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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SeachRE who wrote (125858)	6/5/2008 9:03:42 AM
From: TideGlider	Respond to of 173976

GOP wastes no time hitting obama angle ELECTION '08 \| Long personal history with Rezko already a point for attack messages June 5, 2008Recommend (10) BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter/tnovak@suntimes.com Within hours of Tony Rezko's conviction Wednesday, Republican Party leaders launched a blistering attack against Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, whose political career began with Rezko's financial support. "On the day Barack Obama hoped to unite his party after wheezing over the finish line and claiming the Democrat nomination, a jury in his hometown of Chicago convicted his longtime friend and fund-raiser Tony Rezko of multiple felonies," Republican National Committee chairman Robert "Mike" Duncan said. "Today's verdict and Obama's friendship with Rezko raise serious questions about whether he has the judgment to serve as president.'' Obama's campaign staff put out a statement quoting him as saying, in part, "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew." But an aide declined to respond to the GOP attack, which included a new Web site, www.RezkoJudgment.com, and a YouTube video dubbed "Obama's Money Man." Rezko's relationship with Obama goes back 18 years. Some key events: 1. In 1990, Obama was a Harvard Law School student when he got a job offer from Rezko, then a developer of low-income housing in Chicago. Obama didn't take the job. 2. In 1993, Obama got a job with a small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill, that worked with low-income housing developers. 3. In 1995, one of the firm's clients -- the Woodlawn Historic Preservation and Investment Corp., co-founded by Obama's then-boss Allison Davis -- teamed with Rezko to turn a vacant nursing home at 61st and Drexel on Chicago's South Side into low-income apartments. Obama worked 32 hours on the project, but only five hours came after Rezko and WPIC became partners, according to the law firm. 4. In 1995, Obama ran for the Illinois Senate. Among his first supporters was Rezko, whose companies gave $2,000 to his campaign. Obama won the race to represent a district that included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects. 5. In 2001, Rezko's housing empire began to crumble when his company stopped paying the mortgage on the nursing home project. The state foreclosed on the building, which was in Obama's district. 6. In 2003, Obama ran for the U.S. Senate. His campaign finance committee included Rezko, who threw a lavish fund-raiser June 27, 2003, at his Wilmette mansion. 7. A few months after Obama became a U.S. senator, he and Rezko's wife, Rita, bought adjoining pieces of property from a doctor in Chicago's Kenwood neighborhood. Obama paid $1.65 million for the mansion, $300,000 below the asking price. Rita Rezko paid the full asking price of $625,000 for the adjacent vacant lot. The deals closed in June 2005. Six months later, Obama paid Rita Rezko $104,500 for a strip of her land, giving Obama a bigger yard. At the time of sale, it had been widely reported that Tony Rezko was under federal investigation. Obama has since called the deal "boneheaded'' because it might look like he got a favor from Rezko. 8. In October 2006, Rezko was indicted for soliciting kickbacks from companies seeking state pension business under his friend Gov. Blagojevich. The feds say $10,000 of it went into Obama's campaign fund for U.S. Senate, prompting Obama to donate the money to charity. suntimes.com