Even while lawyers for Goldman Sachs negotiated with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over the recently-revealed fraud charges, the top executive at the company visited the White House no less than four times.

McClatchy reports:

White House logs show that Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein traveled to Washington for at least two events with President Barack Obama, whose 2008 presidential campaign received $994,795 in donations from Goldman’s political action committee, its employees and their relatives. He also met twice with Obama’s top economic adviser, Larry Summers.

No evidence has surfaced to suggest that Blankfein or any other Goldman executive raised the SEC case with the president or his aides. SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro said in a statement Wednesday that the SEC doesn’t coordinate enforcement actions with the White House or other political bodies.

Meanwhile, however, Goldman is retaining former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig as a member of its legal team. In addition, when he worked as an investment banker in Chicago a decade ago, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised one client who also retained Goldman as an adviser on the same $8.2 billion deal.

Democrats have longstanding connections to Goldman Sachs, with former Majority Leader Richard Gephardt even serving as a lobbyist for the company. And:

Several former Goldman executives hold senior positions in the Obama administration, including Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Mark Patterson, a former Goldman lobbyist who is chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.

But back to the White House:

According to White House visitor logs, Blankfein was among the business leaders who attended an Obama speech on Feb. 13, 2009, and he also joined more than a dozen bank CEOs in a meeting with Obama on March 27, 2009.

Blankfein also was supposed be among the CEOs who met with Obama in December, but he and two others phoned in from New York, blaming inclement weather.

He and his wife, Laura, were listed on the logs among 438 presidential guests at the Kennedy Center Honors the previous week.

The logs also indicate that Blankfein met twice in 2009, on Feb. 4 and Sept. 30, with Summers, who was undersecretary of the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration when it was headed by Robert Rubin, a former Goldman CEO.

A spokesman for Goldman Sachs refused to confirm what was discussed between Blankfein and administration officials.

The SEC charges against the company come just as the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have started pushing their financial regulatory reform — a “coincidence” that hasn’t gone unnoticed by pundits on either side of the aisle. In fact, Jason Linkins of the left-wing Huffington Post writes:

But it seems to be pretty clear that what’s happening is that the White House is constructing a big goddamn pageant play with noble heroes and wicked villains. And at the end of the day, something called “reform” gets passed while everyone is looking at the shiny optics and nobody asks “Well, will this work?

That’s never been a question asked by this administration. Be it health care, stimulus packages, or financial regulatory reform, optics and special interests are always more important than efficiency and common sense.