get-up-sucka.thumbnail.JPGDuring the 1990s, the GOP/Media Complex did such a thorough job of promoting the notion of a "Whitewater scandal" that to this day, it’s largely forgotten that the nub of the case was probed to a fare-thee-well by several different official bodies, from the Resolution Trust Corporation to the Pillsbury Commission to even Ken Starr’s Office of (Not At All) Independent Counsel, and each of these bodies found that neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton had done the slightest thing wrong.

Now it’s 2008, and another politician is starting to feel the lash of another alleged scandal involving a land deal. Ironically, while the Whitewater hoo-ha was first pushed by an increasingly desperate Bush the Elder during the 1992 election, the new scandal is being pushed by the Clintons themselves. Barack Obama, come on down! It’s your turn in the barrel.

Whitewater was about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s connections to their longtime friend, real estate developer Jim McDougal. McDougal was a charming, mercurial man whose surface amiability hid a deeply troubled person whose inner demons would lead him to die in jail as mad as a hatter, so mentally unbalanced and prone to giving ever-changing and unreliable testimony — worse even than Starr’s star witness, ex-judge and utterly corrupt human David Hale — that Ken Starr could never publicly use his testimony without revealing the utter ridiculous cruelty of his nonexistent case.

The alleged scandal in Obama’s case involves his own relationship and real estate dealings with a real estate developer who turned out to be unsavory: Tony Rezko. The prosecutorial side of the allegations have been laid out by looseheadprop. Here’s a sample, courtesy of Archpundit, of what the defense might be saying, were this a court case:

The best synopsis of the Obama Rezko relationship was done by the Trib on January 23rd:

Both men declined to comment on their once-close friendship. Obama has been accused of no wrongdoing involving Rezko and has insisted that he never used his office to benefit Rezko.

Thus far, there is little in the public record to suggest otherwise, and the few exceptions that have come to light appear minor. On Capitol Hill, Obama once gave a summer internship to the son of a Rezko business associate on Rezko’s recommendation. Earlier, as a state senator, Obama was one of several South Side political and community leaders who wrote state and city officials urging approval of public funding for a senior housing project involving Rezko.

But when Rezko pushed for passage in Springfield of a major gambling measure, Obama vocally opposed it.

Obama publicly apologized for his 2005 property deal with Rezko, calling it “boneheaded” because Rezko was widely reported to be under grand jury investigation at the time. And Obama has given to charities $85,000 in Rezko-linked campaign contributions, including $40,035 last weekend following a published report suggesting that Rezko funneled a $10,000 donation to Obama through a business associate. Aides to Obama say the senator had no knowledge of any such scheme.

Rezko is tied to nearly every major politician in Illinois over the last couple decades going back to Jim Edgar under whom he received his first state contract. Rezko’s reputation as a slumlord largely got started after Obama was not practicing law full time and was largely dealt with by the City of Chicago and not state government entities.

It’s fair to say Obama used poor judgment in buying the strip of land from Rezko, but of the many ties to Rezko in Illinois, a two key things stand out:

  1. Obama did no favors such as providing money from a Member Initiative to Rezko
  2. Obama did not receive any personal benefits from Rezko

The dumbest thing about the relationship from Obama’s standpoint is that one of the most squeaky clean pols in Illinois didn’t think before buying a 10 foot strip of land for above assessed value from a guy about to be indicted. In Illinois that’s amazing, in the Presidential race, it’s the best personal record of any of the candidates.

Archpundit has what he calls a ‘primer’ on this affair, organized into eight parts. It’s very useful and answers each of the accusations brought against Obama. (See also Siun’s piece examining the law firm where Obama got his start and detailing its progressive nature and actions over the decades.)

To go back to the prosecution side for a moment, Lambert Strether over at Corrente points back again to the January 20 Chicago Sun-Times article in which an unnamed source "familiar with the case" is cited as claiming that Barack Obama is the "political candidate" referenced in the December 21, 2007 court document filed against Rezko. (This is the $10,000 that was mentioned by ArchPundit in his primer.)

Here, in full, is the reference in question in the proffer by Fitzgerald (scroll to page 36 to see it):

Another $10,000 of the $112,000 transferred into the pizza company’s bank account was used to make a political contribution in Individual D’s name to a political candidate. Rezko was a fundraiser for that political candidate and directed at least one other individual to make a political contribution to that same candidate, which Rezko then paid back.

Yup, that’s it.

It’s one paragraph, on page 36 of a 78-page document. Ooooh, scary! That’s how little — if any — attention Fitzgerald is directing Obama’s way on this, in a document that Obama’s attackers would have you think is all about taking down the junior Senator from Illinois.

How pathetic is this? So much so that when Chicago-area Republican blogger Dan Curry was using the Rezko proffer in December as a club with which to beat up every local Democrat he could think of (most especially the proffer’s actual main target, Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich), he didn’t even bother with bashing Obama, even though Rezko’s Obama connections had hit the news months earlier. However, Curry did later spread around the Rezko guilt by association with a mention of Hillary Clinton’s ties to John Burgess of IPA, whose lawyer is named in the Rezko indictment.

And again, there’s no evidence that Obama did anything for Rezko as a result. None. As ArchPundit and others, including the editorial board of the Sun-Times’ rival, the Chicago Tribune, have noted, Obama has in fact worked against Rezko’s interests.

As ArchPundit states, Obama is not the only politician to get money from Rezko — though he’s probably the only one to donate it to charity, as he did eight months ago when the allegations about Rezko first hit the news. Not only did Rezko give to many Illnois politicians, he also gave donations to Democratic political operations well outside of Chicago.

Ironically, two of Hillary Clinton’s strongest and closest allies, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who is a national co-chair of her presidential campaign) and Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, have had Rezko money pass through their hands: Rezko gave to Villaraigosa’s mayoral campaign in 2001 and to a Villaraigosa PAC in 2003, and Rezko donated $15,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2000 when Rendell (who last month officially endorsed Clinton for president and who is on the short list to be her running mate) was DNC chair. (And of course Hill and Bill had their picture taken with Rezko at a fundraiser for Carol Moseley Braun, which was the infamous photo that Matt Lauer ambushed Hillary with on the Today show last month.)

Obama’s campaign’s response to the Sun-Times‘ questions about him and Rezko, which was placed at the very end of the January 20 article, has this passage:

Q. Has the Federal Election Commission or the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago contacted the senator or any of his representatives about these matters?

A. No.

So according to the Obama campaign, neither the FEC nor Fitz’s office had — as of January 20, when this article was published — contacted Obama or his people about this issue.

If true — and there’s been three weeks in which this could have been shot down as a lie, and so far it hasn’t been (which considering the level of digging and number of articles the Sun-Times had been doing on this issue is rather interesting) — then it means that all the hooting and hollering by the accusers is much ado about nothing. I’m reminded of William Safire’s insistence that indictments were just around the corner for the Clintons in Whitewater, when of course the Clintons never were indicted despite Ken Starr’s worst efforts. And Patrick Fitzgerald is no Ken Starr, which is about the highest praise I can have for the man.

(UPDATE:  I’ve been reminded that the Sun-Times’s reporters should have known that targets of investigations are never supposed to be warned beforehand, thus the question that they asked is silly.  But then again, so’s the idea that anyone connected with Fitz’s office would "confirm" that someone who isn’t named in a proffer is actually in it.  One can make assumptions on one’s own, but nobody in Fitz’s office can "confirm" them.   And really, if Obama was the target of anything, why then isn’t there more of him in the proffer?  Why, out of nearly eighty pages, is there only the one paragraph that is thought to reference him?  Compare that to the pages and pages on "Co-Schemer A" and other persons, all of whom are, as Curry notes, part of Rod Blagojevich’s inner circle.)

On the one hand, it’s rather ironically sad to see Hillary Clinton throwing elbows like this against a fellow Democrat, especially after the living hell her life became courtesy of Ken Starr, the Republican Congress of the 1990s, and their compliant news-media buddies. One wishes she would be as tough if not tougher on the Republicans who have made their careers on tormenting her and her husband.

On the other hand, to judge from the photo in Obama’s office (see above), Barack Obama’s probably more than ready for this sort of smashmouth campaigning. Besides, we might as well get this thing dealt with right now — and really, the chances of this turning into a Whitewater-style witchhunt are slim.

Why? Because the real scandal of Whitewater was of the GOP Congress, with the media cheering them on, going berzerk and viciously abusing their authority. It’s not possible now, because while with FOX News and talk radio at their side the Republicans in Congress certainly can make a big media stink, that’s about all they can do — they can’t use the OIC statute to create a quasi-legal body to harass Obama the same way they harassed the Clintons, because the OIC statute was allowed to expire in 1999.

But an even more important factor may be this: In 1998 the Republicans lost a net total of five Congressional seats and lead Senate impeachment-pushers Lauch Faircloth and Al D’Amato as a direct result of their pushing impeaching Clinton over this bogosity when they fully expected to win oodles of seats because of it. (By the way: The guy who took out Faircloth was none other than John Edwards.) That is a clear warning to them not to try anything like their Whitewater smear, and the related abuse of the legal system, ever again.

One last ironic note: That infamous ten-foot strip of land Obama bought for above market value? The real estate agent who sold it to him is a Hillary Clinton supporter.