Posted on 11/24/2009 10:36:15 PM PST by STARWISE
By now, millions of Americans are familiar with Anita Dunn, who recently resigned her post as Barack Obamas White House Communications Director after it was learned that she had previously cited Mao Zedong, the late Communist dictator and mass murderer, as one of her favorite political philosophers.
By contrast, few people know anything substantive about Dunns husband, Robert Bauer, who has replaced Gregory Craig as President Obamas White House Counsel. Craig resigned abruptly on November 13, after having repeatedly denied, for weeks, that he had any plans of stepping down.
A 1976 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, Robert Bauer bleeds Democrat blue. He has served as counsel to the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees for many years.
In 1999 he was counsel to Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who led his partys defense of Bill Clinton in the latters impeachment trial.
Each day during the trial proceedings, Bauer and Democratic leaders strategized on how they could best help Clinton beat the charges against him perjury, abuse of power, and obstruction of justice.
In 1999-2000, Bauer was general counsel to the Bill Bradley for President Committee. Also in 2000, he filed a racketeering lawsuit against then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, accusing the Texas Republican of extortion and money laundering.
In 2004 Bauer served as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry.
Today Bauer heads the political law group at Perkins Coie, the powerful, Democrat-aligned Seattle law firm that represents, among others, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, Richard Gephardt, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Bauer forged a close affiliation with Barack Obama after the latter was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004. He became Obamas private attorney and then, when the Senator declared his candidacy for President in February 2007, Bauer was appointed as general counsel for Obamas presidential campaign a project dubbed Obama For America (OFA).
In January 2009, when OFA merged with the Democratic National Committee and became known as Organizing for America, Bauer retained his position as the entitys general counsel.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama, who has never made his original birth certificate available for public scrutiny, hired Perkins Coie to defend him in court cases challenging his status as a natural born U.S. citizen a status upon which Obamas eligibility to hold the office of President is contingent.
According to Federal Election Commission records, OFA has already paid Perkins Coie $1,352,378.95 for its legal services in these cases.
Also in 2008, Bauer was intimately involved in Obamas controversial decision to break the pledge he had made to accept public funding for the presidential campaign. Bauer and Obama based that decision on their calculation that the candidate was a fundraising powerhouse who would be able to collect far more money via his own efforts than he could ever get from the public financing system.
While Obama campaigned against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, and then against Republican opponent John McCain, Bauer quietly wrote letters to television-station managers and to Assistant Attorney General John Keeney, contending that Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules forbade the airing of any anti-Obama television ads that made even the barest mention of the Senators well-documented association with former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
Bauer filed FEC complaints against groups that were seeking to run such ads, and he intervened on Obamas behalf to prevent the American Leadership Project a pro-Hillary organization from running TV spots exposing the strong support Obama had received from the thuggish Service Employees International Union.
The SEIU is led by former New Leftist Andrew Stern, who was taught the tactics of radical activism at the Midwest Academy, the training ground established by former Students for a Democratic Society radicals Paul and Heather Booth.
Stern also has close ties to the billionaire financier of far-left causes, George Soros, and sits on the Executive Committee of the Soros-funded America Coming Together a massive get-out-the vote project for Democrat candidates. Bauer himself has lent his legal expertise to ACT.
In 2009 Obama hired Bauer as legal counsel to represent him in a criminal probe investigating whether former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich may have sought with Obamas (or Rahm Emanuels) knowledge to sell to the highest bidder the U.S. Senate seat Obama had vacated when he assumed the presidency.
Bauer also has worked on issues related to Obamas ties to Tony Rezko, a Chicago-based restaurateur and real-estate developer who was one of the first major financial contributors to Obamas political campaigns in the 1990s.
Over a span of several years, Rezko raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama. A few months after Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, he and Rezkos wife purchased (in a deal that may have been handled, in part, by Robert Bauer) adjacent pieces of property in Chicagos Kenwood neighborhood.
Obamas portion of the deal involved a mansion for which he paid $1.65 million $300,000 below the sellers asking price. Meanwhile, Rezkos wife (who had little income and owned few assets) paid the full asking price $625,000 for a vacant lot adjacent to Obamas mansion.
The owners of the house and the lot had stipulated that neither property could be sold unless a deal for the other also closed on the same day. Both deals indeed closed on the same day in June 2005.
At that time, Mr. Rezko, who owed more than $10 million on defaulted loans and failed business ventures, was being hotly pursued by creditors; at least 12 lawsuits had been filed against him and his businesses. Moreover, he was under federal investigation on charges that he had solicited kickbacks from companies seeking state pension business under his friend, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, for whom Rezko reportedly had raised as much as $500,000.
For more than two years before the property purchases, news articles also had raised questions about Mr. Rezkos influence over state appointments and contracts. Moreover, reports swirled that the FBI was investigating accusations of a shakedown scheme in which Rezko had suggested particular candidates for appointment to a state hospital board.
What does all this have to do with Robert Bauers current, and sudden, ascendancy to the position of White House Counsel?
According to The American Spectator, one former Obama transition team adviser puts it this way:
[Bauer] knows where all the bodies are buried, and this indicates that there is something amiss with this White House, or at least someone is nervous about what is going on. You dont just make these kinds of changes [Bauers appointment as Gregory Craigs replacement] for the sake of rearranging the deck chairs, and not at this time with at least three legislative and policy decisions looming that the Counsels office would have been deeply involved in.
A highly placed Washington attorney (who has served as counsel in the Senate and in previous presidential administrations) characterizes Bauers sudden appointment as pretty damn weird.
Im surprised not only that the press seems to be ignoring the fact that two presidential lawyers have left at about the same time, adds the attorney, but that no one seems to care that for the first time, I think ever, we have a Presidents personal attorney also serving as White House counsel.
I dont care if Bob [Bauer] recuses himself from future personal legal business, this should be troubling to anyone who cares about the Executive Office of the President.
Ultimately, Anita Dunns affinity for Chairman Mao may prove to be far less significant than her husbands unrivaled familiarity with the skeletons in President Obamas closet.
*It was Bauer who lobbied the Justice Department unsuccessfully last fall to pursue a criminal probe of American Issues Project (AIP), an independent group that sought to run an ad spotlighting Obamas ties to Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers.
*It was Bauer who attempted to sic the DOJ on GOP donor Harold Simmons and sought his prosecution for funding the ad.
*It was Bauer who tried to bully television stations across the country to compel them to pull the spot. All on Barack Obamas behalf.
Bauers specialty is stifling dissent. Hes married to the woman Obama entrusted to lead the campaign to de-legitimize critics in the media.
Girding loins? You betcha.
~~~~~~
IL-Sen: Alexi the unelectable?
Illinois state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is "deeply flawed" as a candidate against Rep. Mark Kirk (R) in next year's Senate race and "his nomination would put Barack Obama's former Senate seat in extreme jeopardy for the Democrats," according to a pollster for a rival Democrat.
Geoff Garin, who is conducting the polling for former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, detailed Giannoulias' alleged flaws in a polling memo obtained Tuesday by the Fix.
At the center of Giannoulias' weakness, according to the memo, is his family's bank and its ties to disgraced developer Tony Rezko.
When the poll sample was read a paragraph of information about Broadway Bank and Rezko -- a paragraph that said the bank had "close financial ties" to the developer, had given him $11 million in loans and and had granted him "preferential treatment" by allowing him to bounce nine checks worth $500,000 -- roughly three-quarters expressed either very serious (62 percent) or fairly serious (13 percent) concerns about the issue.
~~~~~
Two weeks ago the Chicago Tribune, the paper that broke the still-unexplained real estate deal between convicted felon Tony Rezko and Obama, did not even mention Obama's jailbird buddy as it endorsed The One for president.
The bank Miller mentioned is Broadway Bank, owned by the family of Illinois State Treausurer Alexi Giannoulias, whom Obama endorsed over the party slated candidate two years ago. Let me make this clear--there is no way "The Boy Banker" would've won the primary had it not been for Obama's endorsement. No way. Obama also appeared in a television commercial touting Alexi. After Alexi's win, it was revealed that he approved two multi-million dollar loans to mobster Michael "Jaws" Giorango.
Over $10 million was loaned by Broadway Bank to reputed "new mafiya" businessmen Lev and Boris Stratievsky.
And what about Broadway Bank? Are the other mob loans we don't know about?
Blagojevich, Giannoulias
Giannoulias, O
~~Ping!
NOTE:
Something was wrong with the link I posted for the thread. Here’s the correct link:
the Zero White House is like the Hotel California - you can check out any time you like, but you never really leave....
ping
fact that two presidential lawyers have left at about the same time, adds the attorney, but that no one seems to care that for the first time, I think ever, we have a Presidents personal attorney also serving as White House counsel. I dont care if Bob [Bauer] recuses himself from future personal legal business, this should be troubling to anyone who cares about the Executive Office of the President.
Bauers sudden appointment as pretty damn weird
Does his tongue fly out of his mouth like a lizard as hers does?
It was at the Kerry convention that BHO gave keynote speech and sudddenly rose to National prominence. Bauer is in on this conspiracy up to his eyeballs.
sounds like an old George Wallace wife trick!
Should be:
Obama Foe America (OFA).
Pronounced Ofay...
I must say this Anita Dunn and that husband of hers, Mr. Bauer are two appallingly ugly human beings. Their faces must be the mirror to their souls.
True that.
You’ve seen the “Their wimin Vs Our women” comparison haven’t you?
I have always wondered about this maneuver. Has that ever been done before?
Obama is circling his wagons!
He knows a hoard of birthers are on the march, and will have him soon!
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