Obama/Rezko Land Deal Papers Subpoenaed

 It is no secret that president-elect Barack Obama has some shady people that he calls associates. During the campaign people who wrote about these associates were accused of using his associates as diversions from the real issues facing the country. We were accused of using the politics of personal destruction and told that we should stick to the issues.

 People who wrote about Obama’s associations were told that the people that Obama chose to hang around with in the past do not matter. Well, at least one of the people that Barack Obama hung around with DOES matter.

 Tony Rezco, the convicted felon, is one of Obama’s associations. And now papers about a sweetheart land deal that Rezco and Obama engaged in have been subpoenaed. 

 the senator may have gotten a deal on his property purchase, noting that Mrs. Rezko paid the full asking price for her property on an adjacent lot. Both of which were sold by a single seller. Mr. Obama bought his house for $1.65 million – $300,000 below the asking price.

 It seems as though the books were cooked on this deal and that there may have been two appraisals of the same property that Obama purchased. One of the appraisals just seems to have disappeared.

bank officials replaced a loan reappraisal that he prepared for a Chicago property that was purchased by the wife of now-convicted felon Tony Rezko, part of which was later sold to next-door neighbor Barack Obama.

The complaint said the Rezko loan was approved by Mutual Bank President and CEO Amrish Mahajan and others so that Mrs. Rezko could buy a 9,090-square-foot vacant parcel of real estate. It said that in January 2006, Mrs. Rezko and Mr. Obama, along with his wife Michelle, signed an agreement to sell a 10-foot strip of the property to the Obamas. At that point, according to the complaint, Mr. Connor’s firm asked him to conduct the reappraisal.

 While the complaint doesn’t implicate Obama, one has to wonder about this:

As a state senator, Mr. Obama wrote letters endorsing government support of a Rezko housing project for senior citizens. Obama aides say he was simply supporting a project that would help residents of his district, not doing a favor for a friend.

 He received land at a discounted rate from Tony Rezko, he then writes letters endorsing the government support of a housing project that Rezko was involved in. We are supposed to believe that this was not a case of Obama taking care of a friend who just happened to give him a deal on some property.

 We are supposed to believe that Obama’s associations don’t matter but this story shows us why they DO matter. Are we still supposed to let this story go because it isn’t important? I think not.