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Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”

By Truthteller on June 14, 2008 at 12:25 PM in Barack Obama, Chicago, Chicago politics, Emil Jones, Larry Johnson, Nadhmi Auchi, Obama's Thugs, Patrick Fitzgerald, Real Estate, Tony Rezko

Larry Johnson writes the following on 28 JAN 2008:

We may not find out until Rezko’s trial starts on 25 February. Imagine this nightmare scenario. Obama nails down the Democratic nomination for President on Super Tuesday. But then comes the Rezko trial and we learn Obama was doing favors to get an Iraqi felon a visa to the United States. You know, he is just helping out one of his major fund raisers. Will his story line about a new day in Washington still sound plausible? Will folks still believe he’s serious about not being beholden to “special interests?”

I don’t begrudge Obama trying to help out a buddy. I just wish he’d cut the holier than thou act. He’s playing the Washington game like many others. In this case, however, he may get dirtied up. And in that case he could take the Democrats with him.

A passport for Nadhmi Auchi, the Iraqi billionaire who infused Rezko’s bank account with millions of dollars of cash before the bankrupt Rezko helped Obama purchase the Kenwood mansion he and Michelle could not afford in 2005, may not be the favor that will sink Barack Obama and the Democratic Party he is now corrupting. But some favor involving Obama and Rezko will. I quote a paragraph of the column John Kass of the Chicago Tribune published today:

The last thing Sen. Barack Obama and Gov. Rod Blagojevich needed was that letter written by convicted Illinois influence peddler Tony Rezko promising he’d never rat out his pals.

The imprisoned political fixer insisted that federal prosecutors are squeezing him, according to an exclusive Tribune report written by federal courts reporter Jeff Coen for Thursday’s paper.

“They are pressuring me to tell them the ‘wrong’ things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama,” the fundraiser (and Obama’s personal real estate fairy) wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve.

“I have never been a party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator,” Rezko argued. “I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take whatever comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people.”

Amen, Tony. But those who say nothing don’t brag. They shut up.

Yet those who promise to say nothing, and promise it loudly, often have much to say later, in a calm and rational voice, meekly from the witness box.

Kass is probably correct, for Kass has witnessed mobster after mobster and criminal politician after criminal politician expose their allies in the courtrooms in the den of crime, corruption, machine politics and fraud that is inner city Chicago. Kass also makes the following observation, which casts the sanctimonious letter Rezko and his attorneys submitted to Judge St. Eve on 9 JUN in a relief one can only describe as perspicuous and palpable:

They all want the same thing—to make sure their loved ones are well cared for on the outside. It could be that Rezko, who mentioned his sons in the letter, cares more about them and his wife, Rita, than he does about his political buddies. Hence, the implied threat to the senator and the governor. That could be a problem for both Obama and Blagojevich, but mostly, I think, for Blagojevich, if Rezko—convicted of more than a dozen corruption counts—begins to squeak.

Unlike Kass, I do believe this can also be a problem for Obama. As I wrote yesterday,

2005 is the year Rezko helped Obama purchase the mansion in the Kenwood neighborhood in inner city Chicago. And 2003 is the year Rezko held a fundraiser for US Senate candidate Barack Obama at his posh home in Wilmette, Illinois. Another event of significance in 2003 is Illinois Governor Blagojevich’s appointment of Rezko to the Board that oversees the $30 billlion dollar teachers’ pension fund. This is the same year during which Barack Obama was appointed to the Illinois state Senate Committee on Pensions and Investments by his friend and mentor state Senator Emil Jones. According to the Superseding Indictment filed by Fitzgerald in December 2006, Obama’s appointment to this state Senate committee coincided with Rezko’s attempts to leverage his influence with “high-ranking State of Illinois officials” to oppose a pension consolidation plan that would complicate the efforts of Rezko and Levine to defraud investment firms and the pensions funds of Illinois. Notice also how Obama sat on the state Senate Pensions and Investments Board when Rezko funneled money he defrauded from an investment firm that sought access to the Illinois pensions fund to Obama through Joseph Aramanda, whose son worked as an intern in Obama’s US Senate office in 2005, the year Rezko advised and assisted the Obamas when they purchased the Kenwood mansion they could not afford.

The information I provide is in no way exhaustive, as Rezko and Obama have been buttressing each other as they climbed the political, social and financial ladders of crime infested inner city Chicago since the early 1990s. Just view the information compiled by the Chicago Triubne:

Rezko, I guess, will “blow up” Barack Obama. Sitting in his cell with Rita, the boys and his dead mother in Hillside, Illinois, on his mind, he is ready to talk. Although his letter was addressed to Judge St. Eve, its intended recipients are Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich.

Will Antoin “Tony” Rezko blow up Barack Obama and the Democratic Party? I believe Patrick Fitzgerald has the answer:

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said the verdict represented “an antidote to the poison of corruption” that trial testimony alleged included the fixing of state boards that controlled a $40 billion pension fund and made major decisions about million-dollar hospital construction.

He expressed hope it would have an effect on Illinois politicians.

“If morals don’t get to them, I hope the fear of going to jail does,” Fitzgerald told reporters.

It is only a matter of time until Rezko’s song and dance blows the lid off of the fraud.

No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

RezkoWatch contains even more information on Obama’s deep and problematic ties to convicted slumlord and notorious political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko.