The New York Times has a really bizarre story on the front page today. I will make some remarks about the story and then there is a link at the bottom for you to read the entire story. I don’t want to run wild with crazy conspiracy stories but there are some really peculiar parts of this New York Time story that warrants further investigation.
* Juan Jose Rojas Cardona (“Pepe” and hereinafter I will refer to him as that) lives in Mexico and is part of the casino business (known as Mexico’s casino czar) with a very shady background and record. He is linked to violence and corruption in Mexico. According to a State Department cable in 2009, he was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business rival and making illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials;
* Pepe is wanted in the USA for state charges in Iowa going back to the early 1990′s. After his Iowa conviction in the early 90′s, he was sentenced to 5 years but then he jumped bail on the Iowa conviction.
* THE STRANGEST THING HAPPENED IN 1998 – 4 years after his plea of guilty to Federal charges. I have never seen this happen before — Federal Prosecutors, even though Pepe had jumped bail a second time (and thus avoiding prison) and was in Mexico beyond their reach, went to a Federal Judge and convinced the Judge to quash the indictment.
A few more pieces of the puzzle ...
http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011/09/obama_defends_immigration_reco.html
Obama defends immigration record, curious about Chicago casino during Rich Daley, Danny Solis WH visit
By Lynn Sweet on September 11, 2011 2:42 PM | No Comments
WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama dropped in at Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s office on Friday, the conversation with visiting Chicagoans — including former Mayor Richard Daley and his son, Patrick — turned to how Mayor Rahm Emanuel was doing, why Chicago doesn’t have casino gambling and Obama’s own immigration record.
That’s the report I got from Ald. Danny Solis (25th), whom I ran into on Pennsylvania Avenue as he was leaving the White House on Friday with City Colleges of Chicago board chair and Cabrera Capital Markets CEO Martin Cabrera Jr., Evans Food Group CEO Alejandro Silva and United Neighborhood Organization CEO Juan Rangel.
I’ve been fascinated with the interlocking relationships among Chicagoans in the Obama White House since the beginning, which was made even more interesting when Bill Daley later took over from Emanuel as chief of staff. Solis has distinct and separate ties to the Daley brothers as a Chicago alderman and to Obama, whom he met when they were both young community organizers in Chicago.
(snip)
One thing, I guess, led to another and Obama offered up, Solis said, that his mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, “goes once or twice a year to Vegas and really enjoys it.”
Solis and Obama met in the 1980s when Solis worked for UNO and Obama for The Developing Communities Project, both part of the Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation network. “We used to go to the same trainings together,” Solis told me.
There is also another connection. Patti, Solis’ sister — who managed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign until she was jettisoned — ended up in the Obama 2008 headquarters in Chicago as chief of staff for vice presidential running mate Joe Biden.
(snip)
The Chicagoans were in town for a dinner honoring the former mayor on Thursday night, hosted by Mexico’s Ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan.
Sarukhan met with Daley in September 2009, when he was in Chicago. When I interviewed Sarukhan in April of last year, in advance of First Lady Michelle’s trip to Mexico City, he recalled his Chicago tour and his interest in a city with such an enormous Mexican-American community.
Bill Daley joined the dinner honoring his brother after Obama delivered his jobs speech before a joint session of Congress Thursday night. Solis said Mayor Daley suggested the White House visit Friday.
It was “a good friendly meeting among people who have known each other for a very long time,” Solis said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamaliel_Foundation
The name “Gamaliel” refers to the Biblical wise man who was a teacher to St. Paul (see Acts 5:38-39; and Acts 22:3), whom Saul Alinsky considered to be the first great congregation-based organizer.
Gamaliel Foundation works in the community organizing tradition of Alinsky, ...
http://www.dannysolis.org/node/199
Ald. Danny Solis Voted Chair of the Hispanic Caucus
http://www.newsmax.com/BradleyBlakeman/Lobby-Obama-White-House/2011/12/28/id/422377
Lobby Group Provides Access to Obama White House
Wednesday, 28 Dec 2011 02:38 PM
By Bradley Blakeman
EXCERPT
Business Forward is officially a non-profit trade association formed after President Obama was elected. It was formed by former Obama staffers and supporters.
Its’ 2009 tax filing lists four directors: The CEO James Doyle, a liberal Democrat Obama supporter and the husband of Patti Solis Doyle, who was an official in the Obama presidential campaign. The corporate secretary and director David Sutphen, another big Democrat, whose sister Mona Sutphen is Deputy White House Chief of Staff; Erik Smith, an Obama supporter; and Rob Shepardson, who ran candidate Obama’s youth marketing agency.
Instead of simply forming a lobbying group, these relatives and Obama campaign officials formed a trade association. This is rather unusual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arturo_Sarukh%C3%A1n
Arturo Sarukhán
EXCERPT
Sarukhan graduated from El Colegio de México with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and received a master’s degree in U.S. Foreign Policy at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., where he studied as a Fulbright scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow. In 1988–1989, before joining Mexico’s Foreign Service, Sarukhan served as the Executive Secretary of the Commission for the Future of Mexico-US relations, a non-governmental initiative funded by the Ford Foundation to recast the Mexico-US relationship.[4]
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-01-30/news/ct-met-fugitives-mexico-20120131_1_border-crossing-fugitives-extradition-program-extradition-process
Mexico promises increased efforts to return border-crossing fugitives
Ambassador tells Durbin his country ‘will never be a safe haven’
January 30, 2012|By Gary Marx and David Jackson, Chicago Tribune reporters
Mexico’s top diplomat in the United States has vowed that his government will redouble efforts to apprehend the growing numbers of criminal suspects who escape across America’s borders.
“You have my firm commitment that Mexico will never be a safe haven for fugitives fleeing justice in the United States,” Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin.
Durbin received the diplomat’s letter late Friday and provided a copy to the Tribune on Monday.
Durbin has seized on the issue of border-crossing fugitives in response to a recent Tribune investigative series that found violent criminals were able to leave the country and remain at large because of an astonishing lack of coordination among U.S. Justice Department officials, county prosecutors and local police; a failure by these agencies to keep track of their cases; and inexplicable, years-long delays.
Penetrating the intense secrecy that surrounds America’s extradition program, the Tribune identified more than 100 international fugitives from northern Illinois who remain free today. Wanted on charges of homicide, rape and other felonies, those suspects fled to countries as far-flung as Nigeria, South Korea and India, but more than half found haven in Mexico, records show.
(snip)
http://www.thenews.com.mx/index.php/home/P01-19424.html
In Mexico, ‘justice is not politicized’
Poiré will be meeting with US officials in Washington
THE NEWS
WASHINGTON – Mexican Secretary of the Interior, Alejandro Poiré, denied accusations by Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) members on Thursday who said that the Mexican government has used the justice system for political purposes.
Poiré, who travelled to Washington to meet with Obama Administration officials, said that officials in President Felipe Calderón’s administration have never instructed any Justice Department official to act on political grounds.
“We categorically deny that there is any use of the justice system for political purposes,” Poiré said in response to questions about a travel ban issued to three PRI ex-governors of the state of Tamaulipas who are being investigated by the federal government.
“The Public Prosecutor is required to act according to any evidence that comes before him,” Poiré said. “We have a government that upholds the laws and respects the principal of checks and balances, especially when dealing with judicial cases.”
Poiré, who arrived to Washington on Wednesday evening, met with foreign correspondents from the Mexican media at the Mexican embassy where he was accompanied by the Mexican ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan.
When asked about comments made by aspiring National Action Party (PAN) presidential candidate, Josefina Vázquez Mota, that Poiré’s personal conversations had been recorded, Poiré responded that there never has been and will never be orders from the federal government to Justice Department officials to attack politicians from other political parties.
(snip)
He arrived at Washington on the same day U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s appeared in the House of Representatives where he testified about his involvement in the controversial “Fast and Furious” program.
