but maybe it will help...
Hillary Clinton on Monday, January 21st, 2008 in a debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
A fragment of truth, distorted
Barely True
In one of the most heated exchanges of the Democratic debates, Hillary Clinton on Monday night fired off this pointed attack on Barack Obama:
“I was fighting against those (Republican) ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.”
Asked later to respond, Obama said, “Here’s what happened: I was an associate at a law firm that represented a church group that had partnered with this individual to do a project and I did about five hours worth of work on this joint project.”
The man in question here is Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Chicago real estate developer and fast food magnate now under federal indictment. He’s also a longtime friend of Obama who over the years did a good amount of fundraising for him.
In April 2007, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Obama did some legal work between 1995 and 1998 on a series of troubled low-income housing deals involving Rezmar Corp., owned by Rezko.
Reporter Tim Novak reported that Obama was an associate attorney with the small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, that helped Rezmar and not-for-profit community groups secure more than $43-million in government funding to rehab 15 apartment buildings for the poor. Four ended up in foreclosure.In all, Novak reported, Rezmar rehabbed 30 buildings, a third of which were in the Illinois Senate district Obama represented between 1997 and 2004. Many of the buildings fell into squalid disrepair and financial straits while Obama was state senator, prompting the city to repeatedly sue over problems, including no heat.
Obama’s campaign staff told the Sun-Times that Obama worked on some of the deals, but that his Rezmar-related work amounted to just five hours.
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Bottom line, Clinton’s claim is Barely True. Obama, by his own admission, did some, albeit very little, legal work that helped Rezko’s company obtain properties that would later be neglected. But the allegations that Rezko was a slumlord did not arise, at least not publicly, until years after Obama performed that work.http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/306/On the April 24 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle claimed that an April 23 Chicago Sun-Times article "alleged
Obama did legal work for Rezko that enabled him to get $43 million in government funding to rehab 15 buildings." In fact, the Sun-Times reported that while Obama worked at the law firm that helped Rezko's company, Rezmar, secure the government funding, his role in the Rezmar deals is "unclear," and that Obama's campaign said Obama worked only five hours on Rezmar-related deals. "Senator Obama did not directly represent Mr. Rezko or his firms," according to an email from Obama's staff that the Sun-Times quoted. "He did represent on a very limited basis ventures in which Mr. Rezko's entities participated along with others."
Angle also reported: "Rezko's the same man whose wife bought the lot next door to Obama's house on the same day the senator bought his home, then later sold half that lot to Obama for 1/3 its original value." A December 17, 2006, Washington Post article, however, cited an Obama spokesman in reporting that Obama purchased one-sixth of Rezko's lot and paid Rezko more than double its appraised value because "Obama considered it fair to pay one-sixth of the original price for one-sixth of the lot."
As Media Matters for America has documented, several media outlets have cast the Obama-Rezko land deal as a "scandal," despite the complete absence of evidence of impropriety or allegation of wrongdoing.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200704250011
* Land deal
On November 1, 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Obama and Antoin "Tony" Rezko -- who had "pleaded not guilty to federal charges involving pay-to-play allegations that surround Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's administration" -- bought adjoining properties on the same day in 2005 and that as Obama and Rezko "jointly worked to improve their side-by-side properties, the two men entered an ongoing series of personal financial arrangements." The Tribune article alleged no wrongdoing and quoted Obama saying: "I haven't been involved with in any legislative work whatsoever or any government activities of any sort." The article noted: "In normal circumstances, the two real estate transactions probably wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. There is, after all, nothing illegal or untoward about an aggressive developer buying hot property next door to a rising political star." Indeed, the only apparent cause for the article's existence was that "these are not normal times for either Obama or Rezko."
Even though the article alleged no wrongdoing on Obama's part, the Tribune editorialized two days later, writing that "the senator's real estate tie to Rezko threatens to leave Obama hoisted by his ethics petard."
More than a month later, Slate.com teased a December 14 article, headlined "Barackwater" and written by Slate chief political correspondent John Dickerson, by suggesting that the article exposed a "Shady Real Estate Deal" involving Obama. The article, whose headline was a reference to the Clinton-era Whitewater real-estate "scandal," which gave rise to an extensive, multimillion-dollar investigation that turned up no evidence of illegality by the Clintons, in fact explained that there is "no evidence" Obama did anything wrong.
But even with the constant refrain that Obama had not "been accused of wrongdoing," as the AP reported, the discussion of the land deal came up again following Obama's announcement that he was forming an exploratory committee. For instance, on the January 20 edition of Fox News Watch, Newsday columnist Jim Pinkerton asserted that one of "the questions about a fellow ... named Barack Hussein Obama" is "about this land deal he had." Similarly, during a report on the January 16 edition of ABC's Nightline, ABC News senior national correspondent Jake Tapper asked, "Just who the hell is Barack Obama?" and noted that voters "may not like what they hear about a questionable land deal was involved in with a political operative since indicted for fraud."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200703200011#landdeal
Q: Senator, when did you first meet Tony Rezko? How did you become friends? How often would you meet with him, and when did you last speak with him?
A: I had attracted some media attention when I was elected the first black President of the Harvard Law Review. And while I was in law school, David Brint, who was a development partner with Tony Rezko contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in being a developer. Ultimately, after discussions in which I met Mr. Rezko, I said no.
I have probably had lunch with Rezko once or twice a year and our spouses may have gotten together on two to four occasions in the time that I have known him. I last spoke with Tony Rezko more than six months ago.
Q:. Have you or your wife participated in any other transactions of any kind with Rezko or companies he owns? Have you or your wife ever done any legal work ever for Rezko or his companies?
A: No.
Q: Has Rezko ever given you or your family members gifts of any kind and, if so, what were they?
A: No.
Q: The seller of your house appears to be a doctor at the University of Chicago . Do you or your wife know him? If so, did either of you ever talk to him about subdividing the property? If you ever did discuss the property with him, when were those conversations?
A: We did not know him personally, though my wife worked in the same University hospital. The property was subdivided and two lots were separately listed when we first learned of it. We did not discuss the property with the owners; the sale was negotiated for us by our agent.
Q: Did you approach Rezko or his wife about the property, or did they approach you?
A: To the best of my recollection, I told him about the property, and he developed an interest, knowing both the location and, as I recall, the developer who had previously purchased it.
Q: Who was your Realtor? Did this Realtor also represent Rita Rezko?
A: Miriam Zeltzerman, who had also represented me in the purchase of my prior property, a condominium, in Hyde Park. She did not represent Rita Rezko.
Q: How do you explain the fact your family purchased your home the same day as Rita Rezko bought the property adjacent to yours? Was this a coordinated purchase?
A: The sellers required the closing of both properties at the same time. As they were moving out of town, they wished to conclude the sale of both properties simultaneously. The lot was purchased first; with the purchase of the house on the adjacent lot, the closings could proceed and did, on the same day, pursuant to the condition set by the sellers.
Q: Why is it that you were able to buy your parcel for $300,000 less than the asking price, and Rita Rezko paid full price? Who negotiated this end of the deal? Did whoever negotiated it have any contact with Rita and Tony Rezko or their Realtor or lawyer?
A: Our agent negotiated only with the seller's agent. As we understood it, the house had been listed for some time, for months, and our offer was one of two and, as we understood it, it was the best offer. The original listed price was too high for the market at the time, and we understood that the sellers, who were anxious to move, were prepared to sell the house for what they paid for it, which is what they did.
We were not involved in the Rezko negotiation of the price for the adjacent lot. It was our understanding that the owners had received, from another buyer, an offer for $625,000 and that therefore the Rezkos could not have offered or purchased that lot for less.
Read more.....
http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/124171,CST-NWS-obama05.article
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