AH Insiders Subpoenaed

Subpoena of President Obama's ex-boss Allison Davis, Tony Rezko, and Bill Cellini on 30 years of "affordable" housing deals--issued back in September, revealed now. Sun Times:

The mountain of documents the grand jury wants from the Illinois Housing Development Authority includes two projects in which President Obama has acknowledged playing a minor role. Both of those projects involved Rezko, a former fund-raiser for Obama. One of them included Davis, who was once Obama's boss at a small law firm.

The grand jury is the same panel that's investigating alleged corruption under former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. [snip]

Obama was a lawyer with the Davis firm. The president has said he did six hours of legal work in 1995 on one of the deals now under scrutiny by the grand jury, helping Rezko and his business partners -- Bishop Arthur Brazier and the Rev. Leon Finney -- turn an abandoned nursing home in Hyde Park into low-income apartments.

Six years later, Rezko's company stopped paying the mortgage. IHDA foreclosed on the property in 2001, as Rezko's low-income housing empire began to collapse, falling into physical and financial ruin.

Davis has long been one of Mayor Daley's top allies in the African-American community. Davis left the law firm in 1996 to become a developer, getting IHDA funding for four projects.

Among those was a senior citizen building he and Rezko built at 4801 S. Cottage Grove, just outside the Illinois Senate district Obama then represented. Though the project was outside his district, Obama wrote letters in 1998 to IHDA and city officials, urging them to give Davis and Rezko government funding for the project. Obama has said he didn't remember writing the letters, which he has called "form letters'' sent out by a staff member.

Yes we can not remember. Here's from a post of mine back in Nov. 2007 on Alison Davis:

So Barack Obama works for a lawyer who turns into a developer. The developer asks for a donation of $1 million from a charitable group for "affordable" housing. Obama is on the board of the group, still practicing law with the same firm, who now represents his old boss reincarnated as a developer.

Oh, and Obama is a newly elected state senator, helped by a campaign contribution from--you guessed it--said developer. The developer also got a $5.7 million loan from the city for the same deal, on which the developer netted $700,000 in fees.

You see how it works?

And who else, besides the mayor, is a close, personal friend of both Obama and the developer? (More background on the developer here.) Sun Times:

As a developer, Davis' partners have included Tony Rezko, the now-indicted political fund-raiser who has been among Obama's biggest political supporters.

A few months after Davis left the law firm, Obama won his first political office -- a seat in the Illinois Senate. His campaign contributors included Rezko and Davis.

Two years later, Obama wrote to city and state officials, urging them to give money to New Kenwood LLC, a company that Davis and Rezko formed to build an apartment building for low-income seniors at 48th and Cottage Grove.

Obama's spokesman says "It's not a conflict of interest to do what's right for your community". Unlike Barack what's good for me is good for the community Obama, another board member who also had ties to the developer abstained on the vote for the $1 million.

He actually had some ethics.

One of Obama's biggest claims is that he offers a new kind of politics and his judgment is sound.

The feds are also looking at records involving Kelly King Dibble who used to work for Rezko and then headed the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA). Dibble is an old friend of Michelle Obama's and worked at Northern Trust at the time of the sweetheart mortgage issued to Barack and Michelle. John Kass on the Chicago Way, on Mayor Daley, Rahmbo, and David Axelrod plus this bit on President Obama's new bipartisan Secretary of Transportation:

...Springfield Republican boss Bill Cellini, is the boss of the state asphalt paving association. Yes, Cellini has been indicted in the same federal investigation that has snared Blagojevich. And yes, he helped elect the Democrat Blagojevich. But there's good news, Washington.

Cellini's guy, former U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Combine) is now the secretary of transportation in the reform Obama administration. I've said it before, but I don't think the people of Washington get it yet.

Well, maybe all this investigating will clean up Illinois, but some of the major players have been exported to Washington--under the wing of one of their major enablers, the most powerful man in the country. And we haven't even mentioned Valerie Jarrett, the president's senior advisor.