While on the county payroll, a top urologist at Cook County Hospital solicited nearly $1 million from drug companies over the last decade for his private foundation.
Dr. Paul S. Ray’s pitch was that the money would go toward medical research and education.
But most of the money hasn’t gone to health care at all. Instead, Ray invested it—mostly in Tony Rezko.
Read More...Rezko’s relationship with Obama goes back 18 years. Some key events:
1. In 1990, Obama was a Harvard Law School student when he got a job offer from Rezko, then a developer of low-income housing in Chicago. Obama didn’t take the job.
2. In 1993, Obama got a job with a small Chicago law firm, Davis Miner Barnhill, that worked with low-income housing developers.
3. In 1995, one of the firm’s clients—the Woodlawn Historic Preservation and Investment Corp., co-founded by Obama’s then-boss Allison Davis—teamed with Rezko to turn a vacant nursing home at 61st and Drexel on Chicago’s South Side into low-income apartments. Obama worked 32 hours on the project, but only five hours came after Rezko and WPIC became partners, according to the law firm.
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