Senator says friend raised more money than he previously admitted to.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-obamafullwebmar16,0,7569169.story Trying to put his past with Antoin "Tony" Rezko behind him, presidential candidate Barack Obama on Friday said he never thought the nowindicted Chicago businessman would try to take advantage of him because his old friend had never asked for a political favor.
But in a 90-minute interview with Tribune reporters and editors, Obama disclosed that Rezko had raised more for Obama's earlier political campaigns than previously known, gathering as much as $250,000 for the first three offices he sought.
Obama also elaborated on previous statements about his private real estate transactions with Rezko, saying they were not simply mistakes of judgment because Rezko was under grand jury investigation at the time of their 2005 and 2006 dealings. "The mistake, by the way, was not just engaging in a transaction with Tony because he was having legal problems. The mistake was because he was a contributor and somebody who was involved in politics."
The Illinois senator made his most extensive comments about Rezko to date in an effort to quell the lingering controversy over his relationship with the politically influential developer and over the personal financial deals first revealed by the Tribune in November 2006.
Faced with intensifying scrutiny as the Democratic primary season grinds on, Obama said voters should view his Rezko dealings as "a mistake in not seeing the potential conflicts of interest." But he added that voters should also "see somebody who is not engaged in any wrongdoing . . . and who they can trust."
After news reports of Rezko's questionable political dealings first emerged in 2005, Obama said he asked his friend about them. Rezko assured him there was nothing wrong. "My instinct was to believe him," he said.
Asked if he ever thought Rezko would expect something from their relationship, Obama was emphatic: 'No. Precisely because I had known him for
years and he hadn't asked me for something."
The friendship between the Obamas and Rezkos included occasional dinners and the Obamas once spending a day at the Rezkos' Lake Geneva retreat. It began in about 1991, when Obama became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and Rezko offered him a job building affordable homes with his Rezmar Corp. Though Obama declined, a friendship and political alliance began.
His first big contributor
When Obama launched his bid for the Illinois Senate in 1995, Rezko was his first substantial contributor. Obama said it was his "best guesstimate" that Rezko raised $10,000 to $15,000 of Obama's roughly $100,000 collected for that race. Obama said he didn't have more certainty because he didn't then have the staff to maintain better campaign finance records.
Rezko helped bankroll all of Obama's subsequent campaigns except his presidential bid. Rezko was on Obama's campaign committee in his failed run against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush and gathered between $50,000 and $75,000 of the estimated $600,000 raised in that race, Obama said.
Rezko also was on the finance committee for Obama's 2004 U.S. Senate run. "My best assessment is that he raised $160,000 during my U.S. Senate primary," he said, adding that those funds had been given to charity.
Obama explained Rezko's appeal to up-and-coming politicians. Part of it was his seeming modesty. "In my interactions with him, he was very gracious. He did not ask me for favors. He was not obtrusive. He wasn't one of those people who would insist on coming around all the time or constantly being photographed with me."
And Rezko was loyal. He had been a supporter of Rush but sided with Obama in that 2000 race. Five years later, bolstered by payments for his best-selling autobiography and advances for future books, Obama and his wife, Michelle, went house hunting. They were drawn to a 96- year-old South Side home with four fireplaces, glassdoor bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany and a wine cellar.
The house and the adjoining yard had been owned as a single property, but the owners were listing them separately and asking $1.95 million for the house and $625,000 for the landscaped side lot.
Obama disclosed Friday that someone else already had an option to buy the garden lot. But he said Rezko took over that option after Rezko learned Obama was bidding for the house. Obama said he knew next to nothing about those transactions and does not recall when he learned that Rezko was interested in buying the side lot- or even how Rezko learned it was for sale.
But they talked about the upcoming sales. "He said, 'I might be interested,' " Obama recalled. "My response was, 'Well, that would be fine.'"
Obama added: "This is an area where I can see a lapse in judgment." He said his motivation was "if this lot is going to be developed, here's somebody I knew. So I didn?t object."
The senator said that at the time, in early 2005, he was aware of the growing controversies surrounding Rezko's dealings with state and city government. In March 2005, for example, city officials alleged that a minority contractor at O'Hare International Airport acted as a front for a Rezko firm. "I started reading the reports that were surfacing," Obama said. Rezko "gave me assurances that this wasn't a problem."
13 pages more....http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-obamafullwebmar16,0,7569169.story
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