Rezko Guilty Verdict: The Relevance
Posted on Wed Jun 04, 2008 at 05:30:00 PM EST
Tags: Tony Rezko (all tags)
Bump and Update: My long thoughts on the relevance of Rezko's conviction are below:
Earlier: Guilty on 16 of 24 counts.
Here's the blank verdict form (pdf)listing the counts.
The Rezko verdict will be announced in five minutes.
Guilty on one count, more counts still being read
Guilty on more than one count.No cameras in the courtroom.
My thoughts on the verdict below:First, I don't like the guilty verdicts. I was hoping the jury would reject the testimony of star snitch and lowlife Stuart Levine, who in exchange for singing about Rezko, is going from a sentencing guideline range of life in prison to 67 months, assuming the Judge does what the prosecutor wants. Levine's plea agreement is here.
Second, as to Obama, this trial was not about him. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest any connection between him and the illegal activity charged in the case. The Government said so. Obama's name was barely mentioned at the trial.
Rezko's case is important in the context of government corruption in Illinois. This is a state that put more innocent people on death row than guilty people. The Republican Governor, George Ryan, emptied death row and imposed a moratorium. He was later indicted on corruption charges, tried and convicted, a case I followed continuously here at TalkLeft. He is now serving 6.5 years in federal prison.
As I've written several times, Obama was instrumental in getting state legislation passed to require mandatory taping of interrogations to reduce false confessions and confessions that are beaten out of people and in reforming the Illinois death penalty system. He is to be credited for that. Police brutality, torture and coverups by the cops in Chicago has been well-documented, including in the fine investigative reports in the Chicago Tribune by reporters like Maurice Possley, Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong. I have been highlighting these problems on TalkLeft since I began blogging in 2002.
What's significant about Rezko's trial are the allegations of corruption in the current Illinois governor's administration. The allegations aren't limited to Republicans or to Governor Ryan. We don't know if the current Democratic Governor will be indicted, or now that Rezko has been convicted, whether Rezko will cooperate with that probe. There are also other defendants and probable defendants in related investigations (all mentioned in my prior posts on Rezko's trial) that have yet to conclude their cases.
Not one of these corruption investigations has anything to do with Barack Obama. What they have in common is they show there is something rotten in Illinois politics and it has yet to be fully weeded out. Its systemic, it carries through from one administration to the next, business as usual.
So it is completely unfair to say that Obama should be under some kind of cloud or suspicion of illegal conduct for his association with Rezko.
But as I wrote here, it does call his judgment into question. He said as just 3 months ago when he sat down with the reporters at the Chicago Sun Times:
Is Rezko still a friend?On the question of Obama's judgment regarding Rezko, and why it isn't comparable to something like Norman Hsu, see here. As I wrote then,"Yes,'' Obama said, "with the caveat if it turns out the allegations are true, then he's not who I thought he was, and I'd be very disappointed with that.''
And it's that friendship, Obama said, that probably kept him from realizing it was a mistake to enter into a real estate deal with Rezko.
"Probably because I'd known him for a long time, and he'd acted in an aboveboard manner with me," he said. "And I considered him a friend. ... It's further evidence that I'm not perfect.''
Obama says voters who are concerned about his judgment should view his involvement with Rezko as "a mistake in not seeing the potential conflicts of interest."Obama says despite his mistakes (engaging in personal real estate deals with someone under criminal investigation who was a contributor to his multiple campaigns for public office and involved in politics -- and his failure to spot the potential conflicts of interest) voters should "also "see somebody who is not engaged in any wrongdoing . . . and who they can trust."
I think that's a fair statement of what voters should ask themselves. For me, I see someone who is not engaged in any wrongdoing, but the trust issue gives me pause.
Now, having had months to follow Obama's campaign closely , I can say for me, as a voter, he's passed the trust test with respect to his character. He's honest and he has integrity.
But there's more than integrity at stake when we put trust in our future leaders. We also have to trust their ability to lead us and their experience and judgment are very much a part of that. Obama's failure to spot both the warning signs and clear indicators of conflicts of interest with Rezko do go to the issue of experience and judgment.
As Obama said, voters will have to decide that issue for themselves.
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