01-07-2008, 12:17 PM
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#11 (permalink)
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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
....Explain to me how this makes Rezko and Obama bedmates, please. It sounds like Obama being a good neighbor and following the law.
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So far, it only smells, and it is a sign of poor judgment. Is it "worse than whitewater"? "You know who", will make certain that an investigation attempts to find out, if Barak is elected POTUS.....
Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/14/us...in&oref=slogin
An Obama Patron and Friend Until an Indictment
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: June 14, 2007
.....Mr. Obama says he never did any favors for Mr. Rezko, who raised about $150,000 for his campaigns over the years and was once one of the most powerful men in Illinois. There is no sign that Mr. Obama, who declined to be interviewed for this article, did anything improper.
Mr. Obama has portrayed Mr. Rezko as a one-time fund-raiser whom he had occasionally seen socially. But interviews with more than a dozen political and business associates suggest that the two men were closer than the senator has indicated.
Mr. Obama turned to Mr. Rezko for help at several important junctures. Records show that when Mr. Obama needed cash in the waning days of his losing 2000 Congressional campaign, Mr. Rezko rounded up thousands of dollars from business contacts. In 2003, Mr. Rezko helped Mr. Obama expand his fund-raising for the Senate primary by being host of a dinner at his Mediterranean-style home for 150 people, including some whose names have since come up in the influence scandal.
And when Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, bought a house in 2005, Mr. Rezko stepped in again. Even though his finances were deteriorating, Mr. Rezko arranged for his wife to buy an adjacent lot, and she later sold the Obamas a 10-foot-wide strip of land that expanded their yard.
The land sale occurred after it had been reported that Mr. Rezko was under federal investigation. That awkward fact prompted Mr. Obama, who has cast himself as largely free from the normal influences of politics, to express regret over what he called his own bad judgment.
“Senator Obama is a very intelligent man, and everyone by then was very familiar with who Tony Rezko was,” said Cindi Canary, executive director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a nonpartisan research group. “So it was a little stunning that so late in the game Senator Obama would still have such close involvement with Rezko.”
While it is not clear what Mr. Rezko got from the relationship, he liked to display his alliances with politicians, including Mr. Obama.
In one instance, when he was running for the Senate, Mr. Obama stopped by to shake hands while Mr. Rezko, an immigrant from Syria, was entertaining Middle Eastern bankers considering an investment in one of his projects.
[Years earlier, as a state legislator, Mr. Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting efforts by Mr. Rezko and a partner to build apartments for the elderly with $14 million in government money, The Chicago Sun-Times reported in its June 13 editions. The developers received $855,000 in fees.]
Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, said the senator was one of several politicians who intervened because the project was important to local residents.
Mr. Burton also said in a statement that the senator “has held himself to a high standard and has had a career in public service fighting for the toughest possible ethical rules.”
“This is not a record changed by anything that has happened to Tony Rezko,” Mr. Burton said.
Mr. Rezko, 51, declined to comment. He has pleaded not guilty to the federal charges.
People who know Mr. Rezko describe him as warm and personable......
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