2008 Election Cover-Ups
Tony Rezko Sings To Feds In jail; higher-ups implicated
October 2008You'll Never Believe How High
... Oh sure you Will ...
by Andrew Peterson
For CoverUps.com
From the confines of the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Barack Obama's good friend and political insider Tony Rezko is singing a song, though the piano man he is not. What he is, rather, is a singular threat to a number of very powerful politicians in these last weeks of the 2008 campaign.
How powerful?
How does the top of the Democrat ticket for President sound? Powerful enough for you?
All of this is highly speculative. The very mention of the possibility that Senator Barack Obama might face jail time based on the testimony of Tony Rezko compels us to pile on the caveats: maybe / possibly / improbably / we could be wrong / don't bet the house / don't hold your breath ... all of these are appropriate phrases to use when discussing this story.
But since we brought it up ...
From the Hillbuz blog comes word that Chicago Sun Times columnist Michael Sneed reports this intriguing tidbit:
... Tony Rezko, who is now singing sweetly to the feds from his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, has been talking about his “dealings” with a Chicago bank, which has political connections.
The identity of this Chicago bank is thought to be Broadway Bank, which is owned by the politically heavy-hitting Giannoulias family, with whom Rezko and Barack Obama have extensive ties. That by itself proves nothing, but consider this: Obama's dealings with the Giannoulias clan date back to 1996 -- to his first state senate campaign. Among other things there are rumors that Obama was the recipient of a sweetheart deal on his first town home in the Windy City, which he could not have otherwise afforded. Who financed that house? Broadway Bank.
The quid pro quo came ten years later, when an abysmally unqualified Alexi Giannoulias, then 29, a man who had never cast a vote in any election up until then, decided to run for State Treasurer of Illinois. Amazingly -- or not -- Barack Obama endorsed him -- and put his own political machinery in the service of young Alexi, who won the election. Imagine the political and financial windfall the Giannoulias reaped.
Political circles in Chicago supposedly believe Rezko has or soon will flip on Alexi -- for starters. Standard prosecutorial practice in such matters is to work up the food chain. The links in this particular chain are Governor Rod Blagojevich and Senator Obama. The Prosecutor in question -- Patrick Fitzgerald -- is a political pit-bull (without lipstick). Just ask Scooter Libby.
Hillbuz puts it this way:
Giannoulias leads to Obama through that town house home loan and the quid pro quo political endorsement several years later. And that home loan ties back to Rezko, in that it was the first of two shady home buys Obama made with quid pro quos attached to them.
Just thinking that last paragraph out, Obama’s defense in the Rezko business was that he never did anything for Rezko so there was no quid pro quo. What the Giannoulias and Broadway Bank stuff proves is that Obama sits in people’s pockets for a while before the favor is given.
Our Take
Hillbuzz -- a pro-Hillary Clinton blog -- is hardly a disinterested party in this -- whatever "this" is. But the fact that they're the source doesn't automatically disprove the rumor either. We tend to be skeptical; the likelihood of Barack Obama ending up behind bars strikes us as being somewhere between slim and none. The enormous energy behind his candidacy would place similarly enormous practical obstacles in the path of any serious effort to charge him -- even if he were hands-down guilty. And the reasons to vote against him were superabundant anyway -- and remain so.
