Two Investigations Into New Illinois Senator Are Begun

By MONICA DAVEY and DIRK JOHNSON
NYT

CHICAGO — The United States Senate Ethics Committee and a local Illinois prosecutor began investigations on Tuesday into the recently appointed junior senator for Illinois, Roland W. Burris, over Mr. Burris’s shifting, inconsistent descriptions of how he came to be named to the seat vacated by the election of President Obama.

Mr. Burris, a onetime state attorney general chosen to fill Mr. Obama’s Senate seat by Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich in the final weeks of Mr. Blagojevich’s beleaguered administration, said he had done nothing wrong and welcomed all investigations.

“I will answer any and all questions to get that point across and restore faith with the citizens of Illinois,” he said in a statement Tuesday afternoon before reporters in Peoria, Ill., where a planned question-and-answer session was canceled.

Only a night earlier, Mr. Burris, a Democrat, had provided yet another new, jolting disclosure about his ties to Mr. Blagojevich’s closest allies: In the month or two before Mr. Blagojevich appointed him, Mr. Burris, 71, tried, without success, to raise money for the governor, he acknowledged, at the request of the governor’s brother.

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