Marathon Pundit: Rezko trial: New star witness hits hard

Stuart Levine, move over: The prosecution in the corruption trial of Democratic political insider Antoin "Tony" Rezko has a new star witness, Ali Ata.

Ata, a longtime Rezko business associate, pleaded guilty last month to lying to a federal agent and filing a false tax return.

Yesterday the Lemont resident testified about the dangers of not "playing ball" with Rezko.

From the Chicago Tribune, free registration required:

Testifying against Rezko at his corruption trial Thursday, Ata said he regularly dropped by to get marching orders and often bumped into other top officials waiting for the powerful Blagojevich administration insider.

Ata said one semi-regular at (Rezko's) office was Kelly King Dibble, a former Rezko employee tapped to head a state housing agency. Once, Ata said, Dibble emerged from a session with Rezko looking disturbed. Dibble, Ata said he was later told, had resisted hiring a Rezko relative. So Rezko, Ata said, passed a message to Dibble "congratulating her on her new assignment," making it clear that the new assignment would be unemployment.

"It emphasized that you need to be a team player and follow the rules if you're going to be a part of the administration," Ata said. You had to take orders and listen, he said, or face consequences.

More...

Headline-grabbing allegations aside, Ata's most crucial role as a government witness may be to reinforce the impression that Rezko ran a shadow government out of his office. Similar charges were leveled earlier in the trial by prosecution star witness Stuart Levine, but his credibility was attacked by Rezko's lawyers who portrayed Levine as a habitual con man and drug abuser whose memory cannot be trusted.

And that is a big problem for Tony Rezko. Early on in the trial, even from my distant vantage point, I could see Rezko's attorney, Joseph Duffy, harping on the wild parties--with hard drugs as the fuel for the frivolities--at Lincolnwood's Purple Hotel, as the tool for Duffy to undermine Levine's believability during his closing statement.

Then along came Ata, who also testified about his "pay to play" maneuver that netted him a $127,000 a year state job.

Ata's testimony is a big problem for Barack Obama--Tony Rezko was one of Obama's first political sponsors. Rezko came across as a monster yesterday, and if Rezko is found guilty of corruption charges, it brings the Wilmette resident back into the national news. The trial will probably go on for a few more weeks, the prosecution is likely to rest its case on Monday--which means a verdict will be reached, barring a mistrial, well before the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Any guess on which type of verdict Hillary Clinton is hoping for?

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