Obama deliberately misstated the facts on how much money Rezko raised for his five elections....
Obama acknowledged that Rezko had raised $250,000 for him — about $100,000 more than had previously been disclosed and about five times more than Obama conveyed during a November 2006 question-and-answer exchange with the Sun-Times.
Obama did do favors for Rezko, despite denials to this day.....
“He never asked me for anything,” Obama said. “He never did any favors for me, other than obviously supporting my campaigns. He never gave me any gifts, gave me no indication he was setting me up to ask for favors in the future.”
Obama also defended signing a 1998 letter urging the state to fund a low-income housing project developed by Rezko and Obama’s former boss, Allison Davis — both of whom were clients of Obama’s law firm as well as campaign contributors. Obama said he didn’t remember writing the “form letter” until the Sun-Times asked about it last June. This was not one of the Rezko developments that fell into disrepair.
Obama stated he was not close to Rezko....
Obama said he sometimes talked strategy with Rezko daily. Then, during political down-times, Rezko was his lunch or breakfast companion, more concerned about Obama, his wife and daughters than with posing for snapshots with the senator as he rose from political obscurity to Democratic presidential hopeful. On one occasion, Obama recalled, they wiled away time with their wives at Rezko’s Lake Geneva estate.
Obama picked Rezko for the campaign finance committee for his 2004 U.S. Senate run. Around that same time, Rezko had begun walking away from affordable-housing projects he was building with government funds, leaving some in squalor — including some buildings in Obama’s own Illinois Senate district. Obama said he knew nothing of those problems. Had Obama known, he said he would have talked to Rezko about the problems. “I think it is deeply troubling he did not keep these properties up, and I am very disappointed in that,” Obama said.
After Rezko helped Obama win the U.S. Senate seat, Obama approached Rezko about the house Obama now owns in Kenwood. Rezko’s wife bought the vacant lot next door, with Obama and Rita Rezko closing on their transactions on the same day in June 2005. Later, in January 2006, Obama bought a 10-foot-wide strip of Rita Rezko’s lot at a time when Rezko was widely known to be under federal investigation — a move Obama called “absolutely a mistake.” Why didn’t alarm bells sound when it was known Rezko was under investigation?
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