Patrick J. Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4621.shtml

Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor

By Margie Burns
Online Journal Contributing Writer


Apr 23, 2009, 00:18

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald interrogated convicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko and others intensively about then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune said on television last week.

Jim Warren, now a political commentator for MSNBC, told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Fitzgerald questioned Rezko “very aggressively” about possible involvement of Obama in alleged political scandals in Chicago, and came away “with nothing.”

Warren said, “They have come away with zilch.”

This item, lost amid furor over newly released Justice Department torture memos last week, came out April 14. Warren was at the Tribune from 1984 until August 2008, according to the newspaper, going to the Tribune from the rival Chicago Sun-Times where he began in 1977. Warren was Washington Bureau Chief for the Tribune for eight years beginning in 1993.

Warren emphasized that his own viewpoint on whether Fitzgerald’s investigations included Obama has changed. From the MSNBC transcript:

WARREN: . . . And, if I can also just add something, in talking to a couple of lawyers close to the case, which is something, Chris and Lynn, that has totally undermined my prevailing assumption that Patrick Fitzgerald took it easy on then candidate Obama, then President-elect Obama, now President Obama, in fact, now I can only attribute this to sources very close to the case.

It turns out that Patrick Fitzgerald and his guys were very aggressively questioning a host of witness, including the notorious developer, now convicted, Tony Rezko, even when he was in solitary confinement a few blocks from here, aggressively questioning him about the involvement of Barack Obama in any of this, and came away, apparently . . .

MATTHEWS: So . . .

WARREN: . . . with nothing.

So, my notion that they took a passive attack toward Obama for a variety of reasons, I now have to admit, according to my sources, is simply wrong.

A politician who's clean.

A husband and father who doesn't cheat on his wife or his taxes.

An honest man.

What a freak....................

...I wouldn't believe his side of the story.

What about REZKO?? What about REZKO??

Oy.

Rezko would be sent to Gitmo and waterboarded UNTIL HE CONFESSED, right? Isn't that how we ended up in Iraq? Anyone have a problem with that?