Shortly after Rahm Emanuel was reported to have accept president-elect Barack Obama’s offer to be his Chief of Staff in the White House, ABC News reported that Emanuel has close ties to Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac is the financial institution closely connected to the crisis in the financial markets – it contributed to the crisis to a very significant degree.

According to ABC News, Emanuel served on the board of directors of Mac at a time when the federal mortgage firm was under fire due to (financial) mismanagement.

‘According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002,’ ABC News reported.

Emanuel himself was not mentioned in the SEC complaint but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) (click here to read) of having “failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention.”

The Orthodox Jew served on the board from 2000 to May 2001, when he resigned because he ran for Congress.

Reacting to the report at ABC News, a spokesman for Emanuel said that the latter only served on the board for 13 months and told his fellow directors that they should take Congress’ concerns into consideration.

Whatever the case, Emanuel’s ties to Freddie Mac will undoubtedly result in criticism from conservatives, moderates and members of the media. Already, conservative bloggers and activists are preparing to use Emanuel’s ties to Freddie Mac against both him and his future boss Barack Obama.

This is a very serious problem for Emanuel and for Obama. The latter presented himself as a ‘new’ voice, a new kind of politician. Emanuel’s ties to Freddie Mac may do much to help destroy the image Obama created for himself in the last two years, and especially in the last two months, by presenting himself as the only man able to deal with the current economic crisis.

At the same time, Democrats succeeded in blaming Republicans for the crisis. They, Democrats said, were the once who constantly pushed for deregulation and who let these financial institutions destroy the U.S. economy. The reports about Emanuel’s tries to Freddie Mac, however, could inform the public about something that was underreported during the campaign: Democrats were just as much, perhaps even more, to blame for the failure of financial institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as Republicans.

Emanuel’s ties to Freddie Mac could become especially problematic considering the fact that the company was accused of “illegally using corporate resources between 2000 and 2003 for 85 fundraisers that collected about $1.7 million for federal candidates.” If this issue is explored, and if Obama critics succeed in tying Emanuel closely to the failure of Freddie Mac and the culture of corruption, Obama’s image of an outside reformer who will clean up Washington D.C., will suffer before he even takes office.