Marathon Pundit: Rezko trial: A scolding and more challenges on credibility

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Rezko trial: A scolding and more challenges on credibility

The weather is absolutely miserable in Chicago today. All day there has been a hard driving cold rain, with an occasional bolt of lightening thrown in.

The stormy weather led to stormy tempers in the corruption trial of Democratic political insider Tony Rezko.

From AP:

The star witness at political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko's fraud trial got a warning from the judge Thursday to answer the questions he was asked and not waste time with his own rambling thoughts.

"At the rate we are going, you will still be on the stand in May," U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve told federal witness Stuart P. Levine.

Allegations of bribery involving the proposed building of a hospital in northwest sububurban Crytal Lake came up again today.

From the Daily Herald:

If Antoin "Tony" Rezko wanted a bribe from Mercy Hospital in exchange for letting it build a facility in Crystal Lake, why didn't he direct the chairman of the state hospital board to approve the plan -- no ifs, ands or buts -- at a vote scheduled just two days out, asked an attorney for Rezko Wednesday.

The attorney, Joseph Duffy, has spent about a week hammering at the credibility of the government's star witness, Stuart Levine. Thursday, he began in earnest to confront the thornier problem of what to do about the secret tape recordings where Levine, not knowing he was being taped, suggests to others that Rezko is in on corrupt deals. Duffy's explanation, given during opening statements of the trial, is that Levine was acting on his own, invoking Rezko's name to benefit himself.

Thursday he set out to prove that point by playing a phone call made April 19, 2004, between Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board Chairman Thomas Beck and Levine, a board member.

Levine and Beck have testified that Rezko would tell Beck how to vote on various hospital matters. But Duffy characterizes Rezko -- a Blagojevich fundraiser -- as just a liaison between the board and the governor, someone who relayed the administration's wishes in a perfectly legal fashion.