Posts with the tag 'Tony Rezko'
It looks like Barack Obama isn’t the only one on the ticket with ties to Tony Rezko:
No matter what help Barack Obama might get from Sen. Joseph Biden, his newly named vice presidential running mate won’t give Obama much cover on the Tony Rezko front.
Biden has described himself as a 30-year friend of a key figure in the Rezko trial who’s pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing.
When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden’s Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president.
In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals.
On the day Cari’s name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee was to have hosted a Biden fund-raiser in Chicago. Cari was a no-show at that July 25, 2005, event.
Offering Cari a vote of confidence at the time, Biden said, “All I know is Joe Cari is a friend, and he’s an honorable guy, but I don’t know anything beyond that.”
Did Obama’s VP Vetting Team actually vet Obama’s potential running mates? Biden has also accepted $2,000 in campaign contributions from Cari, according to campaign-finance records.
It’s connections like these, that if it were a Republican ticket, would be mercilessly attacked and exploited. So, the question that has yet to be answered is what kind of coverage this revelation will receive in the MSM for the remainder of this campaign?
Tags: Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Tony Rezko
August 25th, 2008
The RNC has launched a new website “Obama-Rezko Shady Deal” which posts videos and all the latest news “pertaining to Barack Obama’s lack of judgment and questionable dealings with campaign fundraiser and convicted felon Tony Rezko.”
Check it out.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Viewpoint Journal:
Today the Obama Campaign released a new ad chiding Senator McCain for owning seven homes. Is this a sign of desperation or what?
It is true that when asked by Politico how many homes he owned, McCain did not know off the top of his head. That is because many of those homes belong to his wife, who was wealthy long before McCain married her 28 years ago.
I’m not sure if, in 2004, this line of attack was ever used by conservatives against Senator Kerry regarding his wife, Teresa Heinz-Kerry (another wealthy heiress with many homes), but this whole thing smacks of desperation. How so?
In the first place, Senator Obama’s Chicago home was bought in partnership with Tony Rezko who is, basically, the Jack Abramoff of Illinois. The whole purchase, and a subsequent sale of additional land adjacent to the Obama’s property for a price lower than market value, is still under a cloud. Tony Rezko himself was convicted of multiple crimes of corruption with perhaps more charges to come.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
August 21st, 2008
Not exactly the best news for Obama the day after he unofficially cliched the Democratic nomination…
RNC Chairman Duncan released the following statement tonight regarding the Rezko verdict:
“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 fundraiser Tony Rezko of multiple felonies. This is further proof that Obama’s high-flying rhetoric is just that and in no way represents the kind of change our nation demands. Today’s verdict and Obama’s friendship with Rezko raise serious questions about whether he has the judgment to serve as president.”
Tags: Barack Obama, Corruption, Tony Rezko
June 4th, 2008
And these days, we just don’t have Guido and the boys to take care of such things:
A political fundraiser on trial in a corruption case in Chicago is wanted in Nevada on allegations that he rang up more than $803,000 in Strip casino debts, court documents show.
Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who was awaiting a jury decision Thursday at his fraud trial in Chicago, is sought on a felony arrest warrant issued May 20 alleging he failed to repay 10 casino loans totaling $472,275 and dating to mid-2006 at Caesars Palace and Bally’s, Clark County court spokesman Michael Sommermeyer said.
Rezko, of Wilmette, Ill., also is named in a separate lawsuit alleging he owes $331,000 plus interest to the Bellagio for loans he received in February 2006.
Rezko is a real estate developer and fast-food entrepreneur who has raised thousands of dollars for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
As it turns out, Rezko does own a piece of property which might be sold to help pay off this debt - it is right behind Obama’s house and, as fate would have it, the property is perfectly useless to anyone other than Obama, as you can’t access the property except though Obama’s…given that Rezko’s purchase of this property greatly lowered the cost of Obama’s swell home, maybe it is time for Obama to return the favor to his long time and very close political friend?
Tags: Barak Obama, Tony Rezko
May 30th, 2008
Read this story on Obama’s tendencies to blame the help for all his woes. Here’s but a snippet:
In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko’s business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.
The letter, Obama said, “was essentially a form letter of the sort that I did all time. And that I wasn’t, by the way, aware of.”
A reporter asked: You weren’t aware that he was associated with the project?
Responded Obama: “I wasn’t even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew…This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”
The Sun-Times also pointed out that in November 2006 Obama estimated that Rezko had raised somewhere between $50,000 and $60,000 for him during his political career.
But since that answer, Obama has given back almost $160,000 in Rezko-related contributions.
“The original estimate was based on, I asked my staff to find what monies they attributed to Rezko, and this was the figure given to me,” Obama said.
Blaming others for your own misfortunes, gaffes and mis-steps will only get you so far. For the better part of a year, Barack Obama was held above criticism by the larger media, and was thought to be the democratic “pure as the wind-driven snow” golden child. But the more the truth about the “real Obama” comes out, the more the electorate will realize that the “golden child” they thought they were getting was in reality nothing but costume jewelry.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
May 19th, 2008
John Kass takes note of Obama’s political background:
Except for his dalliance with his indicted real estate fairy, Tony Rezko, a relationship Obama considers a mistake, the senator has not played the fly to Mayor Richard Daley’s spider. Almost, but not quite.
“I know there are those like John Kass who would like me to decry Chicago politics more frequently, and I’ll leave that to his editorial commentary,” Obama said.
Not the politics, just the corruption, I said then, wishing silently that he had decried it all, that he’d stood up years ago and pointed to the list of sleazy deals, pointed an angry finger at the Duffs, the white, Outfit-connected drinking buddies of Daley who received $100 million in affirmative action contracts through City Hall.
That’s an easy political commercial for the Republicans: Mobbed-up white guys party at the old Como Inn with Daley, and they get $100 million in city affirmative action contracts and Daley doesn’t know how it happened and Obama endorses the mayor in the name of reform.
Obama had nothing to do with the Duff deal. But he kept mum. He has endorsed Daley, endorsed Daley’s hapless stooge Todd Stroger for president of the Cook County Board. These are not the acts of a reformer, but of a guy who, as we say in Chicago, won’t make no waves and won’t back no losers.
Obama the reformer is backed by Mayor Richard M. Daley and the Daley boys. He is spoken for by Daley’s own spokesman, David Axelrod. He was launched into his U.S. Senate by machine power broker and state Senate President Emil Jones (D-ComEd).
We have our Obama file, and I recommend everyone take a look at it - because this man just may be sworn in as President on January 20th, 2009. Obama likes to present himself as a reformer - and as a man who has risen above Chicago’s notoriously corrupt and entirely Democratic political culture. This, of course, is nonsense. While Obama is trying hard to play a “Tony Rezko who?” game, there are only two possible interpretations of the land deal Obama had with Rezko vis a vis Obama’s home: either it was a payoff by Rezko for services rendered and/or promised by Obama, or Rezko and Obama are both the stupidest men in America (Rezko for happily buying worthless property which helped Obama; Obama for thinking that when a political wheeler-dealer helps you out, he wants nothing in return).
To think that this man Obama is going to bring change to our political system is to ignore where he comes from and the fact that he’s never taken step one to battle the corruption of his political party in Chicago. The fact that Obama has blinded himself or been blind to the rampant corruption of Democratic politics indicates either a high degree of incompetance on his part, or a high degree of tolerance for corruption. In either case, the mere fact of Obama’s not taking a stand shows he is unfit to be President of the United States. Unless and until Obama can scrape off the Chicago Democratic sleaze, he will be a man incapable of assisting in the real solution to our nation’s problems.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
May 11th, 2008
This just hasn’t been the best of weeks for Obama.
Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama is giving $2,300 in presidential campaign contributions to charity — money he got from Aiham Alsammarae, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who posted more than $2.7 million in property to help spring Tony Rezko from jail.
Alsammarae, Iraq’s former electricity minister, gave to Obama’s presidential campaign six times in January, February and March.
“The contributions were made online,” Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt said. Obama is giving them to charity “given the circumstances brought to light by recent news reports.”
The Chicago Sun-Times reported in its Sunday editions about Alsammarae posting his Oak Brook mansion and two South Loop condominiums to help free Rezko — a onetime Obama political fund-raiser and patron — from jail earlier this month.
According to the report, Obama has had to rid himself of nearly $160,000 in Rezko-connected cash.
UPDATE: Ouch: Rezko Trial Witness Says Obama Attended Party for Auchi at Rezko’s Mansion
Tags: Barack Obama, Corruption, Tony Rezko
April 30th, 2008
And now the Rezko trial is brining in Gov. Blagojevich (D-IL);
A Chicago businessman-turned-Hollywood producer who believed he was being shaken down by two of Gov. Blagojevich’s campaign fund-raisers threatened to “take them down” if they didn’t back off, according to a recording played at the Tony Rezko corruption trial today.
And the governor was made aware of the “situation” and agreed the producer shouldn’t get any more state business, star prosecution witness Stuart Levine testified this afternoon.
The secretly recorded, May 2004 conversation was between Levine and longtime Illinois Republican Party power William Cellini.
An agitated-sounding Cellini is heard telling Levine about a conversation he had with Tom Rosenberg, a principal in the firm Capri Capital who also has produced movies including the hit “Million Dollar Baby.”
According to prosecutors, Levine and Cellini had plotted to shake down Rosenberg for a $1.5 million campaign contribution for Blagojevich in exchange for the $220 million investment deal he sought from a state board. Cellini has not been charged with any crime.
Levine, who has pleaded guilty to taking part with Rezko in schemes to get kickbacks from companies seeking state business, testified that the decision to approach Rosenberg for cash came after Rezko and fellow Blagojevich fund-raiser Chris Kelly learned Rosenberg won big-money deals with the state but hadn’t given to Blagojevich’s campaign fund.
It is a very tangled web in Illinois politics - as can be seen by the connection to a GOPer, who seems to have been shaking people down to get donations for a Democrat. As Matt and I have pointed out, Obama is hip-deep in Rezko…pretty much, Obama is as tight with Rezko as he is with Wright, and could no more disown him than he could disown his grandmother.
The center of this corruption is, of course, the relentlessly corrupt Chicago Democratic machine. When Matt and I were writing Caucus of Corruption, it required great care to keep everything straight - so many people connected to so many others, all of whom have shady dealings. From what we were able to learn, nothing gets done in Chicago without corruption having a hand in - bribes, kickbacks, use of government property and employees on political campaigns, sweetheart deals…its all in there, and none of it really gets stopped because Chicago is a one-party city, and Democrats simply will not call their own to account. Please note that this trial is a Federal trial, not a State trial.
Rezko has been one of those twilight figures - the man who facilitates the corruption…and he’s Obama’s good friend; indeed, such a friend that he, Rezko, purchased a piece of property which is perfectly worthless for Rezko, but by making the purchase helped substantially knock down the price Obama paid for his swank home. Back in 2006, Democrats were calling for the heads of any GOPer who was even remotely connected to corrupt GOP operator Jack Abramoff…well, Obama’s connections to Rezko are at least as strong as DeLay’s connections to Abramoff…so, what will you Democrats do, now that you know how corrupt Rezko - and the whole Democratic political system in Chicago - is?
The Obama File
Tags: Barack Obama, Gov. Blagojevich, Illinois, Tony Rezko
April 3rd, 2008
How long, I wonder, before this trial gets a continuance to January 21st, 2009?
An e-mail message made public on Monday in the fraud trial of Antoin Rezko, a businessman and political contributor, brought attention to Senator Barack Obama’s role in discussions involving a state health planning board that Mr. Rezko is accused of improperly influencing.
The message indicated that Mr. Obama, now a Democratic presidential candidate, and other top Illinois politicians consulted in 2003 on legislation to keep the board, which approved the construction of health facilities, from expiring under sunset provisions in state law.
The vaguely worded message also seemed to raise the possibility that Mr. Obama, who at the time was chairman of the Illinois Senate’s health committee, had been involved in recommending candidates for the board.
Mr. Rezko is accused of using his influence in state government to stack the board with associates, including some who made political contributions to Mr. Obama and other top Illinois politicians, and of seeking a bribe on a hospital project.
But David Wilhelm, a former campaign adviser to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois who asked that the e-mail message be written, said in an interview that he had never talked about the appointment process to Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama has said he had nothing to do with Mr. Rezko’s activities with the board.
Mr. Obama has not been accused of any wrongdoing, and his name is expected to come up only tangentially during the trial. But given his tight race against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination, each mention of Mr. Obama’s name is being closely watched.
Now, Obama has spent a lot of time lately trying to make it seem like Rezko was just this guy he had dealings with from time to time…but Rezko was actually a very close friend and political associate of Rezko. The reason Obama is deserately distancing himself from Rezko is because of things like this - you know, the sort of connections to corrupt lobbyists and wheeler-dealers which had Democrats accusing the GOP of having a “culture of corruption” in 2006. When Matt and I were writing Caucus of Corruption we didn’t just put anyone into the book - we put in people we felt were excellent examples of the level of corruption in the Democratic party, and Obama fit very neatly into that catagory. Keep in mind, its not just Rezko and Obama; its the governor of Illinois and a whole bunch of politicians, government employees and associated hangers-on who have been helping Illinois to approach New Jersey levels of political corruption. To think that a politician would emerge out of such an immoral stew without a few skeletons in the closet is to hope against hope.
There is, unfortunately, plenty of corruption to go around in politics and GOPers have not been immune to the lures of money, power and sex - but the GOPers who do these things eventually get caught and punished; the problem, as Matt and I showed in great detail in Caucus, is that Democrats only very rarely get called to account for their corruption. Tom DeLay was indicted for alleged violations of a very obscure Texas law, and he’s out of politics - William Jefferon has been indicted for major corruption and he gets standing ovations from his fellow Democrats, and Speaker Pelosi tries to get him on major House committees. We’ll never cure all corruption in politics, but just so long as Democrats are nearly immune to punishment for corruption, so will the horrific levels of corruption in politics continue.
UPDATE: The Obama file.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
March 11th, 2008
The Times Online (UK) reports on a very shady deal involving Barack Obama and a British-Iraqi billionaire, that also involves Tony Rezko and the already shady land deal they had.
A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama’s fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses.
The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi, one of Britain’s wealthiest men, helped Mr Obama buy his mock Georgian mansion in Chicago.
A company related to Mr Auchi, who has a conviction for corruption in France, registered the loan to Mr Obama’s bagman Antoin “Tony” Rezko on May 23 2005. Mr Auchi says the loan, through the Panamanian company Fintrade Services SA, was for $3.5 million. Three weeks later, Mr Obama bought a house on the city’s South Side while Mr Rezko’s wife bought the garden plot next door from the same seller on the same day, June 15.
Mr Obama says he never used Mrs Rezko’s still-empty lot, which could only be accessed through his property. But he admits he paid his gardener to mow the lawn. Mrs Rezko, whose husband was widely known to be under investigation at the time, went on to sell a 10-foot strip of her property to Mr Obama seven months later so he could enjoy a bigger garden.
Mr Obama now admits his involvement in this land deal was a “boneheaded mistake”.
Mrs Rezko’s purchase and sale of the land to Mr Obama raises many unanswered questions. It is unclear how Mrs Rezko could have afforded the downpayment of $125,000 and a $500,000 mortgage for the original $625,000 purchase of the garden plot at 5050 South Greenwood Ave….
MORE: Our Obama file…
Tags: Barack Obama, Corruption, shady deals, Tony Rezko
February 26th, 2008
Drudge has the photo…
So, is this important?
No, not at all. When a similar photo of President Bush with Jack Abramoff appeared, the left made it out to be proof of some significant relationship, when the truth was that it was a picture commonly taken with President Bush and people who raised a lot of money for his campaign. I imagine the photo linked above was taken under similar circumstances, and they probably have no personal recollection of meeting Rezko specifically.
Now, Barack Obama would be silly to jump on this, because a photo-op that was taken at the same time probably hundreds were taken at a single event isn’t nearly as significant as Obama’s longterm relationship with Tony Rezko.
UPDATE: Liberal watchdog group CREW, which released the aforementioned Bush/Abramoff photo, claimed at the time that the existence of the photo “proved” that a relationship between Bush and Abramoff existed. Yet, as of now, there’s nothing on their website claiming a relationship between Rezko and the Clintons ever existed.
UPDATE: The Chicago Tribune notes, correctly, that the photo of the Clintons and Rezko is meaningless, and that Rezko is “Obama’s problem.”
Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tony Rezko
January 26th, 2008
If you watched the Democrats debate on Monday, you’d have seen Barack Obama gave a weak defense of his connections to Tony Rezko.
BLITZER: I’m going to go to Suzanne Malveaux in a second, but I just want to give you a chance, Senator Obama, if you want to respond. Senator Clinton made a serious allegation that you worked for a slumlord. And I wonder if you want to respond.
OBAMA: I’m happy to respond. Here’s what happened: I was an associate at a law firm that represented a church group that had partnered with [Tony Rezko] to do a project and I did about five hours worth of work on this joint project. That’s what she’s referring to.
Obama would like people to believe that this is the full extent of his connection to Tony Rezko… but it’s not.
The Chicago Sun-Times gives us 8 things you should know about the connections between the two, and of course you can check out our file on Obama at No Agenda.
Tags: Barack Obama, liberal lies, Tony Rezko
January 24th, 2008
Matt and I have been pointing this out for a while - and those of you who read Caucus of Corruption know all about it…but now it gets a bit worse for Obama:
For the first time, Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama has surfaced in the federal corrupton case against his longtime campaign fund-raiser, Tony Rezko, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
The Illinois senator isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. And there’s no evidence Obama knew contributions to his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign came from schemes Rezko is accused of orchestrating.
The allegations against Rezko that involve Obama are contained in one paragraph of a 78-page document filed last month in which prosecutors outline their corruption and fraud case against Rezko, who was also a key money man for Gov. Blagojevich and other politicians.
Rezko is set to go to trial Feb. 25. The revelation that Obama’s name could come up in court is a political headache he doesn’t need as he heads into a round of primaries that are likely to determine his party’s nomination for president.
Obama is not named in the Dec. 21 court document. But a source familiar with the case confirmed that Obama is the unnamed “political candidate” referred to in a section of the document that accuses Rezko of orchestrating a scheme in which a firm hired to handle state teacher pension investments first had to pay $250,000 in “sham” finder’s fees. From that money, $10,000 was donated to Obama’s successful run for the Senate in the name of a Rezko business associate, according to the court filing and the source.
While there is, as the report says, no evidence that Obama knew of these shennigans, the fact that Rezko was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee puts a very large question mark against Obama - what did he know, when did he know it; and if he didn’t know it, how does that reflect on his executive ability to run a large organization? Rezko, by the way, isn’t just some guy - he’s a long time, close associate of Obama who, amongst other things, pulled off a creepy real estate deal which allowed Obama to buy a swank home at a massive discount. Obama has tried a bit of “Tony who?” since Rezko’s legal problems began, but there is no chance that Obama will really be able to separate himself from Rezko.
There has been much said about what a fresh, new thing Obama is - left out of all this is the very concrete fact that Obama emerges out of Chicago politics. A lot things go into Chicago politics, but “honesty” only gets in there when preceded by “dis”. How deep is Obama into the corruption endemic to Chicago? (Side Note: Why is Chicago so corrupt? Because it is a one-party State, as it were…the Democrats run literally everything in that area and with unchallenged power comes the overwhelming temptation to be corrupt as all get out.) Its unclear - he’s certainly in the muck, but whether its ankle or neck deep on him we haven’t been able to determine.
There is, however, one person who likely knows every last detail about Obama and the Chicago Democratic machine - Hillary Clinton. The longer this race goes on and the more it looks like Hillary won’t be able to wrap it up before the convention, the more likely will “sources” reveal more details of Obama’s past and political connections.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
January 20th, 2008
So says ABC news:
While Clinton still leads on more personal attributes than any of her competitors, just half of Iowa Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll believe she’s willing to say what she really thinks — far fewer than say so of either Obama or John Edwards. Obama beats her by 2-1 as the most honest and trustworthy candidate.
I guess that does make some sense - after all, Obama’s rather strange real estate deal with indicted wheeler-dealer Tony Rezko does make Obama honest as the day is long in comparison to Hillary who seems to only obey laws as long as it is convenient for her to do so. Obama is a relative babe in the woods compared to Hillary and thus hasn’t had the same opportunities to sell himself in the quest for money and power - of course, if Obama were to become President, it is expected that he would fast-track himself into Clinton levels of corruption and dishonesty. But, for now, he is the more honest and trustworthy Democrat…much as Al Capone was one of the more honest and trustworthy bootleggers of yore…
UPDATE: Our Obama File…
Tags: Barack Obama, culture of corruption, Tony Rezko
November 19th, 2007
