Obama's Rose Law Firm Files

I've got my own suspicions, but judge for yourself.

Barack Obama has made some strange decisions regarding secrecy and records. His state legislative records are missing and may have been thrown out, there are questions about his answers to his application to the state bar (keep in mind the DSCC demanded George Allen release his in 2006), and he released a one-page letter from his doctor summarizing his medical history (contrasted with McCain allowing reporters to examine nearly 1,200 pages of health records). He and his former law firm say Obama only did a few hours of work for nonprofit firms connected to convicted donor Tony Rezko, but no records have been released to confirm that.

Obama won't disclose his clients but the ones we know about, like Rezko, are as harsh an indictment of the candidate's judgment as you can imagine.

The backstory on Rezko and Obama:

In 1993 Obama found employment with the Chicago law firm Davis Miner Barnhill, which represented developers who built low-income housing with government funds. In 1995 one of the firm's clients -- the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation (WPIC) -- partnered with Rezmar Corporation in a project to convert an abandoned nursing home into low-income apartments. Obama was instrumental in helping Rezmar Corporation and WPIC strike their deal. Rezmar Corporation would also partner with WPIC clients in four later deals.

When Obama announced in 1995 that he was running for an Illinois Senate seat (which would be up for grabs in 1996), two of Tony Rezko’s companies donated a total of $2,000 to Obama’s campaign. Over the course of the entire primary season, Rezko raised between $10,000 and $15,000 of the roughly $100,000 Obama collected overall. Obama won the November 1996 election, and the district he represented included 11 of Rezko's 30 low-income housing projects.

Rezko served on the campaign committee for Obama’s failed congressional run against U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush in 2000, raising between $50,000 and $75,000 of the estimated $600,000 Obama collected for that race... In 2001 Rezko’s Rezmar Corporation stopped making its mortgage payments on the old nursing home it had converted into apartments, and the state of Illinois foreclosed on the building, which was located in Obama's Senate district.

In January 2008, the Washington Post reported:

Obama has denied doing any legal work directly for Rezko or his companies. During Monday night's debate, he said that he had done "about five hours worth of work" on a joint real estate development project involving Rezko and a Chicago church group...

...Obama's former supervisor at the law firm, William Miceli, said that the firm represented a non-profit group called the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation which redeveloped a run-down property on Chicago's South Side jointly with Rezko. He described Clinton's assertion that Obama represented Rezko in a slum landlord business as "categorically untrue."

Given that Obama's firm represented "developers who built low-income housing with government funds" -- like Rezko -- it's easy to imagine that the great community organizer was more entwined with sleaze than macrame dipped in manure. And that's precisely why he's hiding those records.


Linked by: Curmudgeonly Skeptical. Thanks!