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The Hyde Park condo once owned by former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, the former first lady, is back on the market for the first time in nearly 20 years. Sellers Kurt and Jennifer Elling have listed the four-bedroom condo at 5450 South East View Park for $550,000, almost double the $278,000 the Obamas purchased it for in July 1993, Crain’s reported. The property is being marketed by @properties Christie’s International Real Estate’s Maureen Murnane and India Whiteside. In 2022, a four-bedroom unit across the hall sold for $578,000, while three-bedroom units in the area have sold for prices...

WASHINGTON — President Trump commuted the 14-year prison sentence of former Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois, the Democrat who was convicted of trying to essentially sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat for personal gain, and pardoned the financier Michael R. Milken and Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner, the president announced on Tuesday. “Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich,” Mr. Trump told reporters just before boarding Air Force One for a four-day trip to the west coast where he is scheduled to hold three campaign rallies. “He served eight years in jail, a...

President Donald Trump commuted the sentence of former Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the New York Times reported Tuesday.Several Trump administration aides had claimed to ABC that the president is planning to grant the former governor clemency. Trump had previously hinted he was looking into commuting the 14-year sentence, which was originally handed down after Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell the Senate seat of then-president elect Barack Obama in 2008, according to NBC Chicago. https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1229845536511070209 “Yes, we commuted the sentence of Rod Blagojevich. he served eight years in jail, a long time. He seems like a very nice person, don’t know him,” Trump...

A badly burned body found on the floor of a River North parking garage early Tuesday has been identified as a 60-year-old real estate attorney, officials said. Louis S. Cohen, 60, was of the 200 block of Ivy Lane in Highland Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Wednesday was pending and did not determine a cause and manner for Cohen’s death, the office said. Just before 6 a.m. Tuesday, police and fire crews responded to a fire in the 11th floor of a parking garage in the 300 block of North LaSalle Drive and found...

Most aldermen, most politicians are hos," corrupt Chicago Ald. Arenda Troutman said, rather famously, on federal tape. She wasn't speaking about gardening tools, was she? Troutman was talking about the politics of Chicago, which is, if you've forgotten, the political corruption capital of the United States. Troutman represented the South Side's 20th Ward. At her 2009 sentencing, she squirted a few tears, sobbed, prayed, begged and then got four years in federal prison anyway. And on Wednesday her replacement, Ald. Willie Cochran, a former Chicago police officer who campaigned as something of a corruption buster, was himself indicted on federal...

How did Barack Obama emerge from Chicago in 2008 untainted by political corruption? His rise to power began at the 2004 Democratic Party Convention when Illinois State Senator Barack Obama was catapulted onto the national stage by the alluring force of his oratory.

  The Barack Obama career tree is decorated with ornaments of failure. Most notable among the early disasters is Grove Parc. Grove Parc was a housing project in Obama's district in Chicago. Obama used it as a springboard for his political ambitions. He enmeshed himself with the slumlords Valerie Jarrett and Tony Rezko and subsequently Obama got campaign funding while Jarrett and Rezko got wealthy. The residents suffered for it. Back in 2012 I said this would be the blueprint for the Obama Presidency: Grove Parc was the blueprint for the Obama Presidency. It’s a shame that no one in...

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that the dad, maternal grandpa and father-in-law of President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government. Jarrett’s dad, pathologist and geneticist Dr. James Bowman, had extensive ties to Communist associations and individuals, his lengthy FBI file shows. In 1950 Bowman was in communication with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who fled to Prague after getting charged with espionage. Bowman was also a member of a Communist-sympathizing group called the Association of Internes and Medical Students. After his discharge from...

After the recent Baltimore riots, left-wing critics accused President Barack Obama of lacking an "urban agenda." Critics like PBS's hard lefty Tavis Smiley said: "What do we see in Baltimore and Ferguson and beyond? Racism, poverty and militarism. And so poverty is clearly connected to this. My sense is that this is going to become the new normal. These kinds of uprisings and riots are going to happen a lot more if we can't get serious about jobs, jobs, jobs with a living wage for all fellow citizens. ... "My problem with the President so far, respectfully, is that he...

The city is trying to kick-start development of vacant 62-acre parcel near downtown controlled by a controversial Iraqi billionaire once linked to convicted Democratic influence peddler Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

Amrish Mahajan, former president of failed Mutual Bank of Harvey and a major fundraiser for imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, has been barred from future participation in the banking industry under a newly released regulatory order. Mr. Mahajan consented, without admitting or denying unsafe or unsound banking practices, to a May 1 order by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. prohibiting him from participating “in any manner” in the conduct of the affairs of any federally insured institution. ... Mr. Mahajan was known for his political connections, particularly to Mr. Blagojevich. Mutual Bank briefly entered the realm of national politics after...

Obama Rezko lot transaction bank president Mahajan FDIC lawsuit, Motion hearing, June 12, 2013, Judge Virginia M. Kendall, Rezkos sold lot to Obamas, Ghosts of Obama’s past The FDIC lawsuit against Amrish Mahajan, former president of Mutual Bank, et al is scheduled for a motion hearing in the courtroom of Judge Virginia M. Kendall on June 12, 2013. Mutual Bank loaned Rita Rezko the money for the lot that was purchased by the Obama’s. It is also the bank that fired whistleblower Kenneth J. Conner after he questioned the appraisal of that lot.

In the run-up to the 2012 election, a story surfaced about an Iraqi billionaire who managed to buy access to Washington policy makers while funding a Chicago Pay-to-Play scheme that helped produce a Governor, a U.S. Senator, and, ultimately, a President of the United States. The story was eight years in the making, yet despite the extent of his political influence, this Iraqi’s name remains widely unknown. He wants it that way. In fact, he has spent millions of dollars to hinder the reporting of his activities by the news media. The lack of attention paid to him, however, is...

Inside Iraqi Corruption Charles R. Smith Tuesday, March 29, 2005 John A. Shaw is a curious example of Washington politics gone mad. Shaw is a veteran government employee who served inside the White House under Presidents Ford, Nixon and Reagan and was an associate deputy secretary in the Department of Commerce. In 2001, Shaw was appointed by Bush Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld to head the newly formed Office of International Technology Security. In this post, Shaw began the difficult task of reforming government controls over the export of sensitive technology to foreign countries. In 2003, Shaw began investigating allegations of...

While on vacation in Hawaii this month, President Obama played golf with Allison Davis, a former business partner of Tony Rezko who also helped give Obama his start in the legal profession. Rezko is the former Obama associate and fundraiser who was convicted of corruption and fraud and currently sits in prison. Davis, who is male, partnered with Rezko on a series of government-funded low and mixed income housing development projects in Chicago. While Davis himself has never been charged with wrongdoing, a number of the projects were high-priced failures that resulted in poor living conditions for residents. According to...

According to FOX and ABC, Barry Obama will watch election returns at the Obama Mansion tonight, before the caravan hauls him some 13 minutes up Lake Shore Drive to Chicago's convention center, the mobbed up McCormick Place on the lake. (Alleged mobster Rudy "the Chin" Fratto of the prestigious Elmwood Park Street Crew recently pled guilty to rigging forklift contracts at McCormick Place. He's the latest example of an Italian American whose enterprise at least does some actual work... don't get me started.) Barry's friend Tony Rezko will presumably view some of the exit polls from the day room at...

As I noted in the introduction to my book, The Obama Timeline, a jury at a murder trial will often find the accumulated circumstantial evidence so overwhelming that a guilty verdict is obvious—even though there may be no witness to the crime. “The jurors in the Scott Peterson trial believed the collection of evidence more than they believed Scott Peterson. Among other things, the jury thought that being arrested with $15,000 in cash, recently-dyed hair, a newly-grown goatee, four cell phones, camping equipment, a map to a new girlfriend’s house, a gun, and his brother’s driver’s license certainly did not...

Illinoispaytoplay.com (IP2P) has learned that Daniel S. Mahru, former business partner of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, made a deal with the Department of Justice (DoJ) for his silence. IP2P is the first to report that on, October 4 2012, Daniel S. Mahru will receive probation at his sentencing hearing. IP2P has also learned that this is being done to insure Mahru will not speak of crimes, of which he has knowledge, that implicate Barack Obama, Valarie Jarrett, Allison Davis, Tony Rezko and others. (Remember Tony recently saying he committed crimes for which Fitzgerald did not charge him.) IP2P is also investigating...

An upcoming book about Rod Blagojevich says undercover tape-recordings caught the former governor saying he had heard that convicted influence peddler Antoin "Tony" Rezko secretly channeled $25,000 in cash to Barack Obama, but federal authorities did not deem the claim credible. The book, "Golden: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself Out of the Governor's Office and into Prison," suggests Blagojevich was talking about an undisclosed payment to help Obama with his 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate.