Obama's 2005 roast of future chief of staff Emanuel

In 2005, President-elect Barack Obama joined in a celebrity roast of his future chief of staff, U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) at an event sponsored by Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, a charity run by the wife of Obama strategist David Axelrod. Besides Obama, the roast honoring Emanuel's work for the group was attended by a who's-who of Democratic politics, including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Commerce Secretary WIlliam Daley, brother of Mayor Daley.

During his part of the program, Obama joked about how a work accident that cost Emanuel part of his middle finger "rendered him practically mute" and marveled how Emanuel, a product of the city's rough-and-tumble political culture, avoided being subpoenaed by Congress or ordered to appear before a criminal grand jury. The reason for that, Obama said, was that Emanuel shared the same lawyer as Chicago Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak.