher, not only does Romanoff refuse to answer the question, he won't even say why he refuses to answer the question.

Let me give you a dramatic re-enactment of select parts of my conversation with Teicher:

Me: This Sestak/Romanoff thing keeps getting bigger. I'm wondering why you guys won't comment.

Teicher: That's been Andrew's position from the start.

Me: I get that. But why not?

Teicher: We're not going to comment.

Me: You have a campaign that's supposed to be based on transparency. Is this transparency?

Teicher: We're not going to analyze why we're not commenting. It's just a "no comment."

Me: So, you won't comment on why you're not commenting?

Teicher: You can come at this as many ways as you like, but we're not going to comment.

Be sure to read Littwin's entire column as well as Riley's article from September of last year.

h/t to Line of Sight