Bone-headed paper-shuffling junior lawyer or Mr. Inside? Obama and the slumlord:
Incredibly, Barack's story is he just was a bone-headed paper-shuffling junior lawyer throughout his career as a lawyer and "community organizer.
This is the royal Obama smearing I promised Friday.
A look at Tony Rezko, housing developer for the poor (aka slumlord) and his relationship with Barack Obama, selfless community organizer for the poor:
For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side.
It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers.
Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on.
But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building.
Obama has been friends with Rezko for 17 years. Rezko has been a political patron to Obama and many others, helping to raise millions of dollars for them through his own contributions and by hosting fund-raisers in his home.
Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko's low-income housing empire was collapsing, leaving many African-American families in buildings riddled with problems -- including squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.
The building in Englewood was one of 30 Rezmar rehabbed in a series of troubled deals largely financed by taxpayers. Every project ran into financial difficulty. More than half went into foreclosure, a Chicago Sun-Times investigation has found.
"Their buildings were falling apart,'' said a former city official. "They just didn't pay attention to the condition of these buildings.''
Eleven of Rezko's buildings were in Obama's state Senate district.
But Obama's ties with Rezko go beyond those two real estate sales and the political support, the Sun-Times found. Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm -- Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland -- that helped Rezmar get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 of their 30 apartment buildings for the poor.
Obama role unclear
Just what legal work -- and how much -- Obama did on those deals is unknown. His campaign staff acknowledges he worked on some of them. But the Rezmar-related work amounted to just five hours over the six years it said Obama was affiliated with the law firm, the staff said in an e-mail in February.
Obama, however, was associated with the firm for more than nine years, his staff acknowledged Sunday in an e-mail response to questions submitted March 14 by the Sun-Times. They didn't say what deals he worked on -- or how much work he did.
"The senator, relatively inexperienced in this kind of work, was assigned to tasks appropriate for a junior lawyer,'' according to an e-mail from Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. "These tasks would have included reviewing documents, collecting corporate organizational documents, and drafting corporate resolutions.''
Get that? Though Obama worked for Rezko's law firm for 9 years, got hundreds of thousands of campaign contributions from Rezko over those years, had been offered a job as a developer by Rezko while he was still in Harvard Law school ... But Obama did only 5 hours of work on Rezko deals in that 9 years. And the explanation for that non-involvment in Rezko's legal work is that Obama was too inexperienced a lawyer to handle Rezko's business for all those years - including years he served as a state senator. He was just a "junior lawyer" the whole time who shuffled papers, "reviewed" documents (For what? Typos?) - drafted standard corporate boilerplate resolutions, yadda yadda. That's from Obama's spokesman! Gee, in order to plead ignorance of Rezko's dealings, they're having to claim Obama really wasn't much of a lawyer.
In fact, Gibbs wrote, "Senator Obama does not remember having conversations with Tony Rezko about properties that he owned or any specific issues related to those properties.''
While the poor people in the community Obama was supposedly selflessly working on behalf of were shivering in Rezko's housing, Obama never said word one to his pal Tony about it. You'd think a "community organizer" would notice a half dozen boarded up buildings in his district that his law firm had gotten government money for Rezko to develop. If so, he never brought them up to his pal Tony. Nor his boss at his law firm, Allison Davis, who left law to get into the housing development business as a partner with Rezko and a relative of Mayor Daley. Not even when took Rezko along on his house-hunting trip in 2006. Believable? Gee, how many of us would take a guy with a reputation as a failed developer along on a house hunting trip> If you wouldn't, you must be less of a bone-head than Obama.
Rezko and Mahru had no construction experience when they created Rezmar in 1989 to rehabilitate apartments for the poor under the Daley administration. Between 1989 and 1998, Rezmar made deals to rehab 30 buildings, a total of 1,025 apartments. The last 15 buildings involved Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland during Obama's time with the firm.
Rezko and Mahru also managed the buildings, which were supposed to provide homes for poor people for 30 years. Every one of the projects ran into trouble:
• Seventeen buildings -- many beset with code violations, including a lack of heat -- ended up in foreclosure.
• Six buildings are currently boarded up.
• Hundreds of the apartments are vacant, in need of major repairs.
• Taxpayers have been stuck with millions in unpaid loans.
• At least a dozen times, the city of Chicago sued Rezmar for failure to heat buildings.
EVERY SINGLE PROJECT REZKO WAS INVOLVED IN WAS FU'D! Amazing! Thats a perfect record of failure. But Rezko and his partners and his lawyers (that would be Barack's firm) got their fees. And despite Rezko's by then existing record as a corrupt slumlord, noble selfless crusader for the poor, Barack Obama, took Tony Rezko along on a house-hunting trip in which Rezko's wife (Rezko was technically bankrupt by then) bought a part of the property Obama was buying.
This is supposed to be "bone-headed" - according to Obama himself. If it was only bone-headed, that by itself would be enough to show he didn't have good enough judgment to be President of the US.
But I don't believe it was bone-headed. I think its revelatory. Obama's image as a noble selfless "community organizer" is a fraud. Obama's has been a protege or, employee of, and a political fixer for crooks and grafters.
Obama should have to promise right now that if elected, there will be no pardons for Rezko or any other associate that might be convicted in the future and that the federal prosecutors investigation of IL corruption will not be interfered with.
For five weeks, the Sun-Times sought to interview Obama about Rezko and the housing deals. His staff wanted written questions. It responded Sunday but left many questions unanswered. Other answers didn't directly address the question.
Among these: When did Obama learn of Rezmar's financial problems? "The senator had no special knowledge of any financial problems,'' Gibbs wrote.
What is "special knowledge" anyway? His law firm was Rezko's lawyer. Wouldn't they know about foreclosures? Wouldn't a state senator and "community organizer" notice boarded up buildings his law firm had gotten government money to develop?
Did the senator ever complain to anyone -- government officials, Rezmar or Rezko -- about the conditions of Rezmar's buildings? "Senator Obama did follow up on constituency complaints about housing as [a] matter of routine,'' Gibbs wrote.
Don't guess constituent complaints came up when house hunting, sharing dinners, attending campaign fund raising functions?
Did the senator ever discuss Rezmar's financial problems with anyone at his law firm? "The firm advises us that it [is] unaware of any such conversations,'' Gibbs wrote.
A major client of Obama's lawfirm is a failing slumlord/developer. But nothing to talk about there.
Turns down Rezmar job
Obama's friendship with Rezko began with a telephone call.
It was 17 years ago. Obama had just become the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. Newspapers wrote about him. One story caught the eye of David Brint, a vice president of Rezmar, a new company that had become the Daley administration's favored developer of low-income housing.
"I just cold-called him," Brint said in an interview.
Brint said he wanted to know if Obama would come work for Rezmar, developing housing for the poor -- something Obama had expressed interest in, according to the story Brint had read. Brint arranged for Obama to meet Rezko, but Obama didn't take the job.
Obama, who has a law degree from Harvard, subsequently returned to Chicago to lead a voter-registration drive in 1992.
Sure that was an election year and Obama was just doing his civic duty. Never mind that it was an important year for the mayor's office and its favorite developer of government funded housing and his law firm. Doesn't take a genius to see he was already working for the law firm and Rezko while leading that voter-registration drive, regardless of whatever payroll records would show.
The next year, Obama joined Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, a 12-lawyer firm that specialized in helping develop low-income housing. The firm's top partner, Allison S. Davis, was, and is, a member of the Chicago Plan Commission, appointed by Mayor Daley. Davis was also a friend of Rezko. Davis and Rezko would eventually go into business together, developing homes.
Another firm partner, Judson Miner, ran the city Law Department under Mayor Harold Washington, one of Obama's political idols.
Talk about a politically connected law firm!
Asked what Rezko cases Obama worked on, Miner told the Sun-Times, "We'll put together a list of the cases he worked on involving Rezko/Rezmar in the next day or two.''
That was March 13. He never provided the information.
Shouldn't the voters know what Obama spent his time doing in Chicago before electing him to the Presidency? Especially given the grafters he surrounded himself with worked for.
While at the law firm, Obama spent much of his time working on issues that would help improve conditions in poor neighborhoods, according to his first book, Dreams from My Father, published in 1996.
"In my legal practice, I work mostly with churches and community groups, men and women who quietly build grocery stores and health clinics in the inner city, and housing for the poor,'' Obama wrote in the book.
Oh, how noble! You believed you were doing mission work for the poor, Saint Barry. And you had no idea the people around you and paying your salary were unscrupulous slumlords and grafters, you innocent naif, you. You never realized those boarded up buildings in your district were ones your firm had helped get government money for.
Three community groups represented by Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland were partners with Rezmar in the troubled housing deals.
Rezko offers Obama support
Obama had been at the firm for two years when he began his political career, running to replace state Sen. Alice Palmer.
Rezko became Obama's political patron. Obama got his first campaign contributions on July 31, 1995: $300 from a Loop lawyer, a $5,000 loan from a car dealer, and $2,000 from two food companies owned by Rezko.
Around that time, Rezmar began developing low-income apartments in partnerships with the Chicago Urban League and two other not-for-profit community groups, both founded and run by Bishop Arthur Brazier, pastor of the Apostolic Church of God and a powerful ally of the mayor -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp., known as WPIC, and the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization.
All three community groups were clients of the Davis law firm. Davis himself was treasurer of WPIC when it went into business with Rezmar.
Why go into business with Rezmar? "We thought they were successful,'' Davis said, noting that little development was taking place in Woodlawn.
At the time, Rezmar had been in business for six years and had become one of City Hall's favored developers of low-income housing, managing 600 apartments in 15 buildings it rehabbed with government funding. Teaming now with community development groups, Rezmar rehabbed another 15 buildings, with 400 apartments, between 1995 and 1998. Each deal involved a mix of public and private financing -- loans from the city or state, federal low-income-housing tax credits and bank loans.
By the time Rezmar started working with those community groups, at least two of its earlier buildings were falling into disrepair -- including the Englewood apartment building at 7000 S. Sangamon where the tenants were without heat for five weeks.
The tenants there had no heat from Dec. 27, 1996, until at least Feb. 3, 1997, when the city of Chicago sued to turn the heat on. The case was settled later that month with a $100 fine.
It was during that time that the area's new state senator, Barack Obama, got a $1,000 campaign donation from Rezmar. The date: Jan. 14, 1997.
Obama works on Rezmar deals
Obama spent the next eight years serving in the Illinois Senate and continued to work for the Davis law firm.
Through its partnerships, Rezmar remained a client of the firm, according to ethics statements Obama filed while a state senator.
Davis said he didn't remember Obama working on the Rezmar projects.
A careful lawyer always say he doesn't remember. Remember Richard Nixon telling Dean that? "You can say, I don't remember. You can say, I can't recall."
"I don't recall Barack having any involvement in real estate transactions,'' Davis said. "Barack was a litigator. His area of focus was litigation, class-action suits.''
But Obama did legal work on real estate deals while at Davis' firm, according to biographical information he submitted to the Sun-Times in 1998. Obama specialized "in civil rights litigation, real estate financing, acquisition, construction and/or redevelopment of low-and moderate income housing,'' according to his "biographical sketch."
And he did legal work on Rezko's deals, according to an e-mail his presidential campaign staff sent the Sun-Times on Feb. 16, in response to earlier inquiries. The staff didn't specify which Rezmar projects Obama worked on, or his role. But it drew a distinction between working for Rezko and working on projects involving his company.
"Senator Obama did not directly represent Mr. Rezko or his firms. He did represent on a very limited basis ventures in which Mr. Rezko's entities participated along with others,'' according to the e-mail from Obama's staff.
From a moral standpoint, does it matter if Obama worked for Rezko/Rezmar directly or his "community group" partners?
Obama buys Rezko land
Over the years, Rezko, Mahru, their wives and businesses have given more than $50,000 to Obama's campaign funds, records show. And Rezko has helped raise millions more.
Rezko was among the people Obama appointed to serve on his U.S. Senate campaign finance committee, the Sun-Times reported in 2003. The committee raised more than $14 million, according to Federal Election Commission records, helping send Obama to Washington in 2004.
Wasn't Rezko's slumlord reputation already estalbished by then? Shouldn't Obama have known all about Rezko's record?
As a U.S. senator, Obama grew closer to Rezko.
Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, Rezko's wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000 below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko's wife.
Last year, Rita Rezko sold a strip of that vacant lot to Obama for $104,500 -- a deal Obama later apologized for, acknowledging that people might think he got a favor from Rezko. Obama called the episode "boneheaded'' and a "mistake.''
At the time Obama bought that strip of land, it had been reported that Rezko was under federal investigation for influence-peddling involving the administration of Blagojevich, whose campaign also received Rezko's financial support.
You'd think a savvy community organizer and lawyer would realize that. Ah, but in his defense, Obama can say, I was just bone-headed.
Rezko has since been indicted for allegedly demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Blagojevich. Rezko's trial has been postponed while investigators sort through his finances.
'Disenchanted with Rezmar'
Rezmar's final low-income housing deals involving the Davis law firm went bad quickly.
Those deals were supposed to provide affordable housing for at least 25 years. But the first deal Rezmar struck with the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corp. collapsed in just six and a half years, when the state sued for foreclosure. WPIC and its sister agency, the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, ultimately forced Rezmar to give up control of all 12 buildings they rehabbed together, citing financial troubles and deteriorating conditions of the buildings.
The state foreclosure suit came because Rezmar had stopped making monthly mortgage payments in March 2001 on a state loan to help turn an old nursing home into low-income apartments at 6140 S. Drexel, in Obama's state Senate district.
"WPIC became disenchanted with Rezmar and wanted to get rid of them,'' Brazier said. "They thought the buildings weren't being kept up properly. There were some financial problems.''
Rezmar and WPIC cut all ties last October, when the Chicago City Council agreed to let Rezmar out of a city loan. Rezmar transferred its interest to The Wolcott Group, a management company run by business partners of David Brint -- the man who had introduced Rezko to Obama.
Here Peter, let's give that to Paul.
Contributing: Chris Fusco and Art Golab
suntimes.com
Well, from that we can tell what kind of developer Obama's long time (17 year) associate, friend, and client of his law firm, Tony Rezko, was. He was the kind with no construction experience or expertise but who got government funded jobs by raising money for grateful politicians and teaming up with "community groups" like churches who could deliver votes to those same grateful politicians.
That seems to be where "community organizer" lawyer Obama came in. He helped get the community groups to team up with the grafter and after a couple years he ran for the state senate where he could help steer contracts to the grafter himself. 7
Barack does Political favor for Tony Rezko
So according to Barack he never did anything for his pal Tony. Uh-huh, sure.
From the Chicago Sun Times June 13, 2007:
Obama's letters for Rezko
NOT A FAVOR? As a state senator, he went to bat for now-indicted developer's deal
BY TIM NOVAK Staff Reporter/tnovak@suntimes.com
As a state senator, Barack Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko's successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens.
The deal included $855,000 in development fees for Rezko and his partner, Allison S. Davis, Obama's former boss, according to records from the project, which was four blocks outside Obama's state Senate district.
Obama's letters, written nearly nine years ago, for the first time show the Democratic presidential hopeful did a political favor for Rezko -- a longtime friend, campaign fund-raiser and client of the law firm where Obama worked -- who was indicted last fall on federal charges that accuse him of demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Gov. Blagojevich.
The letters appear to contradict a statement last December from Obama, who told the Chicago Tribune that, in all the years he's known Rezko, "I've never done any favors for him.''
On Tuesday, Bill Burton, press secretary for Obama's presidential campaign, said the letters Obama wrote in support of the development weren't intended as a favor to Rezko or Davis.
LOL!
"This wasn't done as a favor for anyone," Burton said in a written statement. "It was done in the interests of the people in the community who have benefited from the project.
Sure. Obama worked on the "clean" side of the deals - not directly for Rezko, but for the "community groups" who were persuaded to partner with Rezko. Course, given the quality of Rezko's work - most of Rezko's deals left the poor residents living in lousy conditions, maybe these s/b more appropriately called victims.
"I don't know that anyone specifically asked him to write this letter nine years ago," the statement said. "There was a consensus in the community about the positive impact the project would make and Obama supported it because it was going to help people in his district. . . . They had a wellness clinic and adult day-care services, as well as a series of social services for residents. It's a successful project. It's meant a lot to the community, and he's proud to have supported it.''
The development, called the Cottage View Terrace apartments, opened five years ago at 4801 S. Cottage Grove, providing 97 apartments for low-income senior citizens.
Asked about the Obama letters, Rezko's attorney, Joseph Duffy, said Tuesday, "Mr. Rezko never spoke with, nor sought a letter from, Senator Obama in connection with that project."
.............
While Obama served in the Illinois Senate, he continued to work for the law firm, which Davis left in 1997 to become a developer.
Davis soon went into business with Rezko, creating a company called New Kenwood LLC to build the seven-story apartment building for senior citizens on a vacant stretch of land once occupied by a gas station at 48th and Cottage Grove. The city of Chicago owned the land -- nearly two acres tainted by lead, benzene and other toxic chemicals.
Davis is a member of the Chicago Plan Commission. He was originally appointed to the commission in 1991 by his friend, Mayor Daley. Davis, like Rezko, has been a prolific campaign fund-raiser for politicians including Daley and Obama.
Soon after they incorporated New Kenwood in 1998, Davis and Rezko got letters of support from elected officials -- Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) and state Rep. Lou Jones (D-Chicago), whose districts included the proposed project.
Firm paid city $1 for land.
<bNew Kenwood LLC also got letters of support from Obama, who represented a nearby Senate district.
But that wan't done as a favor to his long time friend, Rezko, or his former boss, Allison Davis. Nope, not at all.
"I am writing in support of the New Kenwood LLC's proposal to build a ninety-seven unit apartment building at 48th and Cottage Grove for senior citizens,'' Obama wrote in separate letters, each dated Oct. 28, 1998, to city and state housing officials. "This project will provide much needed housing for Fourth Ward citizens.''
At the time he wrote the letters, Obama was also a lawyer with Miner Barnhill & Galland, the law firm Davis formerly headed. Among the firm's clients were several companies owned by Davis and Rezko. The firm did not represent New Kenwood.
Davis and Rezko hired Daley & George, the law firm of the mayor's brother Michael, to help them get $3.1 million from bonds issued by the city of Chicago.
Rezko and Davis paid the city $1 for the land and spent more than $100,000 to clean it up, including the removal of an underground storage tank. Some tainted land was left behind, but state environmental officials approved construction after Rezko and Davis agreed to cover the polluted areas with parking lots, sidewalks or three feet of dirt, records show.
Toxic soil under the parking lots and sidewalks, huh? No problem. Those sidewalks and parking lots will keep the bad stuff down there.
The $14.6 million Cottage View Terrace was funded entirely by city, state and federal taxpayers.
The project included $855,000 in development fees for New Kenwood. Records don't show how Davis and Rezko split the money. Davis owned 51 percent of New Kenwood, Rezko 49 percent, according to the records.
With Allison Davis being "black", his owning 51% would make New Kenwood a minority contractor favored by governments.
In addition to the development fees, a separate Davis-owned company stood to make another $900,000 through federal tax credits.
Cottage View Terrace was supposed to be managed by Davis' longtime business partner, William Moorehead. But Moorehead said last week that his company was dumped before the apartments opened in 2002. The apartments are now managed by Urban Property Advisors, a company owned by Davis' son, Cullen Davis.
Moorehead is due to report to prison next month to begin serving a four-year sentence for stealing more than $1 million from the Robert Taylor Homes and other public housing projects he managed for the Chicago Housing Authority and the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department, as well as from two developments he co-owned with Davis near Cabrini-Green on the North Side.
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A reference was made above to Allison Davis being black. You can see pics of the fellow here:
blackfilm.com
New Kenwood isn't Davis's only minority-owned real estate development company. He's got a bunch and has gotten rich doing this. Another one is DV Urban Realty Partners - Allison Davis owns 51% and Robert Vanecko owns 49%. Vanecko is Mayor Daley's nephew.
Obama is a big supporter of minority-owned businesses. “Obama’s strong record when it comes to supporting minority-owned businesses ... has black business leaders working overtime to send the 42-year-old congressman to Washington.” Black Enterprize.com
Back to Rezko:
Were Obama and Rezko really close friends? Yes:
......
The two men and their wives used to socialize, meeting for dinner, Obama has said.
............... Some of Rezko's ventures eventually went bad and left residents living in poor conditions. After a published report last year raised questions about the law firm's involvement in representing the Rezko-linked ventures, Obama's campaign said he was unaware of the plight of the properties
An out of touch with the community "community organizer"?
and was only a bit player in the legal work required to get them off the ground, a contention Obama repeated Monday as he responded to Clinton's charge. Law firm partner Judson Miner said that, over several years, Obama did a total of five to seven hours of billable work on Rezmar-linked projects. He mainly filed incorporation papers for the non-profit groups under the supervision of more senior attorneys, Miner said.
Here's Obama the paper-shuffling junior lawyer again.
At the Tribune's request, Cook County Circuit Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans produced a list of all 260 civil and criminal cases in which the firm filed appearances, and the Tribune separately examined 1990s lawsuits that Rezmar Corp. listed in applications for government grants. The paper also examined files from the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the city housing department, as well as the hundreds of clients Obama listed in the unusually frank ethics disclosure reports he filed as a state senator from December 1995 through April 2004.
Those and other records disclosed five instances in which Obama did legal work for ventures that included Rezmar Corp. The case of City of Chicago vs. Central Woodlawn Limited Partnership is one example. In 1992, that community group partnered with Rezmar Corp. to rehab the former slum apartment building at 6107-6115 S. Ellis Ave. As work was ongoing, city officials sued the developers, alleging 16 serious code violations at the property, including a dangerously dilapidated porch. Obama and a co-counsel filed appearances in February 1994, but the court records show they appeared on behalf of Central Woodlawn, Rezko's non-profit partner, not Rezko or his company. A separate attorney, Wayne Muldrow, represented Rezmar in the case.
Is that really an important distinction? Thats a moral question, not a legal one.
.........
Whatever the extent of Obama's help for Rezko, the relationship proved a boon to the lawyer's political ambitions.Since 1995, at least $74,500 was donated to Obama campaigns by Rezko, Rezko companies and people who listed themselves as Rezko company employees when they made the donations, the Tribune found. Public records do not quantify how much money Rezko raised from others on Obama's behalf.In 1995, about the time Rezko was partnering with Obama's boss Davis, Obama launched a campaign for the state Senate seat from Hyde Park. His first substantial donations, $2,000, came from companies linked to Rezko.
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More on the friendship between Obama and Rezko - according to Obama:
Obama explains Rezko relationship to Sun-Times
March 16, 2008
BY CHRIS FUSCO, DAVID MCKINNEY, TIM NOVAK AND ABDON M. PALLASCH
To Barack Obama, Tony Rezko was more than a fund-raiser. He was a friend.
Rezko helped bankroll Obama in five election runs — for the state Senate, U.S. House and U.S. Senate. The savvy businessman with the North Shore mansion could bring in as much as $70,000 from political donors in one night. In the heat of a campaign, Obama said he sometimes talked strategy with Rezko daily.
Then, during political down-times, Rezko was his lunch or breakfast companion, more concerned about Obama, his wife and daughters than with posing for snapshots with the senator as he rose from political obscurity to Democratic presidential hopeful. On one occasion, Obama recalled, they wiled away time with their wives at Rezko’s Lake Geneva estate.
This portrait of Rezko emerged during an 80-minute interview Friday with the Chicago Sun-Times that marked the first time the senator has spoken in-depth about his relationship with the indicted businessman, who’s on trial on corruption charges involving allegations he orchestrated political kickback schemes in the Blagojevich administration.
The interview followed months in which Obama had avoided questions about Rezko and tried to downplay their relationship. With the Pennsylvania primary looming in five weeks, Obama said he hoped to clear the air about his ties to Rezko.
“We want to put the sense that we’re not being forthcoming behind us as quickly as possible,” Obama said.
The senator disclosed that Rezko had raised far more campaign cash for him than previously known. He said he was “saddened” by his friend’s troubles but would be “disappointed” if Rezko ends up convicted. For the first time, Obama said he was disturbed that Rezko had allowed low-income housing Rezko developed to fall apart. And he said that, although he had made a mistake in buying a piece of property from Rezko, “Does it speak to a trend of mine? No.”
Is Rezko still a friend?
“Yes,” Obama said, “with the caveat that, obviously, if it turns out the allegations are true, then he’s not who I thought he was. And I’d be very disappointed with that.”
Obama said he hasn’t talked with Rezko since the businessman’s October 2006 indictment. During their last conversation, Obama said he asked Rezko about his mounting legal problems, and Rezko responded that “his lawyers had been talking to the U.S. attorney’s office, and it’s all getting resolved.”
Though Rezko was wrong on that front, Obama insisted there was nothing impure about his relationship with the Syrian immigrant who offered him a job out of Harvard Law School in 1990.
“He never asked me for anything,” Obama said. “He never did any favors for me, other than obviously supporting my campaigns. He never gave me any gifts, gave me no indication he was setting me up to ask for favors in the future.”
Obama acknowledged that Rezko had raised $250,000 for him — about $100,000 more than had previously been disclosed and about five times more than Obama conveyed during a November 2006 question-and-answer exchange with the Sun-Times.
Obama also defended signing a 1998 letter urging the state to fund a low-income housing project developed by Rezko and Obama’s former boss, Allison Davis — both of whom were clients of Obama’s law firm as well as campaign contributors. Obama said he didn’t remember writing the “form letter” until the Sun-Times asked about it last June. This was not one of the Rezko developments that fell into disrepair.
The senator began the unusual session with Sun-Times reporters and editors by recounting his relationship with Rezko, which he said began when Rezko and two of his partners tried to recruit him out of law school for a job at Rezko’s development firm, Rezmar. He said he met with them in Chicago for about 45 minutes.
“My assessment of Tony Rezko was that he was an immigrant who had sort of pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” Obama recalled. “Somebody who was active not only in the political scene generally, but also had links to the African-American community. I think he saw me as somebody who had talent, but he was probably also intrigued by my international background and the fact that I had lived in Asia and that I knew something about his culture in the Middle East.”
What BS! Having relatives one has seen once or twice in one's lives in Kenya and living in Indonesia a few years as a child tells one exactly what about the middle east?
Obama turned down the job. But he continued to bump into Rezko, he said, because both were active in supporting former state Sen. Alice Palmer, whom Obama eventually would replace.
“We were both active in Alice Palmer’s campaign, so I got to know him at that point, and he was obviously somebody who was supportive of political campaigns. So it’s not surprising that, when I decided I might be interested in running, it might be worthwhile asking him if he’d be interested in supporting me.”
Rezko did just that. In the heat of Obama’s campaigns, the two men would talk daily. But once the politics died down, the senator said, they were simply friends.
“We’d continue to have lunches or breakfasts. We’d talk about politics. We’d talk about family. . . . Even visited [his] home in Lake Geneva once for the day,” Obama said.
“Something that I always appreciated was he was not one of these people who wanted pictures taken all the time or was constantly calling for you to show up at things. He was a very gracious individual.”
Obama picked Rezko for the campaign finance committee for his 2004 U.S. Senate run. Around that same time, Rezko had begun walking away from affordable-housing projects he was building with government funds, leaving some in squalor — including some buildings in Obama’s own Illinois Senate district. Obama said he knew nothing of those problems.
Here's the out of touch with the community "community organizer" again. Like Sgt Schultz of Hogans Heroes: "I see NOTHING! I know NOTHING!"
>b>Had Obama known, he said he would have talked to Rezko about the problems. “I think it is deeply troubling he did not keep these properties up, and I am very disappointed in that,” Obama said.
LOL! He didn't know a thing about Rezko's record.
After Rezko helped Obama win the U.S. Senate seat, Obama approached Rezko about the house Obama now owns in Kenwood. The house has become a political headache for Obama because Rezko’s wife bought the vacant lot next door, with Obama and Rita Rezko closing on their transactions on the same day in June 2005.
....
suntimes.com
Now to Rezko's recent conviction on fraud, money-laundering, and bribery charges associated with a scheme to stack a couple state boards with Rezko cronies. Obama's through his position in the state senate, knowingly or unknowingly, played a key part in the scheme in that his committee approved a change in the Illinois Health Facilities Planning board that allowed Rezko to stack the board with Rezko's cronies. Rezko is serving time for this scheme. It hasn't been proven that Obama knew what was going on here. So he and his defenders can claim it was just another case of Obama being an unwitting dupe for Rezko.
rezkowatch.blogspot.com
In summary, all the information above is old and has been aired in Chicago newspapers. Amazing that this guy has gotten the Democratic nomination given his record in Chicago. Its another sign of the party's absence of any integrity at all.
There are two possibilities. The most charitable one for Obama is that he was a junior paper-shuffling dope and dupe for the grafters Tony Rezko and Allison Davis. The less charitable one is that Obama was a knowing partner, play-acting as an advocate for the poor while serving the interests of grafter who exploited programs for their benefit.
Either way, Barack Obama doesn't belong in the WH or for that matter in the US Senate. |
