Another member of Obama veep search committee has a skeleton in his closet: UPDATED

Well at least Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg is clean...as far as we know. She along with former Clinton administration deputy attorney general Eric Holder and onetime Walter Mondale campaign aide James Johnson make up the committee advising Barack Obama on the selection of his running mate.

Holder played a key role in the disgraceful pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich by Bill Clinton.

That brings us to Johnson. The "Change We Can Believe In" man has tried to score political points by stoking rage over the subprime mortgage crisis. But if Obama wants to find a "poster child" for this mess, he can look turn to Johnson, who had the audacity to apparently acquire sweetheart loans from Countrywide Financial, as the New York Sun reports:

James Johnson, one of three people tapped by Mr. Obama recently to oversee the search for his running mate, took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo Mozilo, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. The Journal said at least two of the mortgages, among a series of loans made available to people Countrywide officials called "friends of Angelo," were at rates below market averages, though it is difficult to predict a market rate without access to nonpublic information about a borrower's credit history and other factors that can reduce interest charges on a loan.

Among the loans to Mr. Johnson, according to the Journal, were a $5 million home equity line of credit against a house in Ketchum, Idaho, a 5.25% loan of $1.3 million for a home in Palm Desert, Calif., and a 3.875% loan of $971,650 for a home in Washington, D.C. The interest rates applied for the first five years of the loans.

"That reeks most high," a public relations specialist and vocal critic of Mr. Mozilo, Bonnie Russell of Del Mar, Calif., said. "Where's the 'change to believe in' if they're playing the same old game using the same old players?"

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama has criticized Countrywide's executives. "These are the people who are responsible for infecting the economy and helping to create a home foreclosure crisis. Two million people may end up losing their homes," Mr. Obama said in March at a town hall meeting in Lancaster, Pa.

UPDATE 12:50PM CDT:

The chief strategist of Hillary Clinton's now-suspended campaign was Mark Penn, president of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller. One of the firm's clients was Countrywide, which caught the attention of David Axelrod, Obama's primary campaign adviser:

Penn's business dealings have always been an issue. The Clinton campaign is clearly not too worried who its chief strategist does business with.

UPDATE 1:10PM CDT: Barack Obama gave a speech about the economy today. By all accounts, the current economic sluggishness can count the supbrime housing crisis as one of the chief causes.

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