The trial of alleged influence peddler and Obama donor Tony Rezko starts Monday in Chicago. The New York Times has a piece for Sunday that ends up saying more about the NYT than it does about its ostensible subject:
Tony Rezko was obviously in trouble. He was a defendant in at least a dozen lawsuits, federal investigators in Chicago were poking around, and his name was in newspaper articles about corruption and fraud.
None of that stopped Mr. Rezko, a politically connected developer, and Senator Barack Obama from completing real estate deals a few years ago that resulted in the Obamas obtaining their dream house and the Rezkos buying an empty lot next door.
***
Mr. Obama, a Democrat, is not part of the case against Mr. Rezko…
But a review of court records, including new details of Mr. Rezko’s finances that emerged recently, show that the lot purchase occurred as he was being pursued by creditors seeking more than $10 million, deepening the mystery of why he would plunge into a real estate investment whose biggest beneficiary appears to have been Mr. Obama.
Is that really the mystery? I submit that the NYT likely would not have written about Rezko absent the Obama connection. At the very least, it would not have received a story of the length and prominence of this one. If the NYT is correct in stating that “Rezko was obviously in trouble,” isn’t the real mystery why Obama got into the real estate deal with Rezko?
What Obama knew about Rezko – and when he knew it — is sufficiently on camp Obama’s radar that they recently started disputing a December 2006 Washington Post story in which Obama said he “should have seen some red flags” in getting into the deal with Rezko.
The NYT buries those flags deep into its Rezko story:
For at least two years before the property purchases, news articles had raised questions about Mr. Rezko’s influence over state appointments and contracts. There had also been reports that the F.B.I. was investigating accusations of a shakedown scheme involving a state hospital board to which Mr. Rezko had suggested appointments.
Also, Chicago officials had announced that they were investigating whether a company partly owned by Mr. Rezko had won public contracts by posing as a minority business.
The “red flags” were there, regardless of whether Obama admitted to them to the Washington Post.ÂÂ
Nor is the infamous real estate deal the only subject on which the Rezko-Obama relationship is murky, as has been noted by the Chicago Sun-Times:
Obama was an attorney with a small Chicago law firm — Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland — that helped (Rezko’s) Rezmar get more than $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 of their 30 apartment buildings for the poor.
Just what legal work — and how much — Obama did on those deals is unknown. His campaign staff acknowledges he worked on some of them. But the Rezmar-related work amounted to just five hours over the six years it said Obama was affiliated with the law firm, the staff said in an e-mail in February.
Obama, however, was associated with the firm for more than nine years, his staff acknowledged Sunday in an e-mail response to questions submitted March 14 by the Sun-Times. They didn’t say what deals he worked on — or how much work he did.
While Obama went on to the Illinois Senate, Rezko’s buildings became slums, with “squalid living conditions, vacant apartments, lack of heat, squatters and drug dealers.” Eleven of Rezko’s buildings were in Obama’s state Senate district. The Sun-Times sought to find out what Obama knew — and when — regarding the housing deals. Obama’s staff left many questions unanswered or inadequately answered.  The paper did report that as a state Senator, Obama wrote letters to city and state officials in support of a $14 million project outside his district benefitting Rezko and Allison S. Davis, the lead partner at Obama’s former law firm.
The list of unanswered questions about the Obama-Rezko relationship continues. In Friday’s conference call, Clinton campaign flack Howard Wolfson laid out a series of them, which the Sun-Times generally confirms are unanswered, including: (1) how many fund-raisers Rezko threw for Obama; (2) how much money Rezko raised for him; and (3) whether Obama importuned Rezko to obtain jobs for his allies with Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.
The answers to those and related questions might shed some light on why Obama might have gotten into a real estate deal with someone under scrutiny by federal and state investigators as well as the media. But the New York Times — and the reporters drinking the Kool-Aid on the Obama press bus — cannot be bothered to ask.
For more details on the above, I recommend the Rezko trial primer by Rick Moran posted at PJM.
Update: In that primer, Moran notes that Obama has told the press that he had lunch with Rezko “a couple of times a year†and that he and his wife socialized with the Rezkos “2 to 4 times a year.â€Â However, the Sun-Times reported earlier this month that an FBI mole logged “frequent visits” to Rezko from Gov. Blagojevich and Obama over the course of two years. (h/t Astute Blogger.) So Obama’s description of the relationship may turn out to be Clintonesque.
You didn’t get the memo that you are never supposed to talk about Obama as if he is a typical Chicago Machine politician.
Also remember Obama is not to be referred to as “Liberal”. I’m not sure what his stand is on “Progressive”, but we MUST only talk about his actions and positions in the exact way he wishes them to be talked about. Any other way is racist you know.
Oh, and he has no middle name either.
Sounds like a peach of a guy to me.
Oh, this is just great Karl.
What exactly do you think this is going to accomplish for HOPE?
geoffb – I think we determined that Barry “fucking” O is appropriate.
Oh, and he has no middle name either.
My vote is still for Milhous.
RACIST!!!!!
I just figured I’d save your friendly local moonbat some trouble today. It’s probably still tired out from opening the trust-fund check yesterday…
I am so sick and tired of the corrupt democrats.
Whitewater, Vince Foster, Grand Jury lying and now this.
Too bad I am not natural born, I would have shown how things should be run
sashal. Please. Look what putting everybody into gulags got your lot. Our way is much more entertaining. And we can still send them to jail.
So the NYT does a Sunday piece questioning Obama’s involvement in a possible scandal, but they “buries” some of the damning facts…hmmm, must be the liberal media.
This is the problem with the whole liberal media BS. EVERYTHING is proof of the liberal media, even NYT articles that make dark intimations about liberal politicians. There’s always SOMETHING.
Could it maybe be that you’re the one reading in – you’re the one with the bias and you really can’t be objective in weighing possible bias? That maybe you (et al.) have developed a bit of a confrimation bias re: this, and all evidence is twisted around to fit your a priori opinions?
Nahhhh! (said like Steve Martin).
steve,
Had you bothered to read the last-linked article, you would have read the following from Lee Cowan, the NBC reporter assigned to the Obama campaign:
The press on the Obama bus are questioning their own bias. They just aren’t doing anything about it.
The link in the update is from June. In that article, the NYT raises the “mystery” of the Obama-Rezko deal. More than eight months later, the NYT is still puzzled over this “mystery.” God forbid they should do any investigative journalism to answer the questions Wolfson identified, or call Obama on the conflict I note in the update.
PS: My post is obviously not a broadbrush indictment of the press either. The Sun-Times is cited several times as an example of a paper actually doing journalism on the subject.
steve
It’s very very simple. Blood first, agenda second. Wonderful when the two coincide (ie Republican scandals, real or manufactured), a bit more problematic with Dems. Ignore, downplay or softpeddle unless the scandal is really really juicy.
So there’s nothing to the “guess that party” game?
Huh. Weird.
steve, when Saturday Night Live is spoofing it, it isn’t just a VRWC hobgoblin.
“I think we determined that Barry “fucking†O is appropriate.”
So that’s why John F’in Kerry is backing him, same name.
“My vote is still for Milhous.”
From what I’ve seen so far “Jennings” might be appropriate but Nixon wasn’t that messianic.
Guys, clearly the proper thing is to simply refer to him as “Barack H. Obama”, and draw the parallel with “Jesus H. Christ”.
That should satisfy the Obamaniacs in their quest for the Obamesiah.
http://tinyurl.com/3cmcvn
This link is to a Chicago Tribune columnist. This is a small portion of the article;”Also mentioned is Cellini’s plump handmaiden, also known as “Individual K” in the case’s court documents, none other than Big Bob Kjellander (pronounced $hell-ander). Kjellander, a friend of former White House adviser Karl Rove, remains a Republican National Committee bigshot who is planning the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in September. Until recently, Kjellander was the treasurer of the Republican National Committee, even though he’d received $4.5 million in finder’s fees for questionable bond deals with the Democratic Blagojevich administration.”
Of course there is much more to read.
This trial will be no boon to the Republicans and will, IMO, bite them in the ass.
@ #11 you’re the one with the bias and you really can’t be objective in weighing possible bias?
Busted by steve. I’m biased.
I want the USA to win.
That makes me what, provincial?
Damn! I knew the Republicans shouldn’t have nominated Rove to run for President!
What? Oh. Never mind.
Could it maybe be that you’re the one reading in – you’re the one with the bias and you really can’t be objective in weighing possible bias?
steve – You were asking yourself this question and it accidentally slipped into a comment, right?
[…] noted that Barack Obama has given some evasive answers to questions about alleged influence peddler and Obama donor Tony Rezko, it is worth noting that […]
Maybe Barack didn’t see those ‘red flags’ because he’s color blind – iow, it’s all green to him?
[…] would grant interviews to the network news anchors slavishly following him across the globe. He stonewalled the press on his relationship with convicted fraud, donor and real-estate partner Tony Rezko, […]