Barack Obama on Thursday stated the following:

“I have never spoken to the governor on this subject. I am confident that no representatives of mine would have any part of any deals related to this seat. I think the materials released by the U.S. attorney reflect that fact,” Obama said at a Chicago news conference. “I’ve asked my team to gather the facts of any contacts with the governor’s office about this vacancy so that we can share them with you over the next few days.”

But on Friday we learned the following:

Emanuel, who has long been close to both Blagojevich and Obama, has refused to respond to questions about any involvement he may have had with the Blagojevich camp over the Senate pick. A spokeswoman for Emanuel also declined to comment Friday.

One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.

Another source said that contact between the Obama camp and the governor’s administration regarding the Senate seat began the Saturday before the Nov. 4 election, when Emanuel made a call to the cell phone of Harris. The conversation took place around the same time press reports surfaced about Emanuel being approached about taking the high-level White House post should Obama win.

Emanuel delivered a list of candidates who would be “acceptable” to Obama, the source said. On the list were Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Illinois Veterans Affairs director Tammy Duckworth, state Comptroller Dan Hynes and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, the source said. All are Democrats.

Where do we begin with Obama’s statement on Thursday?

“I am confident that no representatives of mine would have any part of any deals related to this seat.”

I am confident you phrased this statement in the manner you did, for you knew Emanuel was in contact with Blagojevich through his Chief of Staff and through other advisors and operatives. I am also confident that Emanuel is avoiding reporters, for Emanuel knows his voice is recorded on wiretaps gathered by Fitzgerald and his investigators. It is time for Emanuel to resign and to vacate his House seat. And by the way, is not former Daley operative Valerie Jarrett Co-Chair of your Transition Team? Why was the Co-Chair of your Transition Team in contact with Tom Balanoff, the SEIU Representative, who according to page 69 of the criminal complaint filed by Special Agent of the FBI David Cain “stated that he would find out if Senate Candidate 1 [Valerie Jarrett] wanted SEIU Official to keep pushing her for Senator with ROD BLAGOJEVICH.” Maybe it is time you answer questions about Valerie Jarrett’s contact with Blagojevich and his operatives.

“I have never spoken to the governor on this subject.”

You claim you did not speak to the Governor, but Emanuel submitted a letter with a list of candidates you preferred to Blagojevich. In other words, you communicated with the Governor about the open Senate seat. Moreover, news reports you and your operatives have attempted to remove from the Internet reveal you met with the Governor the week following the Presidential election. You met with him, and you sent him letters. This website contains two screen shots and a press release from Blagojevich’s office documenting that meeting. I recommend you read them and explain their existence to the media during your next press conference. Thank you for your prompt and anticipated cooperation.

“I think the materials released by the U.S. attorney reflect that fact.”

Perhaps you need to think again, for the criminal complaint filed by Special Agent of the FBI David Cain reveals that a line of communication existed between your team and that of Blagojevich. We also know that members of your team, including Emanuel, were engaged in conversation with members of Blagojevich’s team about the open Senate seat and the possibility of positions for Blagojevich since November 4, 2008. Maybe you need to read and reread the criminal complaint until its full import and significance is understood. And besides, no one cares what you “think;” we care about what is known.

“I’ve asked my team to gather the facts of any contacts with the governor’s office about this vacancy so that we can share them with you over the next few days.”

Ask your staff again. Obviously they are incapable of compiling information, for it is Sunday, and no documents have been made available to the public. Do you have any intention of sharing any and all communications between your staff and that of Rod Blagojevich? And while your seemingly inept, incompetent and corrupt staff compiles these records for the perusal of the traditional media and writers online, I recommend you ask them to create a dossier on your dealings with Rezko. This staff, after all, is housed in the Kluczynksi Federal Building on Dearborn Street in Chicago. Access to records from your days as a state Senator of an inner city Chicago state Senate district should not be difficult for a group of overpaid operatives in your Transition offices to obtain. I imagine they are not very bright, but if they refrain from engaging in drunken gang rape simulations with your speechwriter Jon Favreau, the lazy and inept lot will probably have the energy and focus to locate and compile these documents in a timely manner.

=========================

One paragraph, one lie, two equivocations and one false promise: how and why does anyone take Barack Obama seriously?

UPDATE:

Times Online reports calls for Emanuel’s resignation as Obama’s Chief of Staff. I quote with emphasis:

THE bullish, foul-mouthed but effective Chicago arm-twister Rahm Emanuel has come under pressure to resign as Barack Obama’s chief of staff after it was revealed that he had been captured on court-approved wire-taps discussing the names of candidates for Obama’s Senate seat.

Emanuel’s presence at the heart of the scandal threatens to roil the president-elect’s administration as a Chicago prosecutor builds his corruption case against Rod Blagojevich, the Illinois governor.

Not only should Emanuel resign as Obama’s Chief of Staff; he should resign from the US House, where he is also Chair of the House Democratic Caucus. According to the Chicago Tribune, he is yet to vacate his House seat. I quote:

Though now working full-time on Obama’s transition, Emanuel has yet to resign his congressional seat. Illinois law has a different process for filling vacant House seats than Senate seats. When Emanuel resigns, a special election will be held for his replacement.

Emanuel should resign as Chief of Staff and as member of the US House, as sources have confirmed his involvement in the scandal surrounding Obama and Blagojevich. I quote the Chicago Tribune again:

One source confirmed that communications between Emanuel and the Blagojevich administration were captured on court-approved wiretaps.

Another source said that contact between the Obama camp and the governor’s administration regarding the Senate seat began the Saturday before the Nov. 4 election, when Emanuel made a call to the cell phone of Harris. The conversation took place around the same time press reports surfaced about Emanuel being approached about taking the high-level White House post should Obama win.

Emanuel delivered a list of candidates who would be “acceptable” to Obama, the source said. On the list were Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, Illinois Veterans Affairs director Tammy Duckworth, state Comptroller Dan Hynes and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Chicago, the source said. All are Democrats.

Promising to rid Congress of what she called a Culture of Corruption, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated the following after Democrats seized control of the House in 2006:

“The intention of our Founding Fathers was for Congress to be a marketplace of ideas. The Republicans have turned Congress into an auction house – for sale to the highest bidder. You have to pay to play. It is just not right.

“Democrats are leading the effort to turn the most closed, corrupt Congress in history into the most open and honest Congress in history.

Communicating with Blagojevich’s Chief of Staff, submitting a list of candidates Obama approved to Blagojevich through operatives and advisors and participating in conference calls in which Blagojevich was attempting to forge a “pay to play” deal with Obama and Jarrett, Emanuel is engaging in the “pay to play” practices Nancy Pelosi decried on January 6, 2006. If Democrats are truly committed to ridding the House of ethical clouds, cronyism and corruption, then Emanuel must resign as Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

He must also resign as Obama’s Chief of Staff, for Obama has promised “a new dawn of American leadership,” a new dawn that includes a “clean break from the broken politics of Washington.” Emanuel’s direct participation in conversations with Blagojevich reveals that Obama will never enact a clean break if Emanuel is one of his chief advisors. Barack Obama’s inability to disclose all communications between his staff and that of Blagojevich in a timely manner is also a sign that no clean break with the politics of the past will occur during an Obama administration.

I wonder if more calls for Emanuel’s resignation will surface. And if such calls surface, I hope they also include calls for him to resign from the US House. For not only should the White House be free of Emanuel’s corruption; Democrats in the House do not need to be tied to the scandal that is the “pay to play” politics of Washington, DC, and of inner city Chicago, where Democrats Rahm Emanuel, Rod Blagojevich and Barack Obama were schooled in the art of corrupt machine politics.

Gov. Blagojevich with BFF, Obama looking all warm and friendly (cough, cough).

In what is being called one of the most daring escape attempts in the history of law enforcement, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today offered the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama to the FBI agent who took him into Federal custody this morning.

According to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the astonishing escape attempt occurred moments after Mr. Blagojevich was handcuffed by the agent, who was wearing a wire and captured the entire expletive-laden offer on tape.

“‘You can be the [bleeping] junior Senator from [bleeping] Illinois if you let me out of these [bleeping] handcuffs,’” Mr. Fitzgerald read from a transcript. “‘And if that mother-[bleeper] Barack Obama tries to [bleep] with me, I’ll [bleep] him up.’”

According to Mr. Fitzgerald, “When I say ‘bleep,’ he didn’t really say ‘bleep’ on the tape,” adding, “I’m going to keep making that joke until one of you [bleepers] laughs at it.”

Gov. Blagojevich has been charged with a laundry list of Federal crimes, including stealing his haircut from the dad on “The Brady Bunch.”

Hey, this is just as likely a scenario as any other I can think of with this guy, this bunch of people.

And while I am doing some satire - the jokes practically write themselves on this whole thing - Chicago politicians and all - there is this “American Voices” from The Onion: Illinois Governor Arrested

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was arrested Tuesday on corruption charges stemming from an alleged conspiracy to sell or trade the Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama. What do you think?

Ethan Strouth,
Mailroom Worker
“I was moved by the governor’s heartfelt plea that he be given his f**king money back.”

Denise Simmonds,
Dog Groomer
“I should have never had those ‘Spitzer-Blagojevich 2012′ lawn signs printed up back in February.”

John Edwards,
Lawyer
“How much are Senate seats going for these days? I only paid $75,000 for mine back in ’98.”

Well, even counting for inflation, I’d say John Edwards got quite a deal on his Senate seat!

Hey, you gotta admit - as serious as all of this is - and it most definitely is, it is definitely ripe for some major “jokeificating”…Sometimes, you just has to laugh at the absurdity of it all…

There are new findings out from the Civic Literacy Report, and they are not good. In fact, they are disturbing. This is a follow-up survey by one done to test civic knowledge of college students conducted over two years. The best result - the BEST result - was 54.2% on basic civics and self-governance. How do I say this? Oh, here it is - that’s PATHETIC. So, the American Civic Literacy Organization decided to survey adults, and elected officials. Check out some of these findings based on 33 questions asked:

The results reveal that Americans are alarmingly uninformed about our Constitution, the basic functions of our government, the key texts of our national history, and economic principles.

* Less than half can name all three branches of the government.
* Only 21% know that the phrase “government of the people, by the people, for the people” comes from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
* Although Congress has voted twice in the last eight years to approve foreign wars, only 53% know that the power to declare war belongs to Congress. Almost 40% incorrectly believe it belongs to the president.
* Only 55% know that Congress shares authority over U.S. foreign policy with the president. Almost a quarter incorrectly believe Congress shares this power with the United Nations.
* Only 27% know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the United States.
* Less than one in five know that the phrase “a wall of separation” between church and state comes from a letter by Thomas Jefferson. Almost half incorrectly believe it can be found in the Constitution.

Americans from all age groups, income brackets, and political ideologies fail the test of civic literacy.

* Americans age 25 to 34 score an average of 46% on the exam; Americans age 65 and over score 46%.
* Americans earning an annual income between $30,000 and $50,000 score an average of 46%; Americans earning over $100,000 score 55%.
* Liberals score an average of 49%; conservatives score 48%.
* Americans who go to church once a week score an average of 48%; Americans who never go to church score 50%.

I know - holy crap, right? This sure does explain a lot to me, though, about how/why certain people do not see glaring violations of the Constitution even when it is shoved in their faces. They just do not know.

Wanna guess who it is in part responsible for the “dumbing down of America”? Did you guess the television? Then you would be right:

In order to help isolate the impact a college degree has on civic literacy, ISI examined additional factors that might add to or subtract from an individual’s civic knowledge. The survey results were put through a regression analysis to determine whether various behaviors in a respondent’s life had a unique, statistically significant impact on his or her civic knowledge.

The multiple-regression analysis indicated that a person’s test score drops in proportion to the time he or she spends using certain types of passive electronic media. Talking on the phone, watching owned or rented movies, and even monitoring TV news broadcasts and documentaries diminishes a respondent’s civic literacy.

Actively seeking knowledge through print media and high-quality conversations has the opposite effect. Reading about history and current events in books, magazines, and newspapers—and talking about these subjects with family and friends—increases a respondent’s civic literacy.

In fact, an American who lacks a college degree but has initiative and desire—and who does not spend too much time watching TV and talking on the phone—can acquire more civic knowledge than a couch potato with a college degree.

So there’s at least some hope if people can tear themselves away from CNN and MSNBC and pick up a newspaper and discuss it, they might actually learn something about this country.

Okay, as promised, wait, just WAIT until you see how our elected officials, those who swear to uphold the Constitution fared in basic civics. I’d put down that mug (or glass) if I were you:

The elected officeholders come from the ranks of Democrats (40%), Republicans (31%), Independents (21%), and those who say they belong to no party or indicate no affiliation (8%). None were asked to specify what office they held, so the proportion in which they held local, state, or federal positions is unknown.

Not all officeholders do poorly, of course. Some elected officials rank among the highest scorers. But the failure rate on the test among those who have won public office is higher (74%) than among those who have not (71%). Officeholders scored lower on all sub-themes of the test: political history, cultural institutions, foreign relations, and market economy.

In each of the following areas, for example, officeholders do more poorly than non-officeholders:

* Seventy-nine percent of those who have been elected to government office do not know the Bill of Rights expressly prohibits establishing an official religion for the U.S.
* Thirty percent do not know that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are the inalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence.
* Twenty-seven percent cannot name even one right or freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment.
* Forty-three percent do not know what the Electoral College does. One in five thinks it either “trains those aspiring for higher political office” or “was established to supervise the first televised presidential debates.”
* Fifty-four percent do not know the Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. Thirty-nine percent think that power belongs to the president, and 10% think it belongs to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
* Only 32% can properly define the free enterprise system, and only 41% can identify business profit as “revenue minus expenses.”

On some questions, Americans who have held elected office do better than Americans who have not. They are a little more likely, for example, to recognize the language of the Gettysburg Address (23% to 21%) and to know that the question of whether slavery should be allowed to expand into new territories was the main issue in the Lincoln–Douglas debates (25% to 20%).

Officeholders and non-officeholders find it equally difficult to identify the three branches of government. Only 49% of each group can name the legislative, executive, and judicial.

Well, that sure explains a lot, doesn’t it? No wonder we find ourselves screaming at the tv watching our lawmakers say the stupidest things that CLEARLY bear no relation to the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. But for ANYONE in this country - ANYONE - to not know we have three separate branches of government is - wow - staggering. How can any American NOT KNOW THAT???? Clearly, they did not see this enough while growing up:

So, will people be upset of Patrick Fitzgerald doesn’t stay on in his current position? For less than half of the nation who don’t even know the three branches of government, I’d say the percentage of people who wouldn’t even know anything had changed would be at least A GAZILLION percent. Sad. Really, really sad. This is exactly how we end up with people like Obama as the President Elect. People know so little about the government in general, how in the WORLD can we expect them to understand something like caucus fraud?? Wow. Just freakin’ wow. Go check out the site and see some of the other findings. I bet you’ll be be blown away, too. And I bet Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

Please read the Criminal Complaint filed by David W. Cain, Special Agent of the FBI. Details of the conversations Blagojevich had with his operatives about Barack Obama and the possibility Barack Obama would strike several deals with Blagojevich regarding the open Senate seat are discussed, and yes, quotations are provided.

I enjoy this gem from pages 63-64, where a telephone conversation between Blagojevich, Advisor B, a political consultant in Washington, DC, another Washington, DC, political consultant and John Haris, the Governor’s General Counsel, is discussed:

ROD BLAGOJEVICH said that the consultants (Advisor B and another consultant are believed to be on the call at that time) are telling him that he has to “suck it up” for two years and do nothing and give this “motherfucker [the President-elect] his senator. Fuck him. For nothing? Fuck him.” ROD BLAGOJEVICH states that he will put “[Senate Candidate 4]” in the Senate “before I just give fucking [Senate Candidate 1] a fucking Senate seat and I don’t get anything.” (Senate Candidate 4 is a Deputy Governor of the State of Illinois). ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that he needs to find a way to take the “financial stress” off of his family and that his wife is as qualified or more qualified than another specifically named individual to sit on corporate boards. According to ROD BLAGOJEVICH, “the immediate challenge [is] how do we take some of the financial pressure off of our family.” Later in the phone call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that absent getting something back, ROD BLAGOJEVICH will not pick Senate Candidate 1. HARRIS re-stated ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s thoughts that they should ask the President-elect for something for ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s financial security as well as maintain his political viability. HARRIS said they could work out a three-way deal with SEIU and the President-elect where SEIU could help the President-elect with ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s appointment of Senate Candidate 1 to the vacant Senate seat, ROD BLAGOJEVICH would obtain a position as the National Director of the Change to Win campaign, and SEIU would get something favorable from the President-elect in the future.

Senate Candidate 1 is Valerie Jarrett, an Obama advisor who also served as Daley’s Chief of Staff. Jarrett is very close to the Obamas. Senate Candidate 4 is either Dean Martinez, Bob Greenlee or Louanner Peters, all of whom are Deputy Governors of Illinois.

The “specifically named individual” is Michelle Obama, who was appointed to the Board of TreeHouse Foods, a WAL-MART vendor, on June 25, 2005, even though she did not have experience in the private sector previous to the appointment. Here are the benefits the Obama family received as a result of Michelle Obama’s stint with the WAL-MART vendor:

According to the couple’s tax returns, Mrs Obama earned $51,200 (£25,700) for her work as a non-executive director on Treehouse’s board last year, on top of the $271,618 salary she was paid as a vice-president of the University of Chicago Hospitals.

She also received 7,500 Treehouse stock options, worth a further $72,375, as she did the previous year, when she banked a $45,000 salary from the company.

Michelle Obama is the “specifically named individual” who was able to sit on corporate boards, although she lacks the experience of Blagojevich’s wife. And notice how Michelle Obama’s position with the WAL-MART vendor helped alleviate the “financial stress” of the Obama family at a time when they were purchasing a mansion from Rezko they could not afford.

Why is this relevant?

Blagojevich, according to the FBI complaint, thought Barack Obama could appoint his wife to corporate boards if he were to appoint Valerie Jarrett to the open Senate seat vacated by Obama. I quote pages 54-55 of the criminal complaint filed by Special Agent of the FBI David Cain:

By law, after the President-elect’s resignation of his position as a U.S. Senator, which was effective on November 16, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH has sole authority to appoint his replacement for the two years remaining of the President-elect’s Senate term. See 10 ILCS 5/25-8. During the course of this investigation, agents have intercepted a series of communications regarding the efforts of ROD BLAGOJEVICH, JOHN HARRIS, and others to misuse this power to obtain personal gain, including financial gain, for ROD BLAGOJEVICH and his family. In particular, ROD BLAGOJEVICH has been intercepted conspiring to trade the senate seat for particular positions that the President-elect has the power to appoint (e.g. the Secretary of Health and Human Services). ROD BLAGOJEVICH has also been intercepted conspiring to sell the Senate seat in exchange for his wife’s placement on paid corporate boards or ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s placement at a private foundation in a significant position with a substantial salary. ROD BLAGOJEVICH has also been intercepted conspiring to sell the Senate seat in exchange for millions of dollars in funding for a non-profit organization that he would start and that would employ him at a substantial salary after he left the governorship.

Blagojevich, in other words, assumed Obama would appoint his wife to a Board for the political favor of selecting Valerie Jarrett for the Senate seat. Blagojevich is not a stupid man. Indeed, he only assumed Obama would participate in this “pay to play” scheme, for he knows Obama is acutely aware how the game is played in Illinois and in Chicago. This explains why Blagojevich mentions Michelle Obama and her lack of qualifications to serve on the Board of TreeHouse Foods when he discusses how Obama could appoint Mrs. Blagojevich to a Board for the political favor of appointing Jarrett to the US Senate seat. Michelle, after all, was appointed to sit on the Board of TreeHouse foods AFTER Obama was elected to the US Senate. Moreover, Michelle Obama’s salary at The University of Chicago nearly TRIPLED after her husband gained the power to submit earmark requests on her employer’s behalf. Just appoint the spouse to a Board and increase his or her salary if you need a political favor from an Illinois politician. That is how the “play to pay” game is played.

Blagojevich understands this, and he knows Obama understands this. Why else does FBI Agent Cain report the following discussion that occurred on Nov 8, 2008?

On November 8, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH talked with JOHN HARRIS about the Senate seat. During the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH and HARRIS discussed whether it would be possible to obtain a financial benefit for ROD BLAGOJEVICH’s wife in relation to the Senate seat. Specifically, ROD BLAGOJEVICH referred to his wife’s Series 7 license and asked “is there a play here, with these guys, with her” to work for a firm in Washington or New York at a significantly better salary than she is making now. Also, ROD BLAGOJEVICH wanted to know whether SEIU could do something to get his wife a position at Change to Win until ROD BLAGOJEVICH could take a position at Change to Win.

Michelle Obama, Blagojevich implies, received an appointment to a Board for which she was not qualified as a result of a “pay to play” scheme. What about his wife? After all, Obama ally Valerie Jarrett wants the Senate seat. What about Blagojevich’s wife? What about Blagojevich’s “financial stress?”

Blagojevich and his advisers only thought of this as a possibility, for they know Obama has already played the game. Again, these are smart men who know the rules of the game. Why else would they think Obama would participate in a “pay to play” scheme? Michelle was paid for someone to play, they thought. What about Mrs. Blagojevich? Besides, Mrs. Blagojevich has a Series 7 license. All Michelle has is a license to practice law that was revoked as a result of a court order in 1993.

Blagojevich thought Obama would “pay to play,” as the Obamas have been engaged in “pay to play” schemes in the past. That is what Blagojevich thought, and that is why the Obamas are yet again mentioned in a complaint filed in a Court of law.

Memeorandum’s stories on today’s shocking news

I’d like to believe Patrick Fitzgerald will come riding to the rescue with some indictment linking Obama to Rezko, or announce a racketeering indictment relating to all the caucus and voter fraud, but I don’t believe that will happen for a second. I’d like to think that, as nature abhors a vacuum, the media will turn their critical lens on Obama and start airing the truth. It is too little too late and I don’t know that I believe that either.

How do a reconcile the deep love I feel for my country and my upset with people already losing their homes and savings, yet wanting to see the new administration put us to rights again. Do I have faith that they can? Based on what I’ve seen from both Obama and the current Democratic leadership, I have no reason to.

I posted an article the other day condemning his election tactics as well as casting a jaundiced eye on those who allowed themselves to vote against their own interests in assisting his election. However, I said a few words at the conclusion about still being willing to open my heart and lend support, if only for my country’s sake, and I got some grief on the boards about it.

This is a tough one because I feel blackmailed into support by our current dire circumstances and by a media that deserves to be figuratively horsewhipped in the town square due to their irresponsible “journalism” and lack of honest coverage of all the candidates. It is also impossible to think the media would ever allow a huge scandal to break, given how much they were in bed with an Obama candidacy in the first place. Although, the dollar is king, so if it sells copy…

It is also a conflict to feel deeply moved by the historical aspect of Barack Obama’s election and I certainly understand the joy of the African American community, and all Americans that this barrier has been passed. I just wish that this honor and accomplishment was bestowed upon someone more qualified and less disingenuous.

David Axelrod, the DNC power elite and the media have thrown a lavish, yearlong dinner party for this man and stuck us with the bill. Is it possible for our country to succeed and get back on its feet in the near term if he fails? Or do we want that kind of failure, as only failure of enormous magnitude will shake the latte sippers and blackberry bloggers from their stupor enough to realize something’s gotta give here.

Pardon me, but I cannot wish ill. Too many hard working people are in need out there and are looking for answers and all they are hearing is hopey changey. As many wonderful NoQ readers have pointed out in recent days, if he keeps his empty rhetoric up, the electorate will awaken soon enough.

It is very safe to say I will not be drinking kool-aid anytime soon nor will I be sucked into the Obama collective. It is vital that citizens keep the pressure on our elected local, state and national representatives, the media and if necessary, their advertisers. Is it naïve to think that will make a difference? I refuse to be that pessimistic. If I allow that to creep over me, I won’t take action but curl up in a ball in the corner – and I will not give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me do that.

I really don’t have adequate words to describe the rage I feel at the third presidential election in a row feeling stolen and/or decided by those not doing their homework.

Is it best to adopt a wait and see attitude? To see if it’s possible to keep him out of office by legal means in the first place? How many of us, after the primary was forcibly shut down felt that he would implode before the convention, yet the hope never materialized. How many thought ‘spread the wealth around’ would surely do him in? Nope.

If and after he is indeed inaugurated, do I just shut the TV off for the next four years – or keep making noise, hoping some of our representatives will add something to the debate that will help. I will forever blame myself for not protesting out in the street in December of 2000 but in our pre-9/11 mindset, most did not know just how bad our compliance would be.

The rage is perfectly understandable and perfectly justifiable. I am searching for the way to make it effective and not destructive – either to me or my fellow citizens working hard for their families or to those in the military and their families, sacrificing daily for our country.

Most infuriating is that Donna Brazile basically sent out a missive months ago saying “message to base – stay home.” And they got this guy elected anyway – in great part because a bunch of Republicans decided to stay home. I hope in retrospect they are likewise happy with their irresponsible decision. It is interesting to note that PUMAs did have an effect on the election as I believe 3 million voted for Senator McCain. What was not taken into account, and was certainly beyond PUMA control, is that 6 million Republicans chose to sit on their hands.

The DNC may have behaved as though we didn’t exist but we do. Our voices matter and they will not be silenced. Through all of that I can still wish my country Godspeed, even though I am furious at the blind part of the electorate that has perpetrated what I feel is a disaster on all of us by electing this unqualified man to office.

Speaking only for myself, I have lots to sort out and am still reeling from the shock that at one of the most difficult and troubling times in our nations’ history, America has chosen American Idol over competence, patriotism, knowledge and experience. Regardless of party.

How do we want to participate in an administration, either critically or constructively, that has acted as though millions of us are completely invisible and our thoughts and contributions nonexistent? At this moment the answer is admittedly well above my pay grade.

Your thoughts on this would be deeply appreciated.

No Quarter introduced readers to the Mutual Bank in Chicago after a Chicago Sun-Times columnist mentioned how a certain financial institution in Chicago would become the subject of a federal probe to be conducted by Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in relation to the conviction of Antoin “Tony” Rezko. Although I cautioned I did not have conclusive evidence when I argued Mutual Bank is most probably the financial institution in question, it now appears I may have been correct.

For according to a Washington Times exclusive printed today, a Real Estate and Commercial Credit Analyst of Mutual Bank has assumed whistleblower status and filed complaint against his former employer.

The subject of his complaint is the Mutual Bank and its potentially fraudulent reappraisal of the lot on which Obama’s home sits.

Obama, we recall, was only able to purchase the mansion he could not afford in June 2005 as a result of Rita Rezko’s ability to secure a mortgage for the lot on which the home sits from Mutual Bank.

And yes, Obama is involved in this complaint, for his decision to purchase a 10 foot strip of the lot on which his home sits from Rita Rezko in January 2006 was, according to the complaint, the reason why these potentially fraudulent reappraisals of the Rita Rezko lot were drafted.

I quote the Washington Times:

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko’s account and the mortgage Rita Rezko received from Mutual for the lot on which Obama’s home sits were the subjects of a grand jury subpoena in 2006. I recommend you read my essay on Rita Rezko, the Obama land deal and Mutual Bank for an explication of why the mortgage she received from Chicago machine banker “Uncle” Amrish Mahajan of Mutual would have raised the eyebrows of federal prosecutors.

The Washington Post continues:

The complaint also said that the grand jury wanted information on Mrs. Rezko’s checking account and loan file and that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) had audited the Rezko file - although Mr. Connor’s lower reappraisal had been replaced with a higher amount.

“Connor’s internal whistle-blowing activity at Mutual Bank implicates Mutual Bank and the potentially guilty officers thereof to prosecution under federal and Illinois statutes,” said the complaint, filed by attorney Glenn R. Gaffney.

The complaint said Mutual Bank officials could be guilty of making false statements, willfully overvaluing property, bank fraud, witness retaliation, willful violation of a lawful subpoena, FDIC violations, and state banking regulations…

According to the complaint, Mr. Connor reviewed the appraisal of the Rezko property by another firm, Adams Appraisal, which had set the value at $625,000. Mr. Connor’s complaint said that he told his bosses in a report that the property had been overvalued by at least $125,000 and that a “reasonable and fair evaluation” should have been no greater than $500,000.

Why would Mutual Bank desire to inflate the value of the Rezko property on which the Obama home sits? Why would Mutual Bank risk obstructing justice? A paragraph in the Washington Times exclusive answers these questions. I quote them again:

The complaint said the Rezko loan was approved by Mutual Bank President and CEO Amrish Mahajan and others so that Mrs. Rezko could buy a 9,090-square-foot vacant parcel of real estate. It said that in January 2006, Mrs. Rezko and Mr. Obama, along with his wife Michelle, signed an agreement to sell a 10-foot strip of the property to the Obamas. At that point, according to the complaint, Mr. Connor’s firm asked him to conduct the reappraisal.

Connor, in other words, was fired for noting that the value of the property had been inflated.

For if Mutual adhered to Connor’s appraisal, Rita Rezko would have received less money from Obama for the ten foot strip of land next to his home he purchased from the convicted slum landlord’s wife.

And Mahajan, the CEO of Mutual, had an interest in ensuring Rezko would receive more money from Obama, for Mahajan is deeply imbricated in the Chicago machine that used Obama to funnel government revenue into the privatization of public housing scheme from which Obama’s friends profited.

Now wonder why Mutual removed Connor’s appraisal from the Rita Rezko file.

Mahajan, the Mutual Bank, Rita Rezko and the Obama land deal are now the subjects of a complaint filed with the Circuit Court of Cook County, and Obama’s financial dealings with the Mutual Bank and with Rita and Antoin “Tony” Rezko are the subjects of news articles that explore Chicago corruption and questionable real estate transactions.

I guess the deal really was “boneheaded.”

No Quarter asked readers to focus on the land deal and on Mutual when the Chicago Sun-Times mentioned that a financial institution is the subject of federal prosecutors’ interest, for Obama’s decision to purchase land from Rita Rezko catalyzed all the press on his questionable land deal with convicted slumlord Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Now we know that transaction was the subject of a federal subpoena in 2006, and now we know a complaint has been filed against Mutual for intimidating employees and attempting to increase the value of the Obama lot most probably in order to ensure Rita Rezko would receive enough money to repay the $500,000 loan she received from Mahajan and the Mutual Bank even though she only earns $35,000 per annum at her government job.

Much more is to be learned about this land deal. But now that it is the subject of a complaint and a federal subpoena filed in 2006, I imagine we will learn that Obama chose Rezko to tour the mansion and purchase the lot on which it sits in order to ensure that he could later repay Rezko for the land he could not afford.

Why else did Mahajan, one of Rezko’s bankers who also sat on the Chicago Plan Commission of Daley with Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis, manipulate the value on the lot when Obama was ready to repay the Rezkos for the favor?

Must money always be kept within a small network of corrupt Chicago machine cogs?

I imagine we will read more about Obama and his financial dealings with Rita Rezko and Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank before votes are cast in November. It was a “boneheaded” deal indeed, Senator Obama.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• About the Financial Institution Mentioned in the Chicago Sun-Times: Obama, Tony Rezko, Amrish Mahajan, the Kenwood Mansion & Rita Rezko
• Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama - Dominoes?
• CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

A former Illinois bank official, now claiming whistleblower status, says bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama.

In a complaint filed Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Kenneth J. Connor said that his reappraisal of Rita Rezko’s property was replaced with a higher one and that he was fired when he questioned the document.

Mr. Connor, a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the Mutual Bank Corp. in Chicago, also noted in the complaint that the bank received a grand jury subpoena in October 2006 requiring it to produce information concerning Mrs. Rezko’s purchase, including the bank’s files on the property.

The media, who for the most part have ignored the shady land deal between the felon Tony Rezko and Barack Obama, may now be shamed into at least examining the matter in light of their relentless scrutiny of Joe the Plumber. This was a fairly sophisticated money laundering transaction. For starters, Tony Rezko was one of Barack Obama’s major fund raisers. The property that Barack and Michelle Obama wanted to buy had an asking price of $1.95 million dollars. They got a sweetheart loan and bought the house for $1.65 million. Why? Because the owners of the home were able to sell the adjacent lot on the same day to Tony Rezko and his wife for $125,000 dollars more than the land was worth. The Rezkos paid full price, $625,000 for a strip of land adjacent to the house, that according to the appraiser is only worth $500,000.

The inimitable John Batchelor is on this like a chicken on a bug.

John writes:

Startling news this morning from a bizarre break in the mystery of what Tony Rezko is telling prosecutors in Chicago in exchange for a better deal on his conviction for graft and corruption. In the Washington Times — not from either of the Chicago papers — there is a report of a whistleblower lawsuit by previously unknown bank clerk Kenneth J. Connor against his former employer, the Mutual Bank Corporation in Chicago, for firing him because he refused to go along with an apparent real estate fraud involving the house that Barack Obama lives in. The details are complex, including the inflating of the value of the lot that Rita Rezko purchased and later sold a piece of to Barack Obama, including the fact that the bank owner, Amrish Mahajan, is a long-time Rezko crony and creditor, and I point to the gifted encyclopedic site The Real Barack Obama for a full explanation and savvy speculation of the reason Mr. Connor is upset. The heart of it is that Mr. Connor refused to go along with a fraud with regard the lot at 505o South Greenwood Avenue that Rita Rezko (as a cut-out for her husband Tony) bid on and purchased between January and June 2005 in order to make it possible for Barack and Michelle Obama to bid on and purchase their mansion at 5046 South Greenwood Avenue in Hyde Park. Mr. Conner now reveals all this in a lawsuit against the bank that fired him because he wouldn’t play along. Stepping around Mr. Conner’s ambition, there is the much more fetching clue here that the prosecutors have raced way past talking to Tony Rezko about the “Board Games” that led to his conviction, past Tony Rezko’s corrupt dealings raising cash for Governor Rod Blagojeich, past Tony Rezko’s years of skimming and cheating and bullying in Chicago, to go right after the critical piece of the Obama house deal that underlines that something is rotten in Hyde Park. Kenneth J. Conner doesn’t file a lawsuit in civil court unless he has spoken at great length with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office in front of a Grand Jury with regard the criminal investigation of Rezko and his clients. And the extremely irregular and unexplained purchase of the Hyde Park mansion for the newly elected and then sworn-in Senator Barack Obama in 2005 is a major mystery. On Sunday 12, when I spoke to Natasha Korecki, Chicago Sun-Times, re Rezko talking, I was convinced that the prosecution is pursuing the governor’s vulnerability first, and that the senator’s vulnerability was left till later if at all. Now I see, as can anyone who has studied the byzantine pleasure palace of Cook County, that Mr. Fitzgerald and his team have hold of secrets within secrets, and that Tony Rezko’s talking is like 3-in-1 oil, it lubricates the whole investigation of the governor and the senator. The lot! They are on to Rita Rezko’s lot! That is the backdoor to Barack Obama’s self-described “boneheaded” deal with Tony Rezko. That is the backdoor to what really happened between Tony Rezko and Senator-elect Obama and the Wondisfords sellers and the two silent-so-far realtors who were both friends of Tony Rezko.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s Clock is Ticking

It is follow the money. It is always follow the money. Who paid for the lot? Who paid for the house? When and how? Note that the Conner lawsuit also mentions that the grand jury was seeking, as far ago as October 2006, information on Rita Rezko’s checking account and loan file at the Mutual Bank. Her checking account. Fitzgerald is deeply involved in how 5050/5046 South Greenwood, the lot and the house (right), was passed over to Senator and Mrs. Obama. Mention also that another of my very best Chicago sources writes me that Mr. Fitzgerald best accelerate, his clock is ticking, and his tenure is iffy in an Obama Justice Department with a Democratic dominated Congress and an ineffective Chicago media

.

**********Truthteller asks bloggers and reporters to direct their attention to Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey.**********

Mike Robinson’s AP article entitled “Obama Fundraiser, Convicted of Fraud, Spills Beans,” corroborates what we at No Quarter have been writing for weeks: Antoin “Tony” Rezko is cooperating with federal prosecutors interested in Barack Obama. While the national media’s attention to this topic is long overdue, I am not prepared to state that it is too little, too late. I am, however, disappointed.

Also disappointing but somewhat predictable is the blogosphere’s bungled reception of Mike Robinson’s article. Of course those who have embraced Obama will dismiss the story as so much yellow journalism. One blogger claims that prosecutors are interested in Blagojevich and not Obama. But looming in the blind spot of that blogger’s necessarily tendentious gaze is Rezko’s 9 JUN 2008 letter to Judge Amy St. Eve and the reference to Obama as “Individual D” in the superseding indictment and the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors during the Rezko trial. Obama’s name can be printed again and again on the surface of the legal documents filed during the proceedings of the Rezko trial, but these writers with all their “naked” insight will clothe the verifiable record with their blindness. Knowledge production, it seems, has been lifted from its evidentiary supports when Democrats write about Barack Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

And yes, those Democrats include some ostensible Hillary Clinton Democrats. Seizing upon the following quotation in a Chicago Sun-Times column, one blogger believes the AP story heralds the end of the political careers of Alexi Giannoulias and Barack Obama:

Sneed hears rumbles political fund-raiser/fixer Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.

Stay tuned.

While Rezko was a customer of Alexi Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank, where he amassed a debt of $450,000 after writing bad checks at Las Vegas casinos, and while Giannoulias did write loans for Rezko, I do not believe one can aver with the confidence of the blogger I cite above that federal prosecutors are now focusing on Giannoulias, even if Giannoulias was tied to Rezko by his opponent during his 2006 bid for the office of Illinois state Treasurer. Allow me to be clear: Obama bundler, mobster banker and Obama protégé Giannoulias is, to be sure, embroiled in the Rezko scandal and in other aspects of Chicago politics any political observer would find unsavory, but he is not in my opinion the topic of the conservation occurring between Rezko, Rezko’s attorney and Fitzgerald’s team of prosecutors. I do admit he is grist for the mill of impetuous bloggers who desire web traffic and a controversial headline or two, however. Because I tend to rely on evidence and not on hearsay, I believe we should focus our attention on Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey, not on Giannoulias and the Broadway Bank, if we are to assign names to the financial institution about which Sneed of the Chicago Sun-Times has heard “rumblings.” Although Mahajan is not known to readers of No Quarter and to the national media, I imagine they will desire more information on the unscrupulous banker once they read the information I unpack below the fold. And yes, Obama is involved, deeply involved.

My interest in Amrish Mahajan and the Mutual Bank of Harvey was picqued by this list of contributors in Rezko’s bundling network provided by the Chicago Sun-Times last March. View the second page of the document, and notice the following entry:

The data available in the Sun-Times spreadsheet is corroborated by the following data, which is democratically available at the Federal Election Commission’s website:

MAHAJAN, AMRISH
CHICAGO, IL 60607
MUTUAL BANK

OBAMA, BARACK
VIA OBAMA FOR ILLINOIS INC
12/20/2003 500.00 24020030170
04/14/2004 1000.00 24020461757

Not only was Mahajan a member of Rezko’s bundling network; his bank, the Mutual Bank of Harvey, granted Rita Rezko the $500,000 mortgage she needed in order to purchase the lot on which the Obama mansion in Chicago sits. As many of you may recall, the Obamas could not have purchased the mansion they could not afford unless transactions for the mansion and the lot closed on the same day. Obama needed to locate someone who would buy the lot, and he approached Rezko, the convicted slumlord with whom Obama toured the property before they mutually agreed to the following arrangement:

The home and lot sales closed on June 15, 2005. A land trust controlled by the Obamas bought the house for $1.65 million, and the Obamas secured a $1.32 million mortgage from Northern Trust to complete that purchase. That same day, Rezko’s wife, Rita Rezko, bought the side lot for $625,000. A $37,000- a-year Cook County employee, she secured a $500,000 mortgage from Mutual Bank of Harvey.

The structure of this transaction begs the following question: What bank would lend a government employee who earns $37,000 per annum a $500,000 mortgage? What bank would assume such a risk?

The Mutual Bank of Harvey, of course, for the Mutual Bank of Harvey’s President is a man who is deeply connected to the Chicago machine that backed Barack Obama. Indeed, Amrish Mahajan was one of Mayor Daley’s first political appointments in 1989, when he was named to a seat on Chicago’s Plan Commission, where he would be joined by Obama’s former boss and Rezko’s business partner Allison Davis and by Valerie Jarrett, Daley’s Chief of Staff who chaired the Commission from 1991-1995. Mahajan, in other words, worked with those who devised and profited from Daley’s failed public housing experiment in Chicago, a public housing policy Obama helped fund as state Senator and US Senator.

Rezko, according to the Boston Globe, was one of the major beneficiaries of Obama’s legislative advocacy for funding of Daley’s public housing experiment. Other major beneficiaries are Jarrett and Allison Davis. Mahajan was also a beneficiary, for his bank had made $3.4 million dollars in loans to Tony Rezko’s slum landlord business since 2002. A banker for one of the slumlords who benefitted from the Daley housing program Obama helped bankroll, Mahajan was returning a favor when he wrote a $500,000 mortgage in 2005 for the wife of one of his clients. Although Tony’s financial problems were mounting in 2005, and although Rita earned only $35,000 per annum, Mahajan underwrote the mortgage. Favors must be reciprocated, I guess, especially when one can satisfy two parties at once: the person with whom one has a complicated relationship in real estate and the politician who helped finance that complicated relationship as state Senator and US Senator.

I doubt federal investigators are interested in the Mahajans solely for their involvement in the property deal involving Obama, Mahajan and the Rezkos. The Mahajans, I believe, are the foci of their probe for many reasons.

• Anita Mahajan, the wife of Amrish, has been involved with questionable real estate deals that are the subject of federal probes with Governor Blagojevich’s wife, Patricia
• Anita Mahajan exploited lucrative no bid contracts with the Department of Children and Family Services to steal $2.1 million from Illinois taxpayers; she was charged and released on a $250,000 bond in March 2007
• “Uncle Amrish” has raised more than a half million for Blagojevich and approximately $50,000 for Mayor Daley, whose father helped launch Mahajan’s banking career
• “Uncle Amrish” also helped Obama purchase a house he could not afford

The real estate transaction involving Rita Rezko, the Obamas and Mutual Bank of Harvey is just the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, the Mutual Bank of Harvey seems to be at the center of all the corruption in Chicago. To quote former Donald Perillo, Chicago insurance mogul and son of the lawyer for Al Capone, in the Chicago Tribune article I cite above:

Donald Parrillo said he isn’t surprised to see Mahajan mix it up with politics and business. “He got that attitude from the Parrillo family,” the former alderman said. “He wanted to get in the game.”

And Mahajan certainly is in the game. The banker of the Chicago machine, he is also the man who wrote the mortgage for Rita Rezko that facilitated Obama’s purchase the mansion he could not afford. This is why I believe prosecutors are interested in Harvey Mutual Bank. Not only did Rezko receive loans from this institution; this bank is heavily involved in problematic real estate dealings involving Blagojevich and Obama. And if I may quote Rezko in the 9 JUN letter he wrote to Judge Amy St. Eve:

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Rezko is now talking, and prosecutors are presently interested in a politically connected financial institution. I bet Obama now regrets paying Rita Rezko $104,500 for the strip of the land in the lot on which his house sits in January 2006. Acquired with the assistance of a questionable $500,000 mortgage from Amrish Mahajan’s Mutual Bank of Harvey, this lot and Obama’s desire to expand his yard by bit was the catalyst for all the investigative reports into Obama’s deep ties to Rezko. By the way, Rita’s lot is only accessible through the front gate of Obama’s home; it is not a separate property, and it was never intended to be a separate property.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama says of the real estate transactions with Rezko. I wonder if now he also believes it was a mistake for him to serve as the legislator who represented and bankrolled Richard Daley, Amrish Mahajan, Valerie Jarrett, Allison Davis and the Chicago Plan Commission. But at least he and Michelle have a house, a house the Mutual Bank of Harvey, the politically connected bank that wrote loans for Rezko, helped them procure in 2005. Too bad that house will be the end of Barack Obama.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• Rezko, Giannoulias, Obama - Dominoes?
• CORROBORATED: Rezko Speaks, Prosecutors Interested in Obama Listen
• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

We warned readers of No Quarter of the problems convicted slumlord and political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko would create for Obama during the final stretch of the Presidential campaign, and now we have confirmation. I quote the Associated Press:

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal prosecutors have asked to delay the sentencing of convicted fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko indefinitely.

The motion filed Monday afternoon signals the key fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Sen. Barack Obama and other Illinois Domocrats may be telling prosecutors what he knows about corruption in state government.

It asks U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve to delay the sentencing “while the parties engage in discussions that could affect their sentencing postures.” The language is all but an acknowledgment that Rezko is talking.

Rezko was convicted of launching a $7 million scheme to use his clout with Blagojevich’s administration to pressure a contractor and firms wanting to do business with the state for kickbacks.

And yes, Obama was involved in Illinois state government in 2003 through 2005, the time during which Rezko was defrauding the Illinois State Teachers’ Pension fund and bankrolling certain politicians. I quote what I wrote in my last essay on this subject:

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.

I guess there will be surprises in October. And Obama thought Ayers was his only problem. Let us reintroduce the electorate to Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Also read the commentary available at Memeorandum.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• More Than Just a Boneheaded Mistake
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
• Obama’s Gangster Mentality
• Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Recently Unsealed Documents Confirm Obama Heavily Embroiled in Rezko Case
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part II: Barack Obama (D-Slumlord) Is Aloof, Oblivious, Dangerous
• Boston Globe Exposé, Part I: Introducing Cecil Butler, Obama’s West Side Slum Landlord Patron
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Either Rezko is “Levine, Loren, Mahru, [sic] or Winter,” or Rezko decided he will no longer relate “the ‘wrong’ things” but the right things he knows about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. For according to a Chicago Tribune article published today, Rezko has met with prosecutors and is considering cooperating with their investigation. I quote the Tribune:

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a convicted influence peddler who was once one of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s most trusted confidants, has met with federal prosecutors and is considering cooperating in the corruption probe of the governor’s administration, sources told the Tribune.

Rezko’s possible change of heart—after years of steadfast refusal—has sent ripples through a tight circle of prominent defense attorneys who represent dozens of potential witnesses and targets in the wide-ranging probe.

His cooperation would give prosecutors investigating the governor and his wife access to someone they have described as an ultimate political insider at the center of a pervasive pay-to-play scheme.

Rezko’s trial this year laid bare a culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse. It even became fodder in the presidential campaign of Democratic nominee Barack Obama, whose fundraising and personal ties to Rezko go back more than a decade.

Key phrases in this excerpt are “ripples through a tight circle of prominent defense attorneys who represent dozens of potential witnesses and targets,” “political insider at the center of a pervasive pay-to-play scheme” and “culture of scams, bribes and backroom deals stretching from City Hall to the Statehouse.” Obama, we recall, is the “unnamed political candidate” mentioned in the superseding indictment and in the proffer of evidence filed by Fitzgerald and his prosecutors. I quote the Chicago Sun-Times:

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.

Rezko, who was part of Obama’s senatorial finance committee, also is accused of directing “at least one other individual” to donate money to Obama and then reimbursing that individual — in possible violation of federal election law.

This is only a scratch on the surface, however. For as I describe in one of my many essays on the subject of Obama and Rezko, Obama’s relationship with the convicted slum landlord is extensive and elaborate. I quote myself on the years 2003-2005:

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.

That is only a brief summary of Obama’s involvement with Rezko during the years that are the focus of Fitzgerald’s probe. For more on Obama’s relationship with Rezko since at least 1991, I recommend consulting the diaries whose titles are listed below.

Obama’s ties to Rezko are deep and controversial. Moreover, recently unsealed documents from the court proceedings reveal Judge Amy St. Eve permitted prosecutors to summon witnesses who could provide testimony on Obama’s ties to Rezko. Prosecutors, in other words, were interested in Obama’s role in Rezko’s elaborate web of influence peddling and corruption.

The alarm expressed by defense attorneys who represent witnesses and potential targets in the wake of the revelation that Rezko is cooperating with prosecutors should be of interest to readers of No Quarter. For not only is Obama deeply embroiled in Rezko’s legal woes; Obama was also one of the prosecutors’ many targets. And although Obama’s campaign will claim that “prosecutors during Rezko’s trial never made any suggestions that Obama was involved in anything improper,” they neglect to understand that anything Rezko may relate now that he is cooperating with prosecutors will be used against Barack Obama. Besides, Rezko mentions Obama in his letter to Judge St. Eve dated 9 June 2008. If prosecutors were not pressing Rezko to reveal details about his relation to Obama, why would Rezko bother to mention Obama’s name?

Because Rezko is cooperating with prosecutors who demonstrated an interest in Rezko’s relation to Barack Obama during the trial, I imagine Obama’s campaign and defense attorneys are not pleased with this latest revelation in the Chicago Tribune. And yes, we at No Quarter will keep everyone posted. Rezko, after all, is one of the many reasons we insist on probing Barack Obama’s record.

—————————————————-
No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• “CHICAGO MACHINE”
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

Also listen to our NQR Radio Show entitled “READING REZKO with Truthteller and SusanUnPC”

So you thought the problem of Barack and Michelle Obamas’ 2005 mansion purchase was dead and buried.

Well, not any more.

A reader of my website who is a tax accountant of many years, one who specializes in criminal matters, says he believes the Obamas have a tax problem.

Simply put, the allocation of purchase price between the Obamas’ lot and the lot next door, which were both owned by the same couple and had long been sold together, makes no sense unless the amount paid for the lot adjoining the Obamas’ by the wife of now convicted political fixer Tony Rezko was specifically meant as a favor to the Obamas so that they could afford their mansion.

If so, the difference between what Ms. Rezko paid for the side lot and what it was actually worth would be construed by the IRS as income to the Obamas.  After looking at the Obamas’ tax return for 2005, my source was able to say that in his opinion they did not declare any such income, and therefore did not pay taxes on it.

Barack Obama once called the house purchase a boneheaded mistake, but my source believes it is worse than that.

Much worse. If Barack Obama were to attain the White House, this problem could be devastating for the Democratic Party, says my source.

That is why he wants this information made public now.

Here are the specifics.

On June 15, 2005 , Barack and Michelle Obama bought a landmark mansion on Chicago’s South Side for $1.65 million.

The lot next door was sold the same day for $625,000 to Rita Rezko, wife of Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

Tony Rezko was at that time under investigation for fraud and influence peddling, for which he was eventually convicted.

The specifics of these sale transactions were reported by the Chicago Tribune in an article published November 1, 2006 .

The information on the sale is also available online at the website of the Cook County Recorder of Deeds.

According to the Tribune, the Obamas’ price was “some $300,000 less than the asking price.”

The Rezko property, the article said, was purchased for “the full … asking price.”

That means the previous owners were paid $2.275 million for the two properties.

It is reasonable to assume, then, that when the previous owners listed the properties for sale, their asking price for the two was $2. 575 million or thereabouts.

How that total amount became the two amounts is what is at issue here.

Obama claimed in a long interview with Chicago media on March 14, 2008, as Tony Rezko was about to go to trial, that the sellers had tried to sell the house and adjoining lot together, but were not receiving offers as a result of the high price.

The sellers, he said, had already listed the properties separately by the time he and Michelle became serious about making an offer, and that the house, along with its lot, was listed for $1.9 million.

I understand from knowledgeable sources

that the multiple listing service for the area may have the records to confirm this assertion, but I do not have access to those kinds of records.

Archpundit, an Illinois  blogger and strong Obama supporter, somehow obtained access to 94 pages of related documents (pdf) he posted earlier this year, which contain documentation of the $1.9 million listing in January of 2005.  No earlier listings were printed.

Taking Obama at his word, we are led to believe that the sellers are the ones who allocated the $2.5 million or so that they wanted, in total, between the two properties. Since we do not have access to the original calculation and who made it, we can only try to determine if the allocation made at the time was reasonable.

Intrinsic Value

An empty lot only has value to a developer, or a developer’s wife, if he can build on it and sell for a profit.

Could the Rezkos have done that?

The Obamas’ house is in is an official landmark district, and I learned from a Senior Permit Reviewer at the Landmarks Division of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development that any construction in that district must be approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

She said the Commission makes sure that the construction conforms to the look and feel of the neighboring structures.

That means, for the district in question, that the structure could not be a high rise.

A one-unit home is a possibility, but would have to be very expensive in order to ensure a profit.

A small condominium building or several town houses might be a possibility, given the proper zoning, but they would also have to be expensive.

Of course, expensive is the norm for that neighborhood.

I am not an expert on real estate development, but it does seem that there might be potential for some profit in building on the empty lot bought by Rita Rezko.

The property, after 1,500 square feet was sold to the Obamas (see below), has changed hands twice since Rita Rezko bought it. According to the Cook County Recorder’s website, Rita Rezko sold the property on 12/28/06 for $575,000 to 5050 S Greenwood LLC.

Bloomberg reported on February 18, 2008 that the buyer’s name was Michael Sreenan.

5050 S Greenwood LLC sold the property to John D. and Marjorie S. Poulos on 3/17/08 for $675,000.

I do not know these people, nor do I know their relationship, if any, to the Rezkos.

If they do have business or personal relationships with Tony Rezko, these would not be the kind of arm’s length transactions that would ensure a market price for the property.

Comparison of Naked Land Values

It is common in the real estate industry to separate the house vs. land value from a total purchase price by assuming that 75% of the price is attributable to the house and 25% to the land.

And 25% of the $1.65 million that the Obamas paid for their house and land is $412,500.

By this test, the Rezko property should have been priced at less than that amount, as it had less square footage.   Instead, Rita Rezko paid one and a half times as much.

Assessment Associated with a Subsequent Transaction

Again from the 11/1/06  Tribune article (and also from the Recorder’s Office’s online records), we know that on January 11, 2006  the Obamas bought a strip of the Rezko lot that adjoined their property.

As the Tribune describes the transaction,

Using a standard formula, Obama’s appraiser estimated the 1,500-square-foot portion at a market value of $40,500.

But Obama felt it would be fair to pay the Rezkos $104,500, or a sixth of their original $625,000 purchase price, because he was acquiring a sixth of their land.

If an assessor valued 1/6 of the property at $40,500, wouldn’t that mean the market value assessment of the whole Rezko property at that time would be $40,500 x 6 = $243,000? Admittedly, the valuation of a strip of land may be lower because it is such a small portion of a property, but could that possibility account for the huge difference between the two values?The Times of London created a handy graphic to help visualize the properties and the transactions (extracted from this pdf file): 

Relative Assessed Values

The Cook County Assessor’s website shows only the current assessed values of the two properties, but by a call to the office I was able to find out the 2005 assessments for tax purposes. Be aware that assessed values for taxes in Chicago  are not anywhere near the market value.

I am only concerned here with the relative values, which should give us some indication whether the allocation of purchase prices between the two properties might have been reasonable.

The allocation between the two properties at the time of the listing was about 75% for the house and its lot ($1.9 million), and 25% for the adjoining lot ($625,000). That is very much out of kilter from the allocation above, based on assessed values.

What the Obamas Could Afford

At the time, the Obamas’ finances were good, but not good enough to buy a $2.5 million mansion.

The 11/1/06  Tribune article reports that the Obamas obtained a $1.32 million mortgage on their property (the information is also available on the Recorder’s Office website).

That means their down payment was $330,000 ($1.65 million - $1.32 million).

A venerable institution like the Northern Trust, which lent the Obamas the money, would never have engaged in any of the risky practices that later caused the housing market crash.

Therefore, they would have applied a formula to determine what the Obamas could afford to pay for their home, based primarily on the size of the down payment.

Apparently, the magic number turned out to be $1.65 million.

The Obamas wanted the mansion.

But the sellers, as we saw, wanted more for the two lots than the Obamas could afford or were willing to pay.

Who Determined the Relative Prices and How?

According to Obama’s 3/16/08 Chicago  media interview, he played no part in the determination of the properties’ prices.

The sellers have refused to speak to the media.

A member of the Obama campaign spoke with the husband of the couple, and exchanged emails, portions of which were shared with a Bloomberg reporter, who wrote on February 18, 2008,

The e-mail says that the sellers “did not offer or give the Obamas a ‘discount’ on the house price on the basis of or in relation to the price offered and accepted on the lot.” It also says that “in the course of the negotiation over the sales price,” Obama and his wife, Michelle, “made several offers until the one accepted at $1.65 million, and that this was the best offer [the sellers] received on the house.”…

The e-mail between [the seller] and the campaign adviser also says that the sellers had “stipulated that the closing dates for the two properties were to be the same.”

But no statement has been made public by the sellers about how the price allocation between the two properties was made, or when, or whether anyone influenced that calculation.Obama seems to believe that what he said at his 3/16/08 press conference with Chicago media is all he ever has to say on this subject.Neither of the Rezkos has spoken publicly about these land deals. But Tony Rezko was convicted in early June of 2008 for fraud and influence peddling by the office of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

Presumably, that office is now negotiating with Rezko as to whether he will testify against any of his cohorts and any other information he can provide for further investigations by that office.Barack Obama has not been implicated in any of the wrongdoing for which Rezko was convicted, but might Rezko be tempted to reveal his side of this transaction? He was an experienced developer.

He was broke, $50 million in debt, and living on borrowed money at the time of the 2005 purchase, according to ABC News’ The Blotter on March 5, 2008. According to the article, Rita Rezko made only $37,500 per year, six months after the purchase and,

Rezko’s bleak financial picture raises the question of how the Rezkos were able to buy a vacant lot adjoining the home of Sen. Barack Obama in 2005, at a time Rezko says he was already in deep debt…

How were the Rezkos able to make the down payment, and qualify for the loan, on the lot?

The same story may give us a clue:

[Rezko] said he had an ongoing relationship with Nadhmi Auchi, a London-based Iraqi billionaire convicted on French fraud charges, who Rezko described as a close friend and business associate.

Did the “ongoing relationship” between Rezko and the Iraqi-born Auchi involve money changing hands prior to the purchase of the lot next to the Obamas?

It did in 2007, according to now retired Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak.

On February 28, 2008 Novak reported that Rezko “got $3.5 million from Auchi’s company in April 2007.”

In other words, did foreign money enable a U.S. Senator to buy his mansion?There could also be Senate ethical considerations for Senator Obama, if he did not disclose a benefit to him, as required by Chapter 5 of the Senate Ethics Manual (pdf).Judicial Watch has already filed ethics complaints over the house purchase, in regard to what it considers preferential treatment for Obama in obtaining the mortgage on the property.

From the press release:

Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today [date not given] that it has filed separate complaints with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee against Senator Barack Obama for allegedly accepting a below-market rate mortgage loan in 2005 not available to the general consumer.

Patrick Fitzgerald sent a former Illinois governor to prison.

He brought down the top aide of a sitting vice president of the United States.

He continues to investigate Rezko and his partners’ actions to determine if there were more illegalities, especially whether the sitting Illinois governor could be involved. He may be interested in what Rezko has to say about this property purchase next door to a U.S. Senator, now a presidential candidate.

And Rezko may be willing to talk, in exchange for a more lenient sentence, scheduled to be handed down on September 3, 2008.

During his third year at Harvard Law, Obama was offered a job by a Chicago real estate developer named Tony Rezko. Obama turned down this opportunity in order to become an attorney with the Davis, Miner and Barnhill law firm.

It was probably no coincidence that one of this firm’s biggest clients was Tony Rezko. The firm’s senior partner, Allison Davis, was also a power broker behind the rise of Harold Washington to the mayor’s seat in the city of Chicago—again, probably no coincidence as far as Obama was concerned.

Allison Davis subsequently left his law firm in order to go into the real estate development business full-time. He became a 51% owner of DV Urban Realty Partners along with Robert Vanecko who owned the remaining 49% of the firm. Vanecko is Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew. Two of Allison Davis’ sons, Jared and Cullen, work with their father in the real estate business.

Davis and his associates have received more than $100 million in taxpayer subsidies to build and rehab apartments and houses in Chicago. They have also been paid over $4 million dollars in development fees. As Tim Novak, a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, noted in a November 7, 2007 article for his paper, “Davis has gotten deal after deal from the mayor, helping to make him one of the Chicago’s top developers.”

In 1993, the same year he was hired by Davis’ law firm, Obama began serving on the board of Woods Fund, a Chicago charity foundation. After Allison Davis left his law firm, he went to the foundation for money and Obama voted to invest $1 million of the organization’s assets in a Davis real estate partnership.

Ties such as those described above run rampant in the career of Barack Obama from 1993 to the present. Obama has a long history of working with Allison Davis, Tony Rezko, Mayor Daley and Illinois’ Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich, to obtain government funding for housing development in Chicago. Davis, Rezko, Daley and others have, in return, help fund Obama’s rise to political prominence. It has been classic, Chicago machine politics with the requirement that people “pay to play.”

Without the funding from political Godfathers like Tony Rezko, Obama’s career in politics would never have gotten off the ground. But without the aid of corrupt government officials, slumlords like Tony Rezko would never have made the money to contribute to politicians such Obama, Daley and Blagojevich in the first place.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s Federal Indictment of Tony Rezko

The U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Patrick Fitzgerald, has made quite a name for himself in recent years. He has successfully prosecuted Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, and former Illinois Republican governor, George Ryan, within the past year. Fitzgerald also convicted several former members of Mayor Daley’s administration for “pervasive fraud” in city hiring practices. This spring he successfully concluded a trial against Tony Rezko, convicting him on corruption charges.

In Fitzgerald’s indictment of Rezko, he lists eight persons that he refers to as “Co-Schemers.” Virtually all of these people have been major contributors to the political campaigns of Barack Obama, Rod Blagojevich and Richard Daley.

Additionally, Fitzgerald’s indictment makes specific references to Blagojevich and Obama. The governor is referred to as “Public Official A” and the senator is called a “political candidate.”

The fact that Obama, Blagojevich and Daley are all mixed up together in the Rezko affair is not surprising. Favored politicians of both parties in Illinois are often joined at the hip when it comes to political fundraising. For example, a recent analysis done by the Chicago Tribune revealed that Obama has taken in more than $1.5 million dollars for his various campaigns from over seven hundred people who have also contributed to Mayor Daley’s candidacies.

Fitzgerald’s case against Rezko involved two state regulatory boards. One controls the Teachers Pension System (TPS) and the other, the Health Facilities Planning Board, reviews all proposals for construction projects that involve medical facilities in Illinois.

After Rod Blagojevich was elected governor of Illinois, the “Co-Schemers” stacked the TPS board so that favored investment firms were allowed to invest parts of the retirement fund’s $30 billion in assets. The “Co-Schemers” then demanded kick-backs and worked to funnel money into the political organizations of Blagojevich and Obama.

Next the “Co-Schemers” worked to reduce the Health Facilities Planning Board from fifteen members to nine members. Subsequently, they proceeded to stack the board with a bloc of five members that would guarantee them a majority. Three doctors, Imad Amanaseer, Michel Malek and Fortunee Massuda, were named new members in order to secure the necessary majority votes. All three became large contributors to the various campaigns of Barack Obama from this point forward.

On April 21, 2004 the Health Facilities Planning Board approved the building of a new hospital in Crystal Lake, Illinois even though state analysts had said the new facility was not needed. The builder of the hospital, Jacob Kiferbaum, was to have paid bribes to those who made the construction of the hospital possible. The hospital was never built because Fitzgerald’s investigators blew the case wide open and even secured a guilty plea from Kiferbaum who is now cooperating with the Feds. Throughout much of this time, Barack Obama was the chairman of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services and was copied in on e-mails and other correspondence regarding these matters.

The Trial of Tony Rezko

At the recently concluded trial of Tony Rezko, the star witness for the prosecution was a Chicago business man named Stuart Levine. This individual sat on the board that controls the TPS and the Health Facilities Planning Board. He testified that Tom Rosenberg’s investment firm, Capri Capital Advisors, was to have received approval to invest a total of $320 million of TPS assets in exchange for a $500,000 kickback to Levine and $1.5 million in political contributions to Governor Blagojevich. Rosenberg was also a producer of Hollywood films and was so close to Allison Davis on a personal level that he had Davis make a cameo appearance in one of his movies.

Obama also has strong ties to investment companies that seek to do business with the state of Illinois. Once the Democrats took over the state legislature in 2003, Obama was assigned to an Illinois senate committee that began looking into public retirement plan matters. Four firms with close relationships with Obama were subsequently awarded hundreds of millions of new dollars to invest on behalf of these plans. Executives of these firms helped raise $300,000 for Obama’s U.S. senate seat race in 2004 and even more money for his presidential campaign.

The Daley-Obama Machine

Mayor Richard Daley’s office hired Michelle Obama as an assistant to his chief of staff, Valerie Jarrett, in 1991. Daley later appointed Jarrett chairperson of the Office of Planning and Development where Michelle became her assistant.

Today Jarrett is the CEO at Habitat, a real estate development and management firm. It manages the housing program for the Chicago Housing Authority. Jarrett was also a member of Obama’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee in 2004 along with Tony Rezko, Rita Rezko and Allison Davis. Jarrett currently serves as an advisor to Obama’s presidential campaign.

According to today’s edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, “Barack Obama’s name could have been invoked more at the corruption trial of his former fund-raiser Tony Rezko.”  But prosecutors instead chose to focus on the first target of Fitzgerald’s probe: convicted slumlord and notorious Chicago political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the man who helped Obama purchase his Kenwood mansion in 2005. 

The prosecutors’ decision to refrain from discussing Obama’s deep imbrication in the Rezko scandal during the trial does not exonerate the Senator from Illinois, however.  I quote US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who issued the following admonition in the wake of Rezko’s conviction:

 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.             

 Fitzgerald and the prosecutors are particularly concerned with Obama’s acceptance of “straw” campaign contributions others made on Rezko’s behalf.  I quote the Sun-Times:

The Illinois senator was the recipient of “straw” campaign contributions made by others on behalf of Rezko — money that Obama has since given to charities.            

The documents indicate that prosecutors considered offering witnesses to explore why Rezko used others to contribute to Obama and also to Blagojevich, and U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve ruled that they could. But they did not end up offering any such testimony during the trial.

“Witnesses will testify that Rezko was a long-standing supporter and fund-raiser of Barack Obama,” prosecutors wrote. 

 One contribution with which prosecutors are concerned is the donation Joseph Aramanda, an associate of Rezko who is also known as “Individual D” in the superseding indictment Fitzgerald’s prosecutors filed, submitted to Obama in 2004.  A Chicago Sun-Times article dated 24 December 2007 summarizes the situation quite succinctly:  

Aramanda is identified as “Individual D” in Rezko’s indictment. And when Levine pleaded guilty in October, Aramanda again was listed as “Individual D.”            

Aramanda was identified by the Sun-Times as “Individual D,” who allegedly received a $250,000 kickback tied to a scheme to steer lucrative state pension deals to firms and consultants that donated to Blagojevich. Aramanda is not specifically named or charged with criminal wrongdoing in the court papers. He did not return a call seeking comment Saturday. 

 Aramanda’s son, by the way, was rewarded an internship in Obama’s Senate office in Washington, DC, at the behest of Antoin “Tony” Rezko.  Why do the words quid pro quo come to mind unbidden?  

 Because the evidence the prosecutors presented regarding Obama’s involvement with Rezko and Aramanda is so compelling, Judge St. Eve ruled it was appropriate for prosecutors to invoke the name of Barack Obama during the Rezko trial.  All this prompts a few questions:

• Do the prosecutors involved in Operation Board Games intend to broach other aspects of Obama’s deep and problematic entanglements with Antoin “Tony” Rezko?  
• Will this scandal resurface after the Democratic Convention in August?
• Is Rezko the first of many corrupt Chicago machine dominoes to fall?
• Are Presidential candidates usually embroiled in fraudulent schemes involving investment firms, the Illinois Teachers’ Pension Fund and questionable campaign contributions?

No Quarter promises to alert readers to any and all developments involing Patrick Fitzgerald, Barack Obama and the unscrupulous Antoin “Tony” Rezko. 

No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

•  The Illinois Combine II: The DNC Moves Into Chicago
•  Obama’s Gangster Mentality
•  Prescience: “Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?”
• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

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:

• The Epistolary Rezko
• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

The content of Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s letter to Judge St. Eve dated 9 JUN 2008 is so trite it is almost entertaining. The trope of the upwardly mobile immigrant is invoked in order to justify all the fraud and corruption in which he and other Chicago politicians and operatives were engaged. “I am simply an honest, humble immigrant who believes in the American dream[,]” he writes. He also discusses God, family and nation in order to elicit a sympathetic response from his intended reader(s). More egregious, however, is his description of his mother’s grave in a Catholic cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, the Chicago suburb in which he too will eventually rest. While this wedding of the two foundational fictions of the life course and of the American dream may yield a conventional autobiographical narrative fit for the shelves of a supermarket, it reads as a tacit admission of guilt. Indeed, this letter is nothing more than a plaintive cry for a reduced sentence.

But something else lurks in the spaces separating the letters printed on the pages of Rezko’s epistle to Judge St. Eve. This something is Barack Obama, candidate for President of the United States. I quote:

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongdoing that involved the Governor or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes. I will take what comes my way, but I will never hurt innocent people. I am not Levine, Loren, Mahru , or Winter.”

Once again the focus of a Fitzgerald investigation refers to the prosecutors as “overzealous.” Is Rezko a member of the Bush administration? Is the convicted political fixer and slumlord of tenements in inner city Chicago the new Scooter Libby? And why does Rezko mention Levine, Loren, Mahru and Winter? Does he fear they will discuss his relationship with Barack Obama? Is he attempting to neutralize their recollection of events?

Yes, he is. Read these conflicting accounts recorded in a Chicago Magazine article published in November 2007:

Daniel Mahru was Rezko’s partner in Rezmar for 16 years until the two men had, according to Mahru, “a difference of opinion” in 2005. He says they developed more than $600 million in properties, not counting a billion-dollar deal for 62 acres in the South Loop that has been stalled for years. By Mahru’s account, Rezko initially showed little interest in the trappings of power. “Back in the eighties, Tony had an opportunity to go to the White House with Muhammad Ali,” Mahru says. (The occasion was a dinner during the December 1987 summit of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader; Ali had been invited as a guest.) “I commented to Tony, ‘Wow, that is something I would love to do, see history in the making!’ He said, ‘Dan, that doesn’t make me any money. I’m not interested.’

“That changed. I think everything went to his head. After the late nineties he was more interested in being around powerful people. He went to a Christmas party at the Bush White House.” Rezko cochaired a major fundraiser for President Bush’s campaign in 2003.

Rezko declined to comment about Mahru, likening their breakup to a divorce. “You would hear my story; you would hear his story. I wish him no harm.”

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.

This is the time period during which Mahru alleges Rezko became obsessed with power. These are also the years during which Obama and Rezko were involved with Illinois’s pensions funds. What does Mahru know? And why does Rezko feel obliged to proleptically invalidate any information Mahru may or may not have imparted to Fitzgerald’s prosecutors in his letter to Judge St. Eve? According to Rezko, Mahru will “fabricate” stories in order to “harm” the “innocent.” But Mahru says Rezko is the one who “is more interested in being around powerful people.” Will we believe “the immigrant” who suddenly loves, indeed clings to, his “family, nation and God,” or will we trust the business partner who knew Rezko crossed the line when he helped Obama purchase a mansion in 2005?

The epistolary Rezko: it is all so much debased fiction, but it provides an interesting interpretation of the unassailable facts.

No Quarter dossier on Obama and Rezko:

• The Tipping Point?
• Barack, The Truth Ain’t A Smear
• Patrick Fitzgerald Issues Obama A Warning
• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

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.

This is your last chance, superdelegates.

Good job, Obamacrats. Do you seriously believe it is in the best interest of my Party to nominate someone who has had a professional, financial, personal and political relationship with a convicted slumlord and political fixer since at least 1991? Are we now the Party of corruption?

I quote the Chicago Tribune:

Rezko’s guilty verdict on 16 of 24 corruption counts could have broad repercussions for Blagojevich, who made Rezko a central player in his kitchen cabinet. It could also prove a political liability for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who once counted Rezko as a friend and fundraiser, as the likely Democratic presidential nominee heads into the general election campaign against Republican John McCain.

This will complicate Obama’s bid for the Presidency, for Rezko intends to appeal the verdict. [UPDATE: Moreover, the Republicans intend to highlight Obama's connections to Rezko during the campaign. I do not blame them, for as we discussed again and again at No Quarter, this is an issue of Obama's judgment and experience.

We warned you, but you ignored us. And no, I will not try to defend this, as Obama is not this registered Democrat's candidate. I am a person of integrity before I am a machine Democrat. I also do not rely on the Democratic Party's money in order to write online. Unlike other bloggers who will now mindlessly defend Barack Obama, I EARN MY MONEY ELSEWHERE.]

Thank you again, Obamacrats. I guess a McCain Presidency is the change in which all of us can believe.

The Chicago Tribune story also contains a window that outlines Obama’s relationship with Rezko since 1991. I recommend everyone view it. I also recommend consulting the documents the Chicago Tribune has compiled on the questionable property deal involving Rezko, Obama and the Kenwood mansion Obama and Rezko jointly purchased in 2005.

Also review No Quarter’s extensive dossier on Antoin “Tony” Rezko and Barack Obama.

We still have a chance to nominate the correct nominee, superdelegates. Will we choose a real President, or will we choose Rezko’s President?

No Quarter dossier on Barack Obama and Antoin “Tony” Rezko:

• What Hypocrite Obama Should Have Discussion during His Wesleyan Commencement Address
• Barack Obama’s Candidacy as a Take on The Picture of Dorian Gray
• A Majority of One: On Losing the Democratic Base
• Ok, So Tell Us What IS Allowed
• Two Lone Voices Speak for Millions of Us
• What’ll Be Left of the Democratic Party
• It Ain’t Over: Obama MAY Have to Pay the Piper After All
• Obama to Donate Contribution from Rezko’s Iraqi Friend
• Be My Friend, Godfather
• Jaws V, Starring Barack Obama
• The Chicago Three: Obama, Ayers & Rezko
• Charlie Gibson, Will You Ask Barack about Nadhmi Auchi?
• Saddam Hussein, Barack Hussein Obama’s Hidden Real Estate Partner?
• Barack “I-Didn’t-Know” Obama
• Those Who Haunt Him
• Hillary’s Campaign Comes out Swinging
• “Nobie and Obama”
• Authorization to Use Misleading Falsehoods
• What We’ve Noticed about the Speech
• This Is for Main Street (And for the Forgotten People Barack Obama Doesn’t Know)
• Michelle Obama: “Give Us Something Here”
• Rezko Muckrakers Alert!
• The Forgotten People
• Irrefutable Proof That Obama’s Own District Was Home to 11 Rezko Foreclosed Properties
• Speak the Truth, Fallout Be Damned
• The Rezko Saga: Two Videos
• Get Your Daily Rezko Dose Here
• The Media’s Panderbears, Part I
• Sunday Scoops: Rezko-gate and Adviser-gate
• Obama’s Prime-Slime Advisors
• Good Morning, Barack! (Rezko Got Jobs for Your Staffers? Do Tell.)
• Today’s Rezko Trial Scoops (And Prosecutors on $20K Kickback to Obama)
• ABC News: Rezko $50 Million in Debt
• 312.321.2417
• (Pants on Fire!) Lynn Sweet: Obama and His Taking Questions on Rezko
• Rezko Trial: Obama May Be Witness
• Obama’s Judgment on the Eve of Judgment Day
• Truthtelling from Lanny Davis (What about “Iron My Shirt?”)
• Experience, and Experiences (of the Rezko Sort)
• No He Can’t Because Yes They Will
• More Questions on Rezko
• “Obama Bagman” in Jail
• Democratic Death Wish
• How to Buy A Mansion You Can’t Afford
• Will Rezko Blow Up Obama?
• It is “Possible” Obama Was Aware of Rezko’s Financial and Legal Woes
• 20-Year Associate of Obama Arrested
• Look before You Leap: Obama’s Mobbed-Up Allies
• Politics Is A Blood Sport
• BREAKING: ABC News Reports $100,000 from Rezko That Obama Hasn’t Returned
• CNN on Rezko and Obama: This Is Obama’s “Slumwater”
• FACT CHECK: Obama, His Contributor Rezko, The Slum Landlord Business
• A Dope with Hope?
• Obama/Rezko: It Comes down to Judgment
• Didn’t Obama Watch The Firm
• Steve Clemons on Tonight’s Debate
• Patrick Fitzgerald Ties Obama to Rezko Indictments
• All in for Hillary
• Obama, His Lobbyists and His Cronies

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

(Original) Lannie Davis hits a home run — on everything from the double standard (Obama photo vs. the Obama-ite who wore a misogynistic “Iron My Shirt” t-shirt) to Obama’s, um, flexible words on the war in Iraq (”I don’t know” response to how he would have voted on the war had he been in the U.S. Senate, instead of speechifying in the safe liberal environs of Chicago’s university neighborhood). [Thanks, Jim, for the link.]

Here are some more great stories today:

• “Feds hit Rezko’s ties to gov’s office — TRIAL STRATEGY | Campaign director will be first witness,” from the Chicago Sun-Times. [Talk about luck for Sen. Obama! The federal prosecutors' opening statements won't take place until March 6. How convenient, since Obama's name is sure to emerge in the trial, along with his many associations with Tony Rezko. The prosecutorial team is led by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.]

• “Obama jokes: Dime a dozen at $11 m GOP dinner,” from the Baltimore Sun’s Swampland blog. [A sample: "What a great crowd! At least, that's what Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told me to say.," said Missouri governor Matt Blunt.]

  The money flowed too: “The Republican Governors Association said it set a new record with last night’s fundraising dinner at the National Building Museum: $10.6 million collected from 1,400 people.”

MORE:

• “Got Scrutiny?” by Taylor Marsh

• Sean Wilentz’s outstanding piece in The New Republic, from which Taylor quotes.

Race Man
by Sean Wilentz
How Barack Obama played the race card and blamed Hillary Clinton.

After several weeks of swooning, news reports are finally being filed about the gap between Senator Barack Obama’s promises of a pure, soul-cleansing “new” politics and the calculated, deeply dishonest conduct of his actually-existing campaign. But it remains to be seen whether the latest ploy by the Obama camp–over allegations about the circulation of a photograph of Obama in ceremonial Somali dress–will be exposed by the press as the manipulative illusion that it is. … ..

… .. To a large degree, the campaign’s strategists turned the primary and caucus race to their advantage when they deliberately, falsely, and successfully portrayed Clinton and her campaign as unscrupulous race-baiters–a campaign-within-the-campaign in which the worked-up flap over the Somali costume photograph is but the latest episode. While promoting Obama as a “post-racial” figure, his campaign has purposefully polluted the contest with a new strain of what historically has been the most toxic poison in American politics.

More than any other maneuver, this one has brought Clinton into disrepute with important portions of the Democratic Party. A review of what actually happened shows that the charges that the Clintons played the “race card” were not simply false; they were deliberately manufactured by the Obama camp and trumpeted by a credulous and/or compliant press corps in order to strip away her once formidable majority among black voters and to outrage affluent, college-educated white liberals as well as college students. … ..

Read all.

(original) “Experience”: Via Taylor Marsh, Obama questioning his own experience to run for president when asked in 2004:

Experiences (he’s had a few): The Chicago Tribune reports that “Obama’s name likely to come up at Rezko trial” (prosecuted by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald):

The name of Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama is likely to brush up against the impending federal corruption trial of Antoin “Tony” Rezko as the result of a judge’s ruling Monday.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy St. Eve, who is presiding over Rezko’s trial, told prosecutors they could introduce evidence to support allegations that Rezko used straw men to make political contributions on his behalf.

Prosecutors have alleged that the money came from fees Rezko illegally siphoned from a state pension board. [Someone I know is researching the "coincidence" that during the three-plus months that Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama was appointed to the senate's pension committee -- just three months -- the senate prevented the consolidation of state pensions, which would have adversely affected Rezko's pensions schemes, that bilked millions from the state pensions. The bald facts are there, but my friend is still digging for details. - SusanUnPC]

There are new developments regarding the Obamas’ home purchase, a sweetheart of a deal, that directly involved Tony Rezko, who was already under intense federal investigation, and Rezko’s wife. As you’ll see below, several newspapers are reporting Tony Rezko tried to get a state appointment for the real estate agent who did the home sale/purchase, and that an Iraqi/British billionaire involved with Rezko “lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama’s fundraiser just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender.” (By the way, City Nell’s original article on February 4 here at NoQuarter — “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford” — broke new ground on the story, and has been quoted widely across the ‘net.)

“Obama as a State Senator: Does He ‘Deserve a Promotion?’,” the companion article to last night’s ABC Nightline provides some background:

Obama has been repeatedly attacked by the Clinton campaign for his ties to indicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko.

In 2005, Obama purchased a house for $300,000 less than its owners were asking, and Rezko simultaneously bought the adjacent lot from the same seller at full price ($625,000). Obama, who paid $1,650,000 for the home, has said that the price had been lowered because the home had been on the market for some time and that the price on the adjacent property did not move because there was a separate offer on the vacant lot for full price.

While Obama admitted involving Rezko in the purchase was a “bone-headed” mistake because Rezko was under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office at the time, Obama has said that he “was confident that everything was handled ethically and above board.”

McKinney said Rezko could come back to haunt Obama.

“It’s problematic now because Obama day after day is now having to answer Rezko questions, now under indictment, facing trial during this election cycle,” McKinney said, adding that any revelations during the trial would be “at best politically awkward for the senator.”

Some new revelations appear to indicate Obama had involved Rezko at an earlier stage of his home buying than was previously known. The Obama campaign revealed last week to Bloomberg News that while Rezko was under federal investigation, Obama and Rezko toured the home and property together before submitting bids to the seller.

While McKinney considered Obama as a “pretty clean legislator” not unduly influenced by lobbyists, the campaign’s handling of the Rezko matter makes him take a second glance. Identifying and returning or donating all the contributions associated with Rezko has proved a lengthy process, and when questioned by reporters in January, the campaign pointed to Obama’s on-the-record statements that he didn’t recall specific conversations with Rezko and was “not clear” how Rezko became involved in the purchase of the property.

“I don’t understand why there wasn’t clarity initially on those kinds of questions,” …

From the Times UK:

Mansion ‘mistake’ piles the pressure on Barack Obama

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.

In a sworn statement a year later, Mrs Rezko said she got by on a salary of $37,000 and had $35,000 assets. Mr Rezko told a court he had “no income, negative cash flow, no liquid assets, no unencumbered assets [and] is significantly in arrears on many of his obligations.” …

READ ALL of the three-page article.

Then there was Rezko’s intervention for the real estate agent who handled the Obamas’ home purchase:

Rezko sought post for Obama’s home-seller

CHICAGO (UPI) — Indicted Illinois fundraiser Tony Rezko once sought a state post for the agent who sold a home to presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, court records showed.

Court papers filed in Rezko’s corruption case indicated he asked Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration to appoint Donna Schwan Jackson, a real estate agent, to the Illinois Council on Developmental Disabilities, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Friday.

Jackson is included in a list of people Rezko and others tried to get appointed to state boards and commissions, Blagojevich administration records obtained by federal prosecutors showed. Jackson didn’t get the appointment. …

City Nell — in “How to Buy a Mansion You Can’t Afford” — also points out how Michelle Obama used her position on a preservation board to get the stately old home that the Obamas purchased under those iffy circumstances.

Questions? I have a few. More than a few.