A chronology:

2001–Barack Obama gets an $8,000 a month legal consulting contract from a company owned by Robert Blackwell Jr. at a time that Obama is low on money.

2002–Barack Obama writes a letter to the State of Illinois urging a state grant be given to another company owned by Robert Blackwell Jr.

2002-2004–Blackwell Jr.’s company was given $320,000 in grants by the state of Illinois. The grants increased greatly under Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

2005 — Robert Blackwell Sr. gets a $650,000 computer consulting contract from the University of Chicago Medical Center that is hailed in the hospital’s annual report as an example of minority contracting. Part of Michelle Obama’s job description is encouraging minority contracting.

Blackwell Jr.’s paid advisor was Obama’s first political director and was close to Blagojevich’s most important ally in Springfield, the former state Senate President.

Obama’s people continue to insist that Obama has no real ties to Blagojevich but the Blackwells show once again that claim is false.

Auchi is a controversial figure closely linked to Saddam Hussein over the years. For background on Auchi, check here and here.

It’s a puzzlement how Auchi got into the United States in 2004 and when he tried to get back in 2005 he was blocked by the U.S. However, Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecutors noted that Tony tried to enlist several Illinois politicians to help get around the ban in 2005.

Who was Tony closest to in 2005? Yep, U.S. Senator Barack Obama and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

Here’s what they told the Chicago Sun-Times in early 2008.

On Monday, prosecutors said that, in 2005, Rezko “directly appealed to the State Department” and, “it appears, asked certain Illinois government officials” to let Iraqi-born billionaire Nadhmi Auchi enter this country. At the time, Auchi was “unable to enter the United States” because of a criminal conviction in France. His sentence “was suspended as long as Auchi committed no new crimes.”

Aides to Obama and Blagojevich said Monday that Rezko never requested — nor did they deliver — any help to Auchi, whose business empire includes 62 acres in the South Loop that Rezko’s development company once owned.

So if you believe the Obama and Blagojevich aides, Tony never asked his two best friends in politics to help him do a favor for Tony’s most important business partner?

The Sun-Times apparently didn’t buy the answer either and asked Obama again at an editorial board visit a couple weeks later.

Q: Did you ever help Auchi enter the country?
A: No
Q: Or your office?
A: “Not that I know of.”

A cynic would say that sounds Clintonian. A journalist might have followed with “How would you not know if a staffer was trying to get an alleged Saddam Hussein business partner around a State Department ban?”

The notion that Rezko wouldn’t turn to Obama and Rezko for help is further eroded by the facts of Auchi’s April 3, 2004, visit to Chicago. Rezko hosted a reception for Auchi where guess who attended? Yep, Blagojevich and Obama. In Obama’s case, he first didn’t remember attending then told the Sun-Times that yes, Tony asked him to go and he went but just doesn’t remember much of anything.

Q: Did you ever meet Nadhmi Auchi or Dr. Aiham Alsammarae?
A: I have to say I do not recall meeting them. It’s been reported that a dinner Tony hosted at the four seasons, I don’t have the exact date, so I don’t know whether it was the before November ’04 when I hadn’t been elected but had already won the primary or whether it was after the election, in which I was . . . Tony called and asked if I could stop by because he had a number of friends that he had invited to dinner and he wanted mew to meet them. I told him that I would be happy to come by if my schedule allowed it. And it did. Although I couldn’t, I think, stay for dinner, so I remember meeting a bunch of people who I had not met before. I frankly don’t remember what their names were. Business was not discussed at the meeting. It was more of a social meeting and they asked me questions about the senate race and so fourth and so on.
I have no specific recollection. They may have been there. I can’t say unequivocally that I did not meet them, but I just don’t recall.

The reception in 2004 was important to Rezko because he was trying to convince Auchi to buy a 62-acre parcel in the South Loop that amounted to all of Rezko’s crumbling empire. When he needed Blago’s and Obama’s help, they were there.

When Tony needed political muscle to get Auchi back in the country, who would he have turned to?

Blago and Obama have given their answers on this question but journalists should not believe them. Their denials are beyond suspect.

He was Edwin Eisendrath, who ran against Rod in the Democratic primary. He was interviewed recently by Steve Rhodes of the website Beachwood Reporter.

Beachwood: Obama stood behind Rod.

Eisendrath: The enemy was George Bush, no question. That was the focus of Democrats. The focus was on Barack – money was being raised for Barack.

Beachwood: So nobody wanted to raise questions about, say, Tony Rezko for fear it would spill over and taint Obama?

Eisendrath: People did raise questions. It was well-known. But there were a lot of other priorities . . . I’m not excusing Democrats – finally they got him out – but it was pretty awful . . . I was hoping someone else would have run against Rod and they didn’t and shame on them . . .

This week, Obama will be back in Chicago celebrating his birthday and raising money for Democrats. If there was a vibrant press, he would be asked about the Blagojevich trial and his previous support for the corruption-stained former governor. Nobody will spoil his birthday with such an impolite question.

Former Chicago Tribune top editor James Warren, now writing for the Chicago News Cooperative, which feeds stories to the NY Times, outlines some questions the Blagojevich trial is failing to answer. Predictably, he’s not interested in Rezko’s connection to Obama. He’s curious about Rezko’s connection to a Blagojevich bond deal and a large finders fee that a former GOP official received.

Then there’s no Tony Rezko, the convicted swindler and once-respected developer deemed so untrustworthy that neither side beckoned him from prison.

The defense sees Mr. Rezko as a slimy manipulator who was putty in Mr. Blagojevich’s hands. But his absence leaves much unclear, including details on a $10 billion state bond issuance in 2003 to bolster pension funds.

It’s the sort of under-the-radar deal that we in the news media rarely mention or understand. We’re left hanging as to what was going on between Mr. Rezko and Robert Kjellander, a Springfield lobbyist and former Republican National Committee treasurer.

An interesting question, for sure. But more interesting than a potential illegal land deal with the President of the United States?

Here are three questions that we wish Tony Rezko would answer:

1. What really happened on that house purchase/land deal with the Obamas? (For a complete transcript of Obama’s meeting with the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board explaining the deal, check here). After reading the transcript, there can be little doubt that Rezko conferred upon the Obamas a financial benefit. There are many holes in the public record. What really happened, Tony?

2. How did you get controversial British/Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi into the country in 2004 and which Illinois politicians tried to get him back in in 2005? For a primer, read this. Auchi is in the news again this morning in Chicago.

3. Since you fervantly believed that inside connections would stop the federal investigation against you, do you believe your even higher level inside connections can get your sentence lightened or commuted?

When the Blagojevich verdicts are announced this week, we shouldn’t forget about Tony Rezko. He has not been sentenced yet and he holds more secrets than anyone we know.

The first clue ought to be the title, “Obama worked to distance self from Blagojevich early on.” It was published about a week after Blagojevich was arrested by the federal government in December 2008.

It ought to be read fully to appreciate the depth of its effort to rewrite history, but here are two glaring omissions or misrepresentations:

1. Saslow failed to mention that despite all Obama’s apparent “early distancing” from Obama, he endorsed his candidacy for governor in 2006 when nearly every newspaper in Illinois had noted that Blagojevich was under intense federal investigation and was disgracing the office.

2. Saslow characterized the U.S. Senate seat episode as Blagojevich pathetically reaching for federal favors and getting rebuffed by Obama. He completely ignores evidence that Obama personally and his team reached out to Blagojevich repeatedly to get the governor to appoint Valerie Jarrett.

Also, the story includes this gem from Abner Mikva, the retired judge and Clinton lawyer who liberals like to prop up as an arbiter of integrity.

“Obama saw this coming, and he was very cautious about not having dealings with the governor for quite some time,” said Abner Mikva, a former congressman and appeals court judge who was Obama’s political mentor in Chicago. “The governor was perhaps the only American public officeholder who didn’t speak at the convention, and that wasn’t by accident. He’s politically poisonous. You don’t get through Chicago like Barack Obama did unless you know how to avoid people like that.”

This is the same Mikva that was aggressively defending Blagojevich’s integrity just two years earlier, an absurdity noted here and here.

“I don’t like government being used as a tool to reward political favors and I never have. I don’t like to see limited state funds wasted on unnecessary employees. And I don’t like seeing public officials accused of wrongdoing when there is nothing to substantiate the accusations,” Abner Mikva wrote in an Op-Ed that appeared in the Sun-Times on June 13, 2006.

“I worked on Gov. Blagojevich’s transition team to advise the incoming administration on how to set up systems for running state government efficiently and transparently. From the beginning, the administration indicated that it wanted to clean up and improve the state’s massive bureaucracy so as to better serve the public.

Mikva, of course, never gets asked about his defense of Blagojevich. No liberal does, including Obama.

I don’t know if Eli Saslow was part of the liberal narrative bending group JournoList. He has a long history of rewriting history in Obama’s favor.

It is amazing that Obama ever complains about the press when he has sychophants like Saslow on duty 24/7 throwing inconvenient facts down the memory hole.

Then it’s on to sentencing of Tony Rezko. We will have more on Rezko and the unanswered questions surrounding his dual relationship with Blagojevich and Barack Obama.

Sam Adam Jr. has just accused President Barack Obama and his transition team of negotiating with Blagojevich.

The offer came from Rod to Tom Balanoff, Adam says. Balanoff brought it to Valerie Jarrett and word came back from Rahm Emanuel through John Wyma. It’s a negotiation they were in, he said of Obama and Blagojevich.

“You start high and they come low,” Adam said.

If they weren’t negotiating, we did it take multiple contacts to pass along a simple message?

The Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown doesn’t draw a distinction between negotiation and “cutting a deal.” I guess he’s been immersed in Chicago corruption so long he’s numb.

And let’s be honest with ourselves. If Blagojevich wasn’t so obviously radioactive in November 2008, the Obama administration may very well have tried to cut a deal with him for that Senate seat.

Brown did, however, make our original point without realizing it. Why, indeed, was the Obama team having any contact with the Blagojevich team when Blago was “so obviously radioactive.”

“Rod realizes that he is being elected as a reformer. People in this state are fed up with corruption and broken promises. The Blagojevich administration will be one of honesty,” he said.

—David Wilhelm

Another member of the club that brought us Rod Blagojevich is David Wilhelm, the former DNC chairman and Clintonista who ran Blago’s 2002 governor’s campaign and transition, snared a few pay-to-play contracts that came under federal scrutiny and moved to Ohio.

Like other top Blagojevich aides, he ended up in the Obama orbit with no scars whatsover from helping launch the most corrupt governorship in Illinois history.

Unlike Pete Giangreco, who can claim he only was the mouthpiece for Blagojevich’s political operation, Wilhelm was the architect of the 2002 campaign, which relied on $30 million in fundraising, an unheard of figure in an Illinois governor’s race. The two fundraisers most responsible for the largess were Tony Rezko and Chris Kelly. Rezko has been convicted of corruption and Chris Kelly was indicted on various charges before killing himself.

Wilhelm oversaw these two men in 2002. It looks like he was asleep at the switch as the corruption extravaganza was being hatched. Or maybe he just wanted to cash in after the election. After Wilhelm and other Blagojevich boosters said they were going to change Springfield, they immediately did the opposite.

It took less than a year for Wilhelm to break his promise.

Hopewell Ventures, whose five principals include former top Blagojevich adviser and 1992 Clinton campaign manager David Wilhelm, secured a $10 million investment from the state Teachers’ Retirement System in December 2003.

Hopewell netted the TRS investment despite Blagojevich’s campaign pledge to end “business as usual” in state government and his promise to prevent some members of his inner circle from doing business with the state.

When asked about it, the ever amiable Wilhelm said:

Informed that his venture-capital firm was named in the subpoena, Wilhelm vigorously insisted that clout played no role in getting TRS business and that the firm won the investments “the right way.

Do I think my past work and political relationships open some doors? Yes. Do I think at the end of the day that got us an approval? No,” Wilhelm added.

At least two federal subpoenas asked about Wilhelm or his firm. A subpoena to TRS in 2005 asked about Hopewell and another in 2007 came to the Governor’s office asking for records pertaining to him and others.

Shouldn’t the Illinois news media have tracked him down and asked about the corruption era he helped shape? Instead, he was given a free pass. And in 2008, when Obama needed a boost in Midwestern primaries, Wilhelm did national interviews endorsing his candidacy without a question about the disaster in Illinois.

David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Pete Giangreco and David Wilhelm all helped bring the nightmarish Rod Blagojevich era to Illinois. All three just transitioned to Barack Obama without a hint of blame for creating the mess in Obama’s home state.

When you are a Democrat in Illinois, you never have to carry your corruption baggage—the news media checks it at the gate.

Pete Giangreco...the Baghdad Bob of Illinois

Democratic consultant Pete Giangreco was a top advisor and spokesman for Rod Blagojevich during his candidacies for Governor. He was an aggressive, over-the-top defender of the former congressman, who had promised Illinois residents an era of reform after the scandals and eventual imprisonment of the previous Governor, George Ryan.

In Illinois, if you are a Democratic consultant who demonstrably lies repeatedly and ridicuously to the press, you apparently lose no credibility. Giangreco continues to be quoted as a political observer in Illinois as if he had nothing to do with the most corrupt Governor in modern state history.

And, with those lies wafting in the air, Barack Obama hired Giangreco as a national mail consultant in his presidential bid. Obama never hesitated to use Blagojevich senior advisors in his campaign and the local press never questioned him for it.

Here are some of Giangreco’s greatest hits:

“We set the bar high. We knew there were going to be snarky articles,” Giangreco said. “We’ve done more to reform state government than the other (previous) governors combined.”

This brazen lie speaks for itself.

The night before that announcement, Blagojevich was attending a $5,000-a-person political fund-raising dinner in his honor at a Chicago restaurant. Asked what kind of message that sends, campaign spokesman Pete Giangreco said the fund-raising event was long- planned and added that the example proves there is a “firewall” between Blagojevich’s political and governmental operations.

That “firewall” language was used by Blagojevich when he was interviewed by the FBI. He is charged with lying to federal agents as the government as put on a parade of witnesses and taped conversations showing the “firewall” was tissue.

Ali Ata, appointed to a $127,000-a-year job running the new Illinois Finance Authority, said he has been a longtime supporter of the governor.

Ata, retired from a marketing job with Nalco Chemical Co. in Naperville, said he previously served as a volunteer for Blagojevich’s father-in-law.

“My relationship with the governor goes back many years,” Ata said. “My contribution in supporting him had absolutely nothing to do with whether I get appointed or not.”

Ata has donated $63,000 to Blagojevich campaigns.

Blagojevich’s kitchen cabinet includes his former congressional chief of staff John Wyma, campaign fund-raising chairman Christopher G. Kelly, major fund-raiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko, campaign chairman David Wilhelm and former Deputy Governor Doug Scofield.

All are Blagojevich advisers who helped him win the governor’s race in 2002. Now, to varying degrees, they have Blagojevich’s ear. And with that influence have come perks.

Blagojevich campaign spokesman Pete Giangreco dismissed the notion that the governor’s informal advisers are benefiting. “It’d be one thing if they were getting state contracts,” Giangreco said.

As for the lobbying contracts three of the advisers have held, he said that “you’d have to talk to the companies about why they hired them. It doesn’t have anything to do with this campaign or this state.”

Three of the above people were indicted, another two were government witnesses against Blagojevich and the last one moved away from the state after being subpoenaed.

“To the extent that we’re focused on anything politically, it’s an ’06 re-election,” Blagojevich campaign strategist Pete Giangreco said. “I think the presidential stuff was overhyped to begin with. The fact that it’s less overhyped than before means no one in the governor’s office was focused on it. It was a creation of the media, and it just played itself out in the media.”

Trial testimony and court documents have revealed that the Blagojevich inner circle was fixated on raising money at a furious pace to pave the way for an eventual presidential bid.

Pete Giangreco , a spokesman for the governor’s political operations, said the fact that most of Blagojevich’s appointees were not contributors is proof of a disconnect. “The people who are qualified to serve in these appointments are by definition people who are active in government and active in their communities,” Giangreco said. “So it should be no surprise that they are active politically.”

And,

“Of the remaining ones, there are people active in the business community and their own community and you’d expect them to be active politically,” Giangreco added. “The governor has ended ‘business as usual’ with appointments in this state.”

Court documents and published report conclusively show that the Blagojevich inner circle was selling board appointments for high dollar campaign contributions.

“This is a system that the Republicans put into place and the governor hopes to reform and change the system to limit the contributions with campaign finance reform.” Giangreco said.

Blagojevich, we later found out, promised his legislative ally Emil Jones he would consider him for the U.S. Senate seat if he would block campaign finance reform.

“The implication of this story is reckless and totally false,” Pete Giangreco , the governor’s campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “The facts actually prove that there is no pattern of giving and no pattern of getting business, not the other way around.”

Story after story demonstrated a pay-to-play culture in Illinois that surpassed previous administrations by a wide margin.

We will highlight at least one other top Blagojevich ally who Obama later relied upon politically at a critical juncture in his presidential campaign.

One reason why, we are finding out, was that instead of watchdogs, the national press corps acted like Obama’s Praetorian Guard.

JournoList was a closed online club of liberal national journalists and activists who exchanged advice on how to kill anti-Obama narratives. Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller website has found some of the exchanges and has written about them the past week or so. Predictably, the MSM has almost completely ignored this scandal of journalists acting like Obama operatives.

In a key episode, JournoList members openly plotted to bury attention on then-candidate Barack Obama’s controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, for instance, suggested an effective tactic to distract from the issue would be to pick one of Obama’s critics, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

When Obama bought his house in June 2005 he coordinated with fixer/fundraiser Tony Rezko, who bought the side yard the same day in a deal that smells of a subsidy from Tony to the Obamas. The local press covered the transaction but the national press yawned. For example, nobody has ever talked to the sellers, who could have shed light on the sketchy, inconsistent stories told by Obama and Rezko. An engaged national media could have flushed the media-shy sellers out.

The national press also yawned when Rezko met with a Saddam Hussein-linked developer under circumstances that never have been explained. Obama’s role in this matter has barely been touched.

JournoListed?