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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...

Rod Blagojevich wants to cancel his retrial, asking to be sentenced immediately, however, prosecutors and the judge would have to approve of the request. His lawyers filed a five-page motion asking to proceed to sentencing right away and avoid a retrial that’s set to begin April 20. “A second prosecution of this case is an irresponsible use of taxpayer funds in light of the current economic crisis and Blagojevich’s imminent sentencing on the conviction from the first trial,” lawyers wrote in the motion. U.S. District Judge James Zagel and federal prosecutors would have to agree however, to dismiss the remaining...

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...

When Marco Rubio was majority whip of the Florida House of Representatives, he used his official position to urge state regulators to grant a real estate license to his brother-in-law, a convicted cocaine trafficker who had been released from prison 20 months earlier, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. In July 2002, Rubio sent a letter on his official statehouse stationery to the Florida Division of Real Estate, recommending Orlando Cicilia "for licensure without reservation." The letter, obtained by The Washington Post under the Florida Public Records Act, offers a glimpse of Rubio using his growing political power...

  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...

Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama was quick to blame the bankruptcy of Wall Street giant Lehman Brothers on Republicans’ “failed philosophy”. Obama’s September 15 comments were repeated throughout the media--yet reporters have not noted Obama’s glaring conflict of interest—the Lehman debt owed to a bank owned by the financier who loaned millions of dollars to Tony Rezko.

Mr. Nadhmi Auchi is a business partner of Syrian-born businessman Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who has supported US Presidential candidate Barack Obama financially since his first run for the Illinois state senate in 1996.

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...

Whether the name of Richie Urso ever makes it into the corruption trial of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich next June is anybody's guess. You've probably never heard of Richie Urso. But the FBI sure has heard of him. His is a classic Chicago story, about a beefy yet charming guy born on Grand Avenue, who got in trouble with the law as a kid, only to make political friends and become extremely wealthy. He was arrested once for jewelry theft in the '60s by the Outfit's top Chicago police detective, William Hanhardt. Urso's alleged partner in the theft was the...

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.

Although he announced his plans earlier this month, we were hoping against HOPE that he would change his mind. So it is with a heavy heart that I must report that the rumors are true - we are losing chef Sammie Kass; he’s moving to New York. To be with his new wife, Ms.NBC news hostess, Alex Wagner. She’s a former political activist and music-magazine editor, so she’s probably got a great future at Ms.NBC. The foxy couple, in an unposed photo for Vogue Here’s how Vogue described the power couple:  “She’s a rising television-news star. He’s the consummate White...

On Thursday's NBC Today, political director Chuck Todd reveled in the wall-to-wall media coverage of the bridge closing controversy surrounding New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: "Welcome to the NFL....he has gotten a lot of benefit by being sort of this Republican rising star in the New York City media markets, so he gets a lot of access to media attention, access to national media. And so he's had a free ride, if you will. Well now, welcome to the vetting process." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Todd's comments were prompted by co-host Matt Lauer...

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...

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...

It's business as usual in Chicago. After protecting President Barack Obama from criminal liability for his corrupt relationship with convicted political fixer Tony Rezko, former Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has been rewarded with a partnership in the Chicago office of New York-based law firm giant Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. The firm counts among its partners, Greg Craig, Obama's first White House Counsel, who had to help navigate Obama through Fitzgerald's investigation of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's attempt to sell Obama's Senate seat, from which he resigned shortly after being elected President but before he was sworn...

How do you say "corruption" in Arabic? A college pal of Tony Rezko who was accused of embezzlement, jailed in Iraq's Green Zone, and then escaped from prison and fled to Jordan is now running for a seat in Iraq's parliament, reports USA Today. Aiham Alsammarae, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen who attended the Illinois Institute of Technology with Rezko -- and who helped raise part of Rezko's $8.5 million bail -- was appointed to run the electricity ministry in 2003 after Saddam Hussein's ouster. During his tenure, a Rezko-owned company won a $50 million contract from Alsammarae's ministry. The deal...

How 'bout a little refresher re. Obama political Godfather  and actual (16-count!) convicted felon Tony Rezko...? The Syrian-born Rezko is an infamous Chicago slumlord, fast-food restauranteur, and sleazy political operator who played a key role in the Blagojevich case- as well as the unlikley ascension to power of Barrack Hussein Obama.Obama's longtime ally, friend, and top fundraiser was found guilty of 16/24 counts of felony influence peddling back in June 2008. Of course the story was mostly buried/detached from his bud Barry in the run-up to that year's most unfortunate (for us) presidential election whilst the jury convicted Rezko of wire...

Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney's overseas investments. It's time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil. The fat-cat narrative attacks on Republicans won't go away by making nice with the White House -- or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president's own bad bank entanglements. Indeed, The New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit...

We have often heard Valerie Jarrett is the de-facto President. That might not be far from the truth. Our team has been exhaustively researching this woman,...again. We went back over notes, articles and saved links, as well digging deeper into new documents that we've gotten a hold of. Valerie Jarret is very powerful. I am hoping to keep our article brief, but there is an awful lot to share. As you may know, Valerie Jarrett is Obama,'s closest cabinet member. That is no coincidence. She is one who helped get him where he is. Sure, he knew all the street...