Posted on 12/09/2008 8:23:52 AM PST by jrooney
GRAND JURY SUBPOENAS ISSUED ON REZKO/OBAMA LAND DEAL
“He didn’t even read the whole news article and even posted as his headline the “obama/rezko deal” when in fact it was the Mutual bank/Rezko’s wife deal. Obama purchased the home after the fact making this a non-story unless you think Rezko being a criminal is still newsworthy which it is not since his criminality is common knowledge.”
Perhaps I’m missing something. At face value, Rezko’s wife overpaid $125K for her lot. Obama underpaid $300K for his. Both were purchasing from the same seller. Thus, one could frame this transaction as a $300,000 “gift” to Obama, $125,000 bankrolled by Rezko, $175,000 bankrolled by the seller. The $125K transfer from Rezko’s to Obama could not have been achieved without the bank knowingly and illegally accepting an inflated appraisal used to justify the sales price and mortgage to Rezko’s wife that permitted this transaction to go forward. I’m no lawyer, but I presume that documenting the above and convincing a jury that a known crook, Rezko, helped finance an illegal gift to Senator Obama, would be easier to accomplish than the other component of corruption cited below.
Apart from the apparent “gift” involved in selling Obama property $300K below its actual value, I thought a parallel complaint was that by agreeing to purchase the empty lot next door (and I presume covertly assuring the Obamas they had no intention of building on it), Rezkos provided Obamas with another more intangible “gift:” a much more private lot with less obstructed views (and hence more value were they to ever sell it) than Obamas could have afforded on their own. As best I can tell, the portion of the Rezco lot sold to Obama’s went for fair market value, i.e., the pro rata share of the $500K lot value that the Obama-purchased parcel represented. So any corruption entailed by having a more private lot arises from getting the views/privacy provided by the remaining undeveloped Rezko parcel without having to pay for this. I don’t have time to check, but assuming Obama-purchased parcel was 10% of Rezko lot, the monetary value of this guaranteed-empty lot would be $450,000. So it’s a bigger deal than the $125,000 gift cited earlier, but unless either party was stupid enough to put this understanding in writing, it seems like it’s way harder to prove/prosecute. So in that sense, nailing the bank on the overappraisal is probably a necessary and possibly even sufficient condition for subsequently nailing Rezko on their share of the gift to the Obamas.
It’s already been established that Obama did at least one favor for Rezko while in IL legislature. So this is prima facie evidence that Rezko stood to potentially benefit from giving illegal gifts to Obama. Moreover, Rezko was a savvy developer: it wouldn’t make sense that his wife wouldn’t know the property she was acquiring was 25% overpriced.
In contrast, I don’t know the other seller. In theory, it might be far harder to establish that individual would benefit by a gift to Obama: this seller’s best defense strategy might be to admit that Rezko convinced him to reduce the price of Obama’s lot by $125,000 in exchange for the assurance that he would get $125,000 extra for the lot sold to Rezko’s wife. Rather than concede that the additional $175,000 price reduction was a gift, he might argue that on a $1.6 million property that hadn’t sold in X months, $175K was a reasonable price concession to get it off his hands etc.
So while the timing of Drudge’s story is a puzzle and he got the headline wrong, I do think the GJ investigation into the Mutual/Rezko deal is part and parcel of a larger effort that eventually points to Obama. Remember that in his zeal to get to someone as high as possible (likely Cheney, but he had to settle for Scooter), Fitz was perfectly willing to give Armitage a complete pass on being the first to name Valerie Plame. An overzealous prosecutor can be a very dangerous thing, but every once in a while, s/he can accomplish something very useful. It would be nice to think that enough of this case will have leaked out by 1/20/09 that Obama would be unable to risk the political fallout that would accompany his firing Fitz.
Chicago will sink obambi. The Gov knows all about obambi’s homosexual and crack dealing past. Maybe we will see a Press Conference with his wife and Larry Sinclair talking about the Donald Young murder.
Maybe Larry will sign some of his books there...
Unless these are new ones, they were issued back in 2006. Obviously the testimony is unknown. The Washington Times covered it a month or so ago, a credit analyst for the bank that gave The One his mortgage was fired for not approving a bogus appraisal, so he's suing. Maybe he should sit in at the bank, I'm sure Obama would be on his side.
The party selling the house Obama moved into wanted a deal for the house and lot nextdoor. Rezko had his wife bid the lot nextdoor at market price but reduce the house to a lesser amount, and the Rezko wife bought the lot in the same deal which got Obama the house. Later, the wife sold a strip of the lot to Obama which reduced the lot to unsaleable size under current lot restrictions. While the deals were running, Rezko claimed he was too broke to hire lawyers, yet tens of millions showed up in his family accounts from an ex-Saddam ‘oil for food’ operative from the Middle East.
“Now let’s see who goes down with him...”
####
Probably no one.
This particular punk would not have gone down without the approval of the powers that be in the Democrat party. It was a surgical incision to save BoBo and others.
Cynical? Yes.
But unless the Republicans have had their balls surgically re-attached in the last 24 hours, I don’t believe this wasn’t done under the complete direction of the Democrats, and the Clinton puppets in the FBI, that Compassionate George so kindly left in place.
Blago would not live long enought to mkae the prtesser ... not a chance he would expose that career killer.
2004, that would be the election where he won the primary after his opponents sealed divorce records came to light, then the GOP candidate withdrew after his sealed divorce records were revealed. I'm sure nothing underhanded went on.
But, but, according to Nancy Pelosi, it’s the REPUBLICANS who are the party of corruption.
La merde a frappé le ventilateur!
DUCK! mon ami...............
Best.
Chris
Yes. It’s true. Rush said that.
Now I know why he is keeping Hillary so close. She has the experience he needs to make these pesky problems go away. Rezko and crew would probably have a hard time buying life insurance these days.
I wonder what Obama's cut was?
A few weeks ago, I mentioned I first registered in August 2001, and someone said I was a Newbie, lol.
“I wish I could see the look on Chris Matthews’ face!”
That’s funny. I was just thinking...I wonder which part of little Chrissie Mathews anatomy is “tingling” now? His sphincter, maybe? LOL
I guess that makes me a newbie too!
This isn’t being reported on the news.
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