Buried in a Washington Post story on the incipient infighting between the Obama and Richardson camps about who's to blame for the aborted Commerce Secretary nomination, there's an interesting advance on the deeper story itself.

The Post reports:

The seriousness of the matter became apparent after the FBI began its own background check on Dec. 2.

And a little further down:

FBI agents assigned to comb his background learned independently that an inquiry was underway in New Mexico, the [Justice Department] source said.

In other words, it looks like FBI agents conducting a background check on Richardson for the Commerce job started bumping into their colleagues, who were looking into how CDR, a financial products company with a sketchy past that's donated over $100,000 to Richardson, obtained lucrative contracts advising the state finance authority on bond issues.

That suggests -- though of course, doesn't prove -- that the federal probe of CDR could be looking more directly at the governor himself.

And in that same vein, it was reported yesterday that Richardson had hired a top Albuquerque white-collar lawyer, Peter Schoenburg, in connection with the investigation.

More to come...