Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (and prosecutors on $20K kickback to Obama)

Below, today’s references to Barack Obama in the gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Rezko trial, and a Chicago ABC TV station’s interview today of a dodgy Barack Obama who claimed he hadn’t had dealings with Rezko since the slumlord’s troubles “began.”

Pinnochio’s gonna need some more wood. It’s like Obama saying, earlier, that he won Michigan, and that Hillary only won two states on Tuesday’s Super 2. (Yes, there was video today on TV that showed him saying exactly that.) Uh, he wasn’t on the ballot in Michigan, you’ll recall, and she won three states on Tuesday night.

First, here’s this Fox News video interview of Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass today, via a John McCain blogger (they’re all over the Rezko trial, salivating at the prospect of Obama as the nominee):

Ah, John Kass, one of the last of the crusty, cynical reporters of yore. Tony Rezko, says the Chicago Tribune columnist, is “Barack Obama’s personal real-estate fairy.” In January, Kass penned “If you look closely, it’s plain: Rezko is Obama’s problem” (more from that below). A few days ago, Kass wrote:

… As most Clinton operatives and Republicans know, Rezko is the indicted political fixer who helped Obama buy his dream house.

The sellers split the parcel in two, one a vacant lot and one with a home. Obama got a $300,000 discount on the house. The Rezkos paid the full asking price for the lot next door. Obama, who keeps insisting he’s told us everything, until something new comes out, admitted recently that he toured the home with Tony before that magical sale. So the real estate fairy sprinkles the magic fairy dust on the Obama dream home. Obama becomes the reform candidate for president, to change American politics as we know it — except of course in Chicago, where the Daley Machine runs things.

UPDATE: Here’s a LATE ARRIVAL ARTICLE that is a must-read: “Boneheaded deal haunts house Obama built,” UK’s Times, March 7, 2008. (It’s chock full of details that will keep our regulars — like Mel, Andy, Simon, Patrick and all of you other sleuthy No Quarter readers — going for quite a while.)

Chicago’s ABC7 TV station reports that “Senator Barack Obama’s name came up Thursday at the Rezko trial” and that their reporter spoke with Obama today.

Prepare for your jaw to drop when you watch the video interview of the dodgy Obama, who actually had the “audacity” to say this today — and I’ve included the video of Monday’s press conference “mayhem” from my story, “(Pants On Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko“:    

To appreciate the next two paragraphs, you first have to go to the ABC7 site to watch today’s video interview of Obama in Chicago.

Oh really, Mr. Obama? You say that your associations with Mr. Rezko ended “before” his troubles began? (How about that home/vacant property purchase you two did the same day while Rezko was being actively investigated by the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office, which everyone in Chicago knew about and the Chicago media was reporting constantly?)

And, Mr. Obama, do show me the video of those press conferences where reporters have run out of questions on your relationship with Tony Rezko. (John Kass, Mark Brown and Lynn Sweet must be laughing themselves silly over that lie.)

Here are the references to Obama from the Chicago Tribune‘s “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of the Rezko trial:

Defense lawyer Joe Duffy is portraying Antoin “Tony” Rezko as a victim of Stuart Levine, not a schemer who tried to rob state boards blind as the government has alleged.

Duffy mentions Levine’s close political ties to the late Mayor Harold Washington, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill), former Gov. Jim Edgar and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Chicago) as examples of how connected Levine was.

::::::::::::::

She [U.S. prosecutor Carrie Hamilton] also did not mention Sen. Barack Obama, another Rezko friend. The government alleges that $20,000 in alleged kickbacks arranged by Rezko found its way into Obama’s 2004 campaign treasury. The Rezko connection has dogged Obama on the presidential campaign trail in recent weeks and is the reason why the national media is swarming over a court case, which has almost nothing to do with the Illinois senator.

Hamilton told jurors about the government’s star witness against Rezko, Highland Park businessman Stuart Levine, who has pleaded guilty to charges that he helped Rezko rig the state boards and scheme to siphon off millions of dollars. Levine has admitted to heavy drug use, and the defense claims that has clouded his memory and led him to invent situations and schemes that never happened.

::::::::::::::

Hamilton finished remarks after an hour. She did not mention the name of Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama, whose U.S. Senate campaign in 2004 allegedly was the beneficiary of $20,000 in campaign cash from intermediaries in the kickback schemes the government says were orchestrated by Rezko.

And here’s Mark Brown today in the Chicago Sun-Times — always the questions, these Chicago newspaper people!

Obama still owes answers on house deal

If he doesn’t speak up, Rezko questions will ‘go on forever’

[...]
But until we get all the answers, we won’t really know, will we?

That’s the part Obama doesn’t seem to accept, otherwise he’d have known why my colleagues Carol Marin and Lynn Sweet were peppering him with Rezko questions the other day in Texas, which prompted the strange sight of Obama fleeing the news media.

“I don’t think it’s fair to suggest that we have been trying to hide the bone on this,” Obama told reporters prior to his exit.

While I enjoyed the colorful turn of phrase, I have to admit that’s exactly what we suspect Obama of trying to do.

From the start, he and his campaign have made it difficult for us.

The Tribune originally broke the Obama house story, and its reporters had the benefit of a face-to-face interview with the senator.

For the Sun-Times, Obama would only respond in writing to questions submitted by our reporters.

Going round and round
This had the effect of allowing his campaign to prepare precise, careful answers, but it also deprived us of the opportunity to ask logical follow-up questions and to press him for clarification. We’ve been going round and round ever since as our reporters developed their own stories on the Obama-Rezko relationship.

One such follow-up question just occurred to me the other day as I reread Obama’s original submission, in which he was asked to explain why the previous owners had dropped their asking price on the house he purchased while Rezko paid full price for the adjoining lot.

“It was our understanding that the owners had received, from another buyer, an offer for $625,000 and that therefore the Rezkos could not have offered or purchased that lot for less,” the senator wrote in November 2006.

I must have missed that at the time. Then why, I wonder, did the sellers accept the Rezkos’ offer of $625,000 if it only matched the offer they already had on the table? Or was it no longer on the table?

On one hand, this might buttress the argument Rezko wasn’t doing the Obamas a favor by making up for some deficiency in their bid, as many have suspected.

But it also could add to the evidence their respective bids were more closely coordinated than Obama has previously indicated. …

Lastly, here’s the crusty Kass in January from his column, “If you look closely, it’s plain: Rezko is Obama’s problem” :

[Obama is] the one with the long relationship with Rezko. He’ll pay for that friendship. If he wants to survive the Clintons and their ambition, Obama will have to fight back, hard. He’s been much too timid, much too gentle with them. He’s too nice, and he’s in a street fight.

“OK, well, I can’t tell who I am running against sometimes,” an exasperated Obama said the other day after another series of Clinton tag team attacks, with Bill punching low and Hillary with that roll of quarters inside her velvet glove.

Up until now, politics has been so easy for Obama, with his opponents either exploding or imploding, as he ran for the Senate in Illinois. He didn’t even have to run. Instead, he sauntered easily into Washington and then after just one speech at the 2004 convention he became the Democratic savior/rock star.

So perhaps it’s been too easy for him. When I called him the Mr. Tumnus of American politics, after the gentle, magical faun in the C.S. Lewis stories, I wasn’t joking.

Mr. Obama’s inartful dodging of reporters’ questions about Rezko will continue to haunt him. Politics won’t be so easy now with all the unanswered questions about their long relationship and that too-cozy house deal with a slumlord known to be under federal investigation at the time, not to mention his associations with Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi.