Like any two political heavies once joined together for mutual benefit only to be separated by unavoidable circumstance — hello John McCain and Sarah Palin — president-elect Barack Obama and nixed commerce secretary hopeful Bill Richardson are now trading barbs like a pair of junior high schoolgirls caught smoking at recess.

Now that a grand jury is investigating, along with the FBI, whether two political action committees headed by Richardson that took donations from a government contract bidder influenced the company getting the deals, even though they were reportedly not the most qualified.

Now it's time for Obama's camp to blame Team Richardson for failing to disclose details of the on-going investigation, was the Washington Post reports:

Sources within the transition and the Justice Department said that Richardson had played down the importance of the probe and did not reveal that his office and staff could be at risk. The seriousness of the matter became apparent after the FBI began its own background check on Dec. 2. But Richardson's longtime aides defended his disclosures, noting that subjects under examination by a grand jury are rarely aware of its secret deliberations.

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A Richardson aide said the governor did "nothing wrong" and noted that New Mexico news outlets had reported on the federal grand jury probe starting in August, when officials at the Finance Authority were first interviewed by the FBI about the agency's selection of CDR Financial and its president, David Rubin, a Richardson donor.

But a source with the Obama transition said Richardson's disclosures to the team were incomplete.

A Justice Department source also said Richardson neglected to mention the ongoing investigation on a background-check questionnaire.

And it's also time for Team Richardson to insist they were very up front with Obama's investigators and couldn't have known how wide the investigation was swinging, because it was a secret investigation:

"This was out there, and he told them," said a senior Richardson aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "I feel that they just missed the boat on it. The FBI or the campaign or something. I don't think it's fair that this is being portrayed as him holding anything back."