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发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Larry Bell
Barack Obama's and Rod Blagojevich's convicted felon fund-raiser, Tony Rezko
, has recently been sentenced to ten years minus 44 months for time served
in jail for wide-ranging corruption. Many people would like to ask him
about his connections to others who knew -- even participated in --
practices that helped to get him planted in the pokey. They are also
curious about why he was never subpoenaed to testify at trials of some of
those who were subsequently convicted of corrupt associations with him,
including former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.
It's very apparent that the FBI had compelling criminal evidence against
Blago long in advance. This included information provided by Stuart Levine,
a lawyer who had served on the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board
when then-State Senator Obama chaired the Illinois Health & Human Services
Committee. Levine had pled guilty in October 2006 to some of the same
corruption counts as Rezko, and was since cooperating with the feds to
escape imprisonment.
So why did U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald wait until December 9, 2008,
just about one month after the 2008 presidential election, to arrest Blago
following years of investigation? Right from the jump, let's recognize that
Fitz is broadly regarded as an upstanding, nonpartisan prosecutor. After
all, he was appointed by President G.W. Bush, and had previously lost no
time pursuing charges against Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide, Scooter
Libby, and President G.W. Bush's deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, for
their falsely alleged outing of former CIA agent Valerie Plame. Nor had he
dallied in going after former Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican,
in a scandal that had been had been swirling around long before Fitzgerald
was appointed.
In fact, these previous actions have actually increased suspicions in some
quarters that failure to expedite the Blago trial or subpoena Rezko may have
been influenced by pressures to keep a lid on embarrassing information that
could have impacted then-Senator Obama's election chances. Fitzgerald was
obviously aware of this sensitivity at the time of his press conference
statement on the day of Blago's arrest. He went out of his way to dispel
such speculation, declaring: "We make no allegations that Obama was aware of
any alleged scheming by Blagojevich." Yet the one person who could have
conclusively proved otherwise was never called to give testimony.
Some of the reporters present weren't so sure, questioning reasons for the
delay and what the DOJ knew regarding Obama's knowledge of charged criminal
activities leading up to the arrest. One asked:
"Sir, just to be crystal clear and to make clear, you're not aware of any
conversations then that took place with the governor and any member of
Barack Obama's transition team at all?"
Fitzgerald replied:
"And what I simply said is that you can read the complaint. I'm not going
to sit here with a 76-page complaint and parse through it. That's what we
are alleging. And I'm just -- I'm not going to start going down and saying,
did anyone talk to anyone."
A reporter went on to ask:
"...you talked about keeping your superiors informed as to what was going on
, I'm assuming that means the Attorney General. In the briefings that
President-elect Obama had over the past week with various government
departments, would it be possible for him to have been briefed on what was
going on here with regard to this investigation?"
The normally articulate Fitzgerald responded:
"I--I--I--I'm not--I'm not--I'm not the briefer, I'm not at those briefings.
But I would say this was very close in Washington, and on the need to know
basis. So, I'm--but I'm not going to--I'm not the briefer, so I'm not
going to represent what happens. But--I'll leave it at that."
So what might some of those possible politically uncomfortable Obama-Blago-
Rezko connections be? Actually, there are quite a few:
The FBI's Operation Board Games Cases
As chairman of the Illinois Health & Human Services Committee beginning in
January 2003, then-Senator Obama oversaw activities of the Health Facilities
Planning Board that granted permits required for proposed hospital
expansions. The Board had a long bipartisan history of corrupt practices
dating back to previous administrations of two Republican governors who
appointed members in exchange for kickbacks. Governor Blago was certainly
no exception. Tony Rezko was his deal-arranger, and also a big Blago and
Obama campaign contributor.
On June 7, 2004, politically connected Republican Stuart Levine abruptly
resigned from the Planning Board after learning that a hospital official was
wearing a federal wire during meetings to expose extortion attempts by him
and others for contributions to Blago on the eve of important hospital
expansion votes. A month later, he also resigned from a seat on the state
Teachers Retirement System board. It ultimately became obvious that the
Blagojevich administration was under federal criminal investigation. On May
9, 2005, Levine was indicted on corruption charges, and federal subpoenas
were issued to numerous administration sources, including Rezko.
In addition to campaign donations to Blago and Obama through the Planning
Board, Obama reportedly also received a $20,000 contribution from the
Teachers Retirement System pension fund.
Levine testified as the star witness in the Operation Board Games corruption
trial and pled guilty to avoid a life sentence. After jury selection began
, the questionnaire list of possible witnesses who might be called included
Barack Obama.
According to trial records, a June 2003 e-mail exchange shows that Obama was
one of eight officials who received names of new Board nominees in advance
from David Wilhelm, who had headed Blago's 2002 campaign for mayor. Many or
all of the successful new appointees were contributors to campaigns of then
-presidential hopeful Blagojevich and U.S. Senate hopeful Obama.
Levine testified that when he thanked Blago for reappointing him to a
Planning Board seat, the governor responded, "Never discuss any state board
with me; discuss them with either Tony Rezko or Chris Kelly." Kelly, along
with Rezko, was a top Blago fundraiser and close friend. Blago then added:
"But you stick with us and you'll do very well for yourself." Levine said
in testimony: "I took this to mean you have an opportunity to make a lot of
money."
There can be no doubt that Obama knew of Rezko's strong connection to Blago.
This is evident since, even as a state senator, he went through Rezko to
have his and Michelle's close friend Dr. Eric Whitaker appointed by Blago to
high positions at the Chicago Medical Center.
Real Estate Connections
A convicted felon and FBI informant John Thomas (formerly Bernard Barton),
wearing a wire, conducted surveillance of numerous visits of Blago, Obama,
and other public officials, including Chicago Housing Authority Chairman
Marty Nesbitt, to Rezko's near north side real estate office. Although the
Chicago Tribune was already aware of Thomas' role in May 2006, Fitzgerald
intervened to prevent the paper from releasing an article about this because
the editors were told that such a release would derail the investigation
and put people in danger.
No taped conversations involving Obama or Blago, if any actually exist, have
ever been released, and Thomas was never called to testify at Blago's trial.
An FBI agent presented a chart to the jury in Blago's trial on April 28,
2008, showing 257 calls from Rezko's phones to Blago's chief of staff, Lon
Monk, between March and May 2004 alone. They also had records of all calls
between Levine and Rezko from November 2002 to May 2004. Yet no records of
calls between Obama and Rezko, which they must have had as well, were
released at the trial.
Obama was still chairman of the Illinois Health & Human Services Committee
when lawmakers learned that the feds were investigating the Illinois Health
Facilities Planning Board schemes in the spring of 2004...a year before
Obama entered into a scandalous real estate deal with Rezko.
In 2005, Rezko and his wife, Rita, helped Barack and Michelle buy a $1.65-
million house in Chicago's Kingwood neighborhood that was beyond their
financial means. Rezko was under federal investigation for unrelated
corruption and bribery offenses at the time.
Rita purchased adjoining land for $625,000 that the owner of both properties
insisted on selling at the same time and later sold Obama one-sixth of her
adjacent vacant lot for $105,000 so that the Obamas could expand their yard.
Real estate specialist Kenneth J. Conner, a whistle-blower in the lot sale
transaction, told FBI agents who were investigating the deal in 2007 that
bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property,
reducing the house value and inflating the land value. After he was fired
from his position as a real estate and commercial credit analyst at the
Mutual Bank Corp. for reporting the Rezko-Obama property deal, Conner filed
a complaint in the Cook County Circuit Court. Conner and the FBI agents
later discussed what appeared to be a $300,000 Rezko "payoff, bribe, kick-
back."
Questions have also arisen concerning Illinois Senator Obama's relationship
with Rezko's close friend Aiham Alsammarae, a one-time Iraqi official who
mysteriously escaped from an Iraqi jail in 2006 following conviction of
corruption while serving as electricity minister. After he was arrested, a
proposed $50-million contract for an Illinois-based private security guard
enterprise called "Companion Security" turned up in Iraqi government court
documents in connection with his theft of $650 million from the Coalition
Provisional Authority established by the U.S and our allies between 2003 and
2006. Blago's office and Illinois Homeland Security had offered to provide
an Army depot in Savanna, Illinois as the training site.
In December 2009, World Net Daily reported that "Obama's senatorial office
engaged in six months of negotiations with a company controlled by Rezko to
lobby the U.S. government to push through a nixed contract to train Iraqi
security personnel at a site in Chicago." The contract was signed on April
18, 2005, one month before Alsammarae left his government post prior to his
arrest. His replacement later aborted the deal. Alsammarae had also
awarded another Rezko-controlled operation a $150-million contract to
construct a 250-megawatt electricity plant in Iraq.
After Rezko was arrested on various corruption charges, Alsammarae posted
more than one-third of Rezko's jail bond, putting up surety of his $1.9-
million Chicago home and two other properties totaling $2.7 million. He also
contributed to Obama, giving the maximum allowable presidential campaign
donation of $2,300 during 2008. Obama later decided to give that "tainted"
money to charity.
The bipartisan Illinois political mob (or "Illinois Combine") had put a
major fundraising operation in place by 2004 to run Blagojevich as their
2008 presidential candidate and were also heavily funding Obama's 2004 U.S.
Senate campaign. Blago's plans were obviously doomed in 2005, when Rezko
was added as a defendant in the pending federal Operation Board Games
corruption case.
From that time on, Barack Obama, strongly advocated by power-broker David
Axelrod, became their man for the job. But this time, Tony Rezko wasn't
there to help. Following a period of solitary confinement in a Chicago
lockup, he was reportedly transferred to a secret location somewhere in
Wisconsin, where he currently resides. The feds are still keeping him under
tight wraps. |
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