Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Real estate developer and fast-food magnate Antoin “Tony” Rezko spent years pouring thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into Barack Obama’s climb from the Illinois legislature to Capitol Hill and helped him raise tens of thousands more.

But these days Rezko is snared in a nasty political scandal and facing a federal corruption trial that begins next month. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked his name and his “slum landlord business” in a debate with Obama on Monday. A plainly embarrassed Obama has been sending the campaign money to charity in an effort to distance himself from the Chicago businessman, including $41,000 over the weekend.

The Democratic presidential hopeful has also been forced to explain how Rezko got tangled in the purchase of the Obama family home and other ties to Rezko some of them going back more than 15 years. If federal prosecutors are right, his ties to Rezko may even mean Obama’s campaign unwittingly accepted money generated by illegal activities.

Obama, who has a spotless reputation after 11 years in public offices, has been accused of no wrongdoing involving Rezko or anyone else.

Nevertheless, the former state legislator and first-term U.S. senator seemingly missed plentiful warning signs that Rezko was headed for trouble with the law.

“The senator exhibited some bad judgment in continuing the relationship once it became clear that Tony Rezko had such serious clouds overhead,” says Cindi Canary, director of the nonpartisan Illinois Campaign for Political Reform.

The facts of the relationship between the two men have been public record for more than a year and so far haven’t hurt Obama with voters. He is considered a favorite, along with Clinton, in the fight for their party’s nomination.

Whether the matter will fade in the heat of a national campaign or turn into a headache for Obama in the months ahead is anybody’s guess.

State Sen. Christine Radogno, a Republican, said voters are guaranteed to hear more about Rezko if Obama continues to make headway on the campaign trail.

“Obviously, the better he does, the more scrutiny he receives,” Radogno said. “So I think there is going to be some discussion of that.”

State Sen. John Cullerton, a Democrat, said voters will realize that Obama is blameless and that the only one charged with corruption is “this Rezko, who thank God I’ve never met.”

“He was a guy with money who glommed onto up-and-coming young politicians like Barack,” Cullerton said.

Rezko faces a Feb. 25 trial, almost three weeks after the Super Tuesday primaries that could go a long way in settling the nomination. He is charged with fraud, attempted extortion and money laundering for allegedly plotting to get campaign money and payoffs from firms seeking to do business before two state boards.

Once that trial is behind him, the 53-year-old Rezko faces a separate federal charge of swindling the General Electric Capital Corp. out of $10 million in connection with the sale of pizza restaurants.

Obama’s name has not come up in connection with any of the corruption charges swirling around Rezko. In fact, prosecutors indicate that the source of Rezko’s clout was somewhere within Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.

Obama, meanwhile, has done what he could to disassociate himself from Rezko.

On Oct. 11, 2006, the day federal prosecutors unsealed the major corruption charges against Rezko, Obama immediately sent $11,500 in contributions to charities ranging from Habitat for Humanity to the Boys and Girls Clubs.

Obama aides say that is all the money that Rezko has contributed to Obama’s campaigns since he first ran for the Illinois Senate in 1996.

They say there’s no telling for sure how much additional money Rezko has raised for the senator over 15 years by putting the arm on friends and business associates. Obama’s aides estimate the amount at about $60,000, though the Chicago Sun-Times reported last year that Obama has received at least $168,000 from Rezko and his associates over the years.

Federal prosecutors say a Rezko associate used ill-gotten money to give $10,000 to an unidentified candidate in 2004. The associate was businessman Joseph Aramanda, according to a source familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing. Election records confirm a $10,000 contribution from Aramanda, which Obama’s campaign has since given to charity.

Aramanda, whose son worked as an intern in Obama’s Washington office in 2005, has been accused of no wrongdoing.

In any event, some $86,000 has been sent by the Obama campaign to various charities after the money was linked in some way to Rezko. That includes $41,000 for what Obama spokesman Bill Burton described as “an abundance of caution.”

On Nov. 1, 2006, three weeks after the Rezko indictment, the Chicago Tribune disclosed that Rezko was involved in the Obama family’s purchase of a red-brick home on a quiet South Side street near the University of Chicago where Obama has taught law and wife Michelle is a vice president.

The Obamas closed on the house June 15, 2006. The price: $1,650,000.

The same day, Rezko’s wife, Rita, bought a lot next door from the same sellers for $625,000. Obama later told the Sun-Times that the sellers had required that both of the lots had to be sold simultaneously.

Burton said in written answers to questions from The Associated Press: “In no way did Senator Obama view this as a favor, nor would he have asked for one. He understood the lot to be attractive as an investment and to have been purchased for that reason.”

The Rezkos later sold the lot, but not before selling the Obamas a 10-foot-wide strip of land from the property for $104,500.

Obama called that a “boneheaded” mistake.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama said in a written statement. “For that reason, I consider this a mistake on my part and I regret it.”

The Obama-Rezko relationship goes back a long way.

Fresh out of Harvard law school, Obama worked at the Chicago firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. Rezko was among clients of the firm, a fact Clinton noted during the debate.

Attorneys there say Obama never represented Rezko directly. The future senator did represent community organizations that were Rezko partners in rehabilitating buildings to provide apartments for the poor.

Judson Miner, a partner in the firm, said that Obama’s role was small. He said Obama did perhaps six or seven hours of work on such projects, mainly filing incorporation papers for the nonprofit groups.

But in October 1998, Obama wrote to state and city officials urging them to provide money to New Kenwood LLC, a company formed by Rezko and a former partner in the law firm, Allison Davis, to construct an apartment building for senior citizens.

“This project will provide much needed housing for 4th Ward citizens,” Obama said in a letter on Illinois Senate stationary to an official of the Illinois Housing Development Authority. The campaign and Rezko’s attorney later said Rezko never sought the letters from Obama.

As for the apartment buildings, as a first-year associate with the law firm, Obama would not have been doing much decision making. And he would have had no control over what happened to the apartments, some of which ended up in poor condition with numerous code violations.

By that time, Obama had gone on to other matters.

(AP)