Barack Obama insists that he and his staff were not involved in the alleged schemes Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich cooked up to sell off the president-elect’s vacant Senate seat.

But the timeline of activity outlined in the FBI’s 76-page complaint against Blagojevich suggests Obama’s team was aware that his home-state governor was playing political hardball in the weeks before his arrest.
That’s because shortly after Blagojevich allegedly told his advisers, in an expletive-laced...