Chicago: Indicted political fundraiser for the Barack Obama campaign for president, Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has poured thousands of dollars into Barack Obama’s political campaigns, was arrested by federal agents Monday after his $2 million bail was revoked.According to Chicago Tribune:
Antoin "Tony" Rezko was roused at daybreak Monday from his Wilmette mansion by federal agents and ordered jailed by a judge who was disturbed that the politically connected businessman concealed a $3.5 million payment from overseas
Rezko is scheduled to begin trial next month. Obama has had a long time relationship with the businessman dating back to before the beginning of his political career in the early 1990s.
Barack Obama's ex boss is a Resko partner
Back in 1993 when Hillary was trying to make health insurance available to all Americans, Obama was working far away from government in a private firm with the name 'Allison S. Davis' on the door of the office.
Five years later, having left his Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland firm, Davis invested in Antoin "Tony'' Rezko's final government-subsidized, low-income housing project, state records show, in a deal handled by Davis' former law firm.
Davis and Rezko also went into business together, building upscale homes in the booming Kenwood neighborhood where Davis lives. The legal work on those deals was also done by Davis' former law firm, where Obama was working.
In October 2006, Rezko was indicted for extortion of businesses seeking to do business with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System Board and the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. In addition, he has been charged with wire fraud for staging false transactions of his pizza stores in order to secure $10 million in loans from GE Capital. The case is being prosecuted by Patrick Fitzgerald who prosecuted the case against Scooter Libby arising from the CIA leak scandal.
One case of extortion being brought against Obama's major fund raiser - Rezko is accused of demanding kickbacks from companies seeking state business under Gov. Blagojevich, the government alleges. In one case, Rezko allegedly tried to shake down an investment firm trying to land state pension work for $1.5 million in campaign contributions for the governor.Obama said yesterday on ABC's George Stephanopoulos Show that he will return all campaign funds that are connected to indicted Chicago developer Antoin Rezko. Obama has already returned $85,000 in Rezko-related contributions, but news reports have suggested recently that he has not returned all Rezko-related money. (Washington Post)
Yesterday George called Obama out on his questionable ethics-Your hometown paper, The Chicago Tribune, endorsed John McCain today. And had some kind words for you as well. But they went on to talk about your relationship with the real estate developer now indicted Tony Rezko. And they wrote this in their editorial. "Obama's assertion in network tv interviews last week that nobody had indications Rezko was engaging in wrongdoing strains credulity. Tribune stories linked Rezko to questionable fund-raising for Governor Rod Blagojevich in 2004. More than a year before the adjacent home and property purchases by the Obamas and the Rezkos. One more time, senator, you need to divulge all there is to know about that relationship." ...
As reported at the Lyndon LaRouche PAC-
In their January 24 coverage, CNN went on to show what has long been very public in the Chicago newspapers: that Rezko will soon be tried in two separate cases for extortion, money laundering and fraud; and that when Obama entered politics he got from Rezko his "first significant campaign contribution" and much more later: "tainted cash, some illegal, some just unsavory." CNN showed buildings that Rezko had developed with public funds solicited for him by Obama, where the tenants were left heatless while Rezko's donations continued to Obama. CNN mentioned the deal involving Rezko, in which Obama got his own expensive house, bought below the asking price; and how Obama has now donated, to charity, $86,000 of Rezko's contributions to him.
- Rezko's Web -
But behind the story, the federal case against Rezko is based on a detailed picture of the web of influence Rezko and his cohorts exerted over state agencies managing Illinois' financial assets. Barack Obama's political career was spun out in tandem with this Rezko apparatus, particularly through Rezko's partner and Obama's former boss, Allison S. Davis.
Start with U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's December 21, 2007 proffer in the Rezko case, with its charges of extortion and kickbacks taken in 2004 from the Illinois Teachers' Retirement System: $10,000 from this crime was channeled to a "political candidate" not named by the prosecutor. The fact that Rezko was on the finance committee of Obama's campaign for U.S. Senate, and the other facts in the case, make it clear that Barack Obama was the candidate in question.
Having raised half a million dollars for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, Tony Rezko got the Governor to appoint Rezko's own men to the Teachers' Retirement System, among them Stuart Levine, now indicted. And Rezko got Allison S. Davis appointed to the Illinois State Board of Investment, in control of billions in state retirement funds. Although Davis has not been charged with wrongdoing, the feds are reportedly pressing a probe of that agency. Davis is currently the president of that State Board.
Barack Obama was a Harvard Law student in 1990 when he interviewed for a job with Tony Rezko's slum-redevelopment firm. He didn't go directly into the Rezko company. But in 1993 Obama was hired by Allison S. Davis, whose law firm (Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland) represented Rezko's operations over the years, while Rezko raised cash for Obama's electoral campaigns. Davis became Rezko's personal financial partner in slum-redevelopment deals, which were then backed by State Senator Obama.
In one of those deals, after both Obama and Davis had left the law firm, Obama wrote letters to state and city housing officials supporting the proposed Cottage View Terrace apartments, a project run by Tony Rezko and Allison S. Davis. The deal cost taxpayers $14 million and the partners got $855,000 in fees. Completed in 2002, the project is now managed by Davis's son Cullen Davis.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported in 2007 that Cottage View Terrace was originally supposed to be managed by Davis's longtime business partner, William Moorehead, until Davis's son was substituted. Moorehead was sent to prison in 2007 for stealing more than $1 million from the public housing projects he managed, including two he co-owned with Allison S. Davis.
- The University of Chicago and the CBOT -
The Obama-Davis nexus also reflects the higher echelon Anglo-American financier oligarchy, that influences politics and culture through such power centers as the University of Chicago and the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT).
When Barack Obama ran for U.S. Congress against incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000, the Chicago Reader reported "whispers" that "Obama is being funded by a `Hyde Park mafia,' a cabal of University of Chicago types, and that there's an `Obama Project' masterminded by whites who want to push him up the political ladder."
Obama was then a state senator and University of Chicago law lecturer. The district was 65% black, but included the rarified Hyde Park neighborhood, home of Obama and of his employer, the University of Chicago. The black community was markedly unfavorable to Obama's challenge against Rush, a former Black Panther, who defeated Obama 61-30 in the Democratic primary.
The "Hyde Park Mafia" purportedly backing Obama's rise was centered in the University's campaign for school reform, along the lines of the Ford Foundation and British efforts to corral American slum residents into blind, self-defeating local politics.
Meanwhile, the media love affair and early coronation of Obama continues, as they did with Bush in 2000. They will report on nothing of signifigance regarding Barack Obama, nothing that should matter in a presidential race. They continue to play him up as if his great orator abilities are the only qualifications needed to be president. But alas, if he should get the party nomination, we can be sure the Republican party will rip him to shreds, and probably, rightly so.
