Skip to content

Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

Because no one
is above the law!

Donate

Corruption Chronicles

Obama And His Chicago Slumlord Cash

Barack Obama has dedicated much of his work as a legislator and attorney to help the poor but that hasn’t stopped the Democratic presidential candidate from taking hefty campaign contributions from a slumlord in his Chicago district whose tenants lived in deplorable conditions.

The slumlord–also a close friend of the Illinois senator – is a shady political fundraiser named Antoin Rezko who has been indicted on fraud and corruption charges for taking huge kickbacks on government deals. He owned dozens of low-income housing structures beset by code violations and 11 of them were in Obama’s state senate district. Buildings were crumbling and some didn’t even have heat, a necessity to endure brutal Chicago winters.

Rezko, who got millions of taxpayer dollars to rehab some of the buildings, claimed he didn’t have the money to repay the loans or turn the heat on in the apartments. He did, however, find money to contribute heavily to Obama who at the time was a state senator.

The relationship strengthened over the years and a two-part newspaper series details just how close the Illinois lawmaker is with the corrupt slumlord who kept his tenants – many of them the African Americans Obama claims to advocate for–shivering for more than a month during a nasty Chicago winter in the late 1990s.

The first part of the series tells how, as an attorney at a small Chicago law firm, Obama actually helped his corrupt friend get more than $43 million in government funding to rehabilitate more than a dozen of those apartment buildings for the poor. Then, as a state legislator, Obama let Rezko get away with abusing the very poor people he strives to help.

No wonder Rezko has been a huge political contributor to Obama’s campaigns over the years. Before his 2004 U.S. Senate run, Obama appointed Rezko to serve on his campaign finance committee, which raised more than $14 million.


Related

Plaintiffs Seek to Keep Reparations Suit Alive

In The News | September 18, 2024
From Evanston Now: The initial lawsuit was filed in May by Judicial Watch, a conservative legal action group, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Judi...

Judicial Watch Pursues Class Action Lawsuit against Reparations Policy – Asks Federal Court to…

Press Releases | September 18, 2024
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it asked a court to reject a motion by the City of Evanston, IL, to dismiss Judicial Watch’s class action lawsuit on behalf o...

ICE Issues Half the Detainers for Criminal Aliens in Local Custody under Biden than…

Corruption Chronicles | September 17, 2024
Besides failing miserably to control illegal immigration at the southwest border, the Biden administration has also been shamefully derelict when it comes to interior enforcement, ...