While Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner last week visited with “personal” friends in the Obama administration in Washington,  a friend of the president now is facing trouble in a court here in Illinois.

Former Illinois Department of Public Health Director Eric Whitaker, who has known Obama since they were law students at Harvard, was called as a witness in a U.S. District Court in Springfield as part of a trial against alleged fraud-executors Leon Dingle, Jr. and his wife Karin Dingle. After he spent two hours on the witness stand in what the Chicago Sun-Times called an “explosive” hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Mills declared Whitaker a hostile witness.

From the Chicago Tribune:

But after hearing the testimony, Mills ruled that Whitaker is “hostile to the government, and I declare him to be so.”

Whitaker contended he was “angry… not hostile,” says the Tribune. Mills made the ruling after Whitaker raised concerns about whether the Justice Department’s investigation into the Dingle’s and other’s fraudulent handling of Illinois grant funds carried racial undertones.

From the Sun-Times:

Prosecutors have charged the Dingles and eight other people in six different cases, most of which involve no-bid grants and contracts that began being doled out when Whitaker headed the Illinois Department of Public Health for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich between 2003 and 2007.

Of those 10 people, only one of them — Karin Dingle — is white, while the rest are black.

Whitaker, who is black, took issue with the fact that most of the people investigated are black, calling it a “selective investigation,” wondering why there were not also investigations into whether or not white staffers may have also used grant money fraudulently.

The Sun-Times says seven of those 10 people have already pleaded guilty to the crimes (though neither Dingle has), including two who worked under Whitaker in the public health department during former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration. The Dingles spent more than $3 million on personal items such as vacations with federal grant money meant for AIDS awareness, the prosecution says, according to the Tribune. Whitaker, who was in charge of disbursing $4 million of this grant money to Leon Dingle, says he may have been unknowingly on the receiving end of some perks bought with that money.

Whitaker himself has not been implicated in any of the crimes, but said he didn’t like the way the prosecution had painted him during the investigation process.

From the Sun-Times:

“Personally, I’m upset about this process and how I’ve been made to look like I’m on trial,” Whitaker said. “My not answering a question was really about an affair. . . . I’ve been made to seem like I’m somehow corrupt. I’m angry about that.”

Throughout the investigation, which has been active since 2009, the Sun-Times says the prosecution has asked questions about Whitaker’s personal involvement about with one of the charged health department employees and whether or not he knew about any of the fraud while it was happening. (He says he did not.)

The judge’s declaration of Whitaker as a hostile witness means that the prosecution has more freedom in asking him questions, but the Sun-Times reports that the prosecution has not yet indicated whether they plan to question him.

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