PrairiePundit

Washington Post: A federal grand jury charged former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich on Thursday with racketeering, extortion and fraud, opening a new chapter in the prosecution of the voluble Democrat who could spend years behind bars if convicted. The 75-page indictment, which also charged Blagojevich's brother and several close aides, describes a political operation designed from the beginning of his first term to strengthen the governor's hold on power and make money that Blagojevich would receive after he left office. Blagojevich, who was impeached and removed from office after his Dec. 9 arrest, was charged with 16 counts, including 11 counts of wire fraud, three counts of extortion and one count of lying to federal investigators. He remains free on bond. No court hearing has been scheduled. The indictment charges that Blagojevich gave two friends, convicted developer Antoin Rezko and indicted businessman Christopher Kelly, significant authority over state boards ...

Chicago Sun-Times: Tony Rezko is out of "the hole." The convicted businessman -- poised to become a crucial witness in the massive corruption case against ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- was quietly moved out of a downtown jail and into another facility in mid-December. Authorities seeking Rezko's cooperation pushed for the move after Rezko complained about being held in the tough confines of solitary imprisonment, known as "the hole," even as he was providing information to prosecutors. Records show Rezko was released Dec. 16 from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago. Kim Widup, the U.S. marshal in Chicago, confirmed that Rezko was relocated. "We have moved him into another institution," Widup said. ... His new cell is in an undisclosed location for security reasons I guess. Rezko had been pushing for the move pretty hard. In late November Rezko's lawyer pushed for sentencing which would have probably meant the end of his c...

Nina Burleigh: Pamela Davis, blond suburban mother of three, was told that her bra would be the best place to wear the wire that kick-started a long investigation into Chicago graft and that ultimately caught the governor of Illinois trying to sell Barack Obama’s Senate seat. Davis is the president and C.E.O. of Edward Hospital, in Naperville, Illinois. She is proud of the fact that on her twenty-year watch the hospital has grown from a hundred-and-sixty-two-bed community facility to a four-hundred-and-twenty-seven-bed regional medical center that leads the county in babies delivered. Back in 2003, Davis was trying to get approval for a new medical office building from the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board. A night or two before a hearing was to be held, Davis recalled, something strange happened. A business acquaintance of hers, Nicholas Hurtgen, then a managing director of the Chicago office of Bear Stearns, called her at home and told her that unless she agreed to use a cert...

Washington Post: A footnote to the 76-page criminal complaint and affidavit charging Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) with soliciting bribes confirms what has long been rumored -- that a former longtime friend and fundraiser for President-elect Barack Obama is talking to federal prosecutors in hopes of a reduced sentence. Antoin "Tony" Rezko's offer to provide authorities with evidence of others' wrongdoing is "not complete," and prosecutors are working to corroborate the claims he has made so far, the footnote said. Rezko, a 53-year-old developer, was convicted in June of 16 criminal counts, including fraud, money laundering and abetting bribery. He is in custody awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors depicted Rezko at trial as a fixer for Blagojevich and the man to see to secure a high-level appointment with the governor's administration. Rezko had been a longtime fundraiser for Blagojevich and other Illinois politicians, including Obama. ... The ongo...

Chicago Tribune: Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges. Click here for the latest updates from the Breaking News Center . A three-year federal corruption investigation of pay-to-play politics in Gov. Rod Blagojevich 's administration has expanded to include his impending selection of a new U.S. senator to succeed President-elect Barack Obama, the Tribune has learned. Federal authorities got approval from a judge before the November general election to secretly record the governor, sources told the Tribune, and among their concerns was whether the selection process might be tainted. That possibility has become a focus in an intensifying investigation that has included recordings of the governor and the cooperation of one of his closest friends. ... There was evidence that Blogojevich decisions had a price in the Tony Rezko trial. So, it would not be surprising if appointments like the one to replace Obama in the ...

Chicago Sun-Times: A federal judge has set a Jan. 6 sentencing date for political fund-raiser Tony Rezko. The rushed sentencing date is an about-face from what lawyers in the case requested in October — to put off sentencing as Rezko and prosecutors engaged in ongoing discussions. Rezko had met repeatedly with prosecutors since the summer and had been providing information to them. But this morning Rezko’s lawyer Joseph Duffy said: “He wants to move on with his life. No one likes living at the MCC.” ... It looks like Tony may be moving into his new space before Obama moves to his. He could come to appreciate the privacy he has at the MCC.

Chicago Tribune: Antoin "Tony" Rezko 's frustration over months in solitary confinement came to a boil this week as his attorneys filed a motion for the judge in his corruption case to immediately set a sentencing date for the convicted political fundraiser. Sentencing had been put off in early October while Rezko's lawyers and prosecutors discussed his potential cooperation in the federal investigation into possible pay-to-play schemes in the administration of Gov. Rod Blagojevich . Despite his possible willingness to aid the government, Rezko has remained in isolation at Chicago's Metropolitan Correctional Center downtown, locked in a cell 23 hours a day. "Mr. Rezko has remained in solitary confinement at the MCC since June 4, 2008, the day of the jury's verdict, and can no longer agree to delay sentencing," the new motion states, asking U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve to set the earliest possible date to hand down Rezko's punishment. The moti...

Chicago Sun-Times: A federal judge has denied Tony Rezko’s plea for an acquittal or new trial, giving the convicted businessman even more incentive to cooperate with the feds. In a 34-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve didn’t buy the argument that Rezko’s conviction relied solely on the testimony of a shaky witness: Stuart Levine. ... “The government introduced substantially more evidence than just the testimony of Stuart Levine to prove defendant Rezko’s criminal conduct, including extensive corroborating wire taps,” St. Eve wrote. “When viewing all of the evidence in the light most favorable to the government, the government proved defendant’s knowledge and intent beyond a reasonable doubt. A new trial is not required in the interest of justice.” ... I think this was just an element of the appeals process that will continue with further hearings in January. It does put more pressure on him to cooperate with the government, which he has apparently been doing.

Washington Times: A former Illinois real estate specialist says FBI agents have questioned him about a Chicago property that had been bought by convicted felon Tony Rezko 's wife and later sold to the couple's next-door neighbor, Sen. Barack Obama . The real estate specialist, Kenneth J. Conner , said bank officials replaced an appraisal review he prepared on the property and FBI agents were investigating in late 2007 whether the Rezko-Obama deal was proper. “Agents and I talked about payoff, bribe, kickback for a long time, though it took them only a short number of minutes of talking with me while looking at the appraisal to acknowledge what they already seemed to know: The Rezko lot was grossly overvalued,” Mr. Conner told The Washington Times Monday. “Rezko paid the asking price on the same day Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for his adjacent mansion,” he said. “This begs the question of payoff, bribe, kickback.” In a wrongful-te...

Washington Times: 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 complaint also said that the grand jury wanted information on Mrs. Rezko's checking account and loan file and that the Federal Deposit Insurance ...

Charles Krauthammer: Convicted felon Tony Rezko. Unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers. And the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It is hard to think of any presidential candidate before Barack Obama sporting associations with three more execrable characters. Yet let the McCain campaign raise the issue, and the mainstream media begin fulminating about dirty campaigning tinged with racism and McCarthyite guilt by association. But associations are important. They provide a significant insight into character. They are particularly relevant in relation to a potential president as new, unknown, opaque and self-contained as Obama. With the economy overshadowing everything, it may be too late politically to be raising this issue. But that does not make it, as conventional wisdom holds, in any way illegitimate. McCain has only himself to blame for the bad timing. He should months ago have begun challenging Obama's associations, before the economic meltdown allowed the Obama campaign (and th...

The RNC ad focuses on three of Obama's allies in Chicago. This issue is not going away and is starting to get traction with the media.

Chicago Sun-Times: Federal investigators are zeroing in on whether Tony Rezko paid for all or part of a $90,000 rehab of Gov. Blagojevich's Northwest Side bungalow as the corruption probe of the state's first family accelerates. Since Rezko's felony conviction in June, the FBI has been investigating how the former top Blagojevich fund-raiser billed the governor and his wife for the work, who paid for it and whether Rezko ever arranged for cash to be passed in envelopes to the Blagojeviches, several sources familiar with the probe told the Chicago Sun-Times. A grand jury has issued at least one subpoena related to the project, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Agents also have inquired about the governor's wife's real estate dealings with Rezko and whether Rezko might have disguised payments for the work through sham billings at a large housing development he was building. The work was done in 2003 shortly after Rezko, a prominent devel...

It is being sponsored by the Judicial Confirmation Network which supports conservatives. It is certainly hitting on the part of Obama's past that he and most of the media would like to ignore.

Chicago 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 mor...

The Belmont Club looks at new revelations about the Iraqi who was loaning Rezko money at a time when Rezko was facilitating Obama's home purchase.

Michael Contentti: ... ... Mr. McCain needs to recast the party in his own image: anticorruption, pro-reform and fiscally and socially conservative. In recent weeks, Republican strategists have urged Mr. McCain to run against the Democrats who control Congress. But that isn’t enough for Mr. McCain. By picking Ms. Palin, he has signaled that he will campaign against the Republicans in Congress, too. In recent years, the Alaska Republican Party has become a metaphor for the national Republican Party. There are probably more caribou than pigs in Alaska, but its Congressional delegation is nonetheless addicted to pork. Flush with oil money, Alaska’s Republicans have built a welfare state that Washington’s “big government conservatives” must surely envy. Corruption is rampant. The party is out of touch. Senator Ted Stevens, who championed the infamous $400 million bridge, faces prison. On Tuesday, Alaska Republicans nominated him for another term. This is where Ms. Palin comes in. She camp...

Jack Tapper resurrects a Ted Koppel interview with Obama during the 2004 convention that includes this: ... Koppel asked, "But do you think that most the delegates on the floor really understand that President Kerry is not going to pursue a policy in Iraq that is essentially different from the one that George Bush is pursuing?" "Oh, I think that they understand that," Obama said. "I think that they recognize that we cannot afford to simply cut and run in Iraq , and that we are in a difficult situation right now. And I think that what they are hoping for is somebody who is going to bring a thoughtfulness and a base of experience to decision-making in the White House, which John Kerry possesses,.... (Emphasis added.) ... I have posted before a video where he made essentially the same statement. But it is interesting to see the big guys finally take notice. Obama's campaign has been built on skipping over his position on Iraq from 2004 until October of 20...

Chicago Sun-Times: No matter what help Barack Obama might get from Sen. Joseph Biden, his newly named vice presidential running mate won't give Obama much cover on the Tony Rezko front. Biden has described himself as a 30-year friend of a key figure in the Rezko trial who's pleaded guilty to a federal extortion charge in Chicago and is awaiting sentencing. When the Delaware senator began contemplating his own 2008 presidential run, he initially was helped by Chicago lawyer Joseph Cari Jr., who also served as Biden's Midwest field director in his failed 1988 bid for president. In 2005, Cari admitted to taking part in an $850,000 kickback scheme that prosecutors say was part of a larger political fund-raising operation for Gov. Blagojevich overseen by Rezko, who was convicted in June of wide-ranging corruption involving state deals. On the day Cari's name first surfaced in the federal probe of the state Teachers Retirement System, the former finance chairman for the De...

Tim Novak: For more than five weeks during the brutal winter of 1997, tenants shivered without heat in a government-subsidized apartment building on Chicago's South Side. It was just four years after the landlords -- Antoin "Tony'' Rezko and his partner Daniel Mahru -- had rehabbed the 31-unit building in Englewood with a loan from Chicago taxpayers. Rezko and Mahru couldn't find money to get the heat back on. But their company, Rezmar Corp., did come up with $1,000 to give to the political campaign fund of Barack Obama, the newly elected state senator whose district included the unheated building. Obama has been friends with Rezko for 17 years. Rezko has been a political patron to Obama and many others, helping to raise millions of dollars for them through his own contributions and by hosting fund-raisers in his home. Obama, who has worked as a lawyer and a legislator to improve living conditions for the poor, took campaign donations from Rezko even as Rezko'...