Barack Obama kept up efforts to keep his Christmas holiday in Hawaii low-profile yesterday, but 4,000 miles away in Chicago the corruption scandal over his vacant Illinois Senate seat continued to dog his White House transition.

Three weeks after Rod Blagojevich, the Governor of Illinois, was arrested and charged with trying to sell the Senate seat, new details emerged about the scandal that stymied attempts by Mr Obama to put the matter to rest.

Mr Blagojevich’s lawyer asked the Illinois legislative committee, which is considering whether to impeach the governor, to subpoena more than a dozen witnesses, including Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s incoming chief of staff, and Valerie Jarrett, a longtime confidante and senior adviser to the President-elect. While it is not clear whether the panel will grant the request, made to force public testimony from Mr Obama’s inner circle and distract attention from the alleged wrongdoings of his client, the move kept the story in the headlines.

Although there is no allegation of any wrongdoing by Mr Obama or his staff, it also emerged that the President-elect was interviewed last Thursday for two hours by two FBI agents and two federal prosecutors investigating Mr Blagojevich. Mr Emanuel and Ms Jarrett were also interviewed. All three were represented by their own personal lawyers.

On Tuesday Mr Obama released an internal review conducted by his incoming White House counsel, which reported that Mr Emanuel had a number of conversations with Mr Blagojevich and his staff about Mr Obama’s Senate seat after the election. The report emphasised that there had been no inappropriate contact with the governor or his office.

The report also stated that Mr Obama authorised Mr Emanuel to pass on the names of four people whom he considered qualified to take over his seat: the Illinois comptroller, Dan Hynes; the Illinois Veterans Affairs director, Tammy Duckworth; Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois congresswoman, and Jesse Jackson Jr.

An official with Mr Obama’s team said that Mr Emanuel had been captured talking on wiretaps made as part of the investigation into Mr Blagojevich.

In Hawaii, Mr Obama and his family have spent Christmas week largely out of sight, although photographers have captured two striking images: one of the President-elect bare-chested, another of him scattering his grandmother’s ashes in the Pacific Ocean.

Madelyn Payne Dunham, the maternal grandmother whom he referred to as Toot, died on November 2, two days before her grandson was elected America’s first African-American president.

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