Friends in Low Places [Stephen Spruiell]
I have a piece on the homepage today about the Rezko trial. Here in Chicago, the press has focused more on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich than Barack Obama. Rezko was a friend and supporter to both men, but he was closer to Blagojevich, and Blagojevich's name has come up over and over again during the trial. In several cases, Blagojevich was the intended beneficiary of corrupt activities that Rezko and a sleazy fixer named Stuart Levine are alleged to have engaged in:
Prosecutors plan to walk Levine through a description of one such scheme during Tuesday's testimony. Levine and Rezko are accused of offering Hollywood producer and financier Thomas Rosenberg a choice: Either give them a $2 million bribe, or donate $1.5 million to Blagojevich's campaign. Rosenberg (ironically, the producer of a film entitled Million Dollar Baby) stood to win a $220 million investment from [the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System], but he refused to pay up and threatened to go to the feds. Levine got a visit from the government shortly thereafter.
Obama is thought to have benefited from Rezko's activities in a similar way, though on a much smaller scale. Levine has testified that he directed the Illinois TRS, of which he was a trustee, to invest $50 million with a firm called Glencoe Capital. In exchange, Levine arranged for himself and Rezko to split a fraudulent $500,000 "finder's fee." Rezko allegedly told Levine to route his half to an associate of his named Joseph Aramanda.
According to the indictment against Rezko, Aramanda "used the money… in substantial part for the benefit of Rezko." To that end, Aramanda received half of the money in March of 2004 and wrote a $10,000 check to Barack Obama's Senate campaign that same month.
Of course, Obama has donated any and all contributions he received from Aramanda to charity, and he says neither he nor anyone on his campaign had any reason to suspect that Aramanda had obtained the money by fraudulent means. But there's another twist: Obama's Senate office awarded Aramanda's son an internship in the summer of 2005 based on Rezko's recommendation.
None of this is breaking news, of course, but Levine's ongoing testimony is exhuming the whole sordid mess and adding new details to Rezko's saga of alleged kickbacks, extortion and patronage. Assessing it all in light of the controversy over Jeremiah Wright, one gets the impression, taking Obama at his word, that he really didn't know his "friends" very well at all.
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