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  1. #1
    Believe. Barry O'Bama's Avatar
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    The indictment of a Chicago nurse accused of diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds for her personal use has turned a spotlight on an Illinois state agency that awarded her money while it was headed by one of President Barack Obama’s closest friends, Dr. Eric E. Whitaker, records show.
    Under Whitaker, the Illinois Department of Public Health awarded Margaret A. Davis — the former program director of the Chicago Chapter of the National Black Nurses Association — a no-bid contract and seven AIDS- and cancer-related grants that became part of her $500,000 cash-siphoning scheme, prosecutors say.
    According to federal subpoenas and other records, Davis’ June 9 indictment by a federal grand jury in Springfield is part of a larger criminal investigation involving the health department and other state agencies.
    Whitaker — who’s now a top executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center — has not been accused of any wrongdoing. He says he couldn’t have known about the problems the Davis indictment describes and that he and his staff acted quickly when they became aware of problems with other contractors.
    Since 2009 and as recently as March, federal authorities have sent the health department a total of four subpoenas seeking information on a broad range of “faith-based initiatives” and health-outreach programs that Whitaker oversaw. Those subpoenas name seven organizations — including Davis’ National Black Nurses Association — which, in all, got more than $2 million under Whitaker.
    The Illinois attorney general’s office is suing to recover $523,546 in allegedly misspent money from one of those organizations: the Let’s Talk, Let’s Test Foundation, a now-defunct AIDS awareness group.
    Whitaker — who was hired by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich in 2003 on Obama’s recommendation — publicly surfaced in the federal investigation in May 2010, when the Chicago Sun-Times reported that he, former chief of staff Quinshaunta Golden and two other Blagojevich administration officials — Deputy Gov. Louanner Peters and Whitaker’s successor at the health department, Dr. Damon Arnold — had been named in a subpoena seeking their state-government e-mails and other electronic records since January 2007. None has been charged with any crime.
    Whitaker, 46, left state government in October 2007 to work alongside future first lady Mic e Obama at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he’s now executive vice president for strategic affiliations and associate dean for community-based research — a job that paid him $670,833 in 2009.
    During the 2008 presidential campaign, Whitaker frequently traveled with Obama, and he remains part of the president’s inner circle. He vacationed with the president in Martha’s Vineyard late last month and attended three White House parties earlier this year.
    After the Sun-Times reported last year that Whitaker’s name had surfaced in the federal investigation, he told reporters: “The organizations the subpoenas were about — they received funding in the last month of my tenure at the Illinois Department of Public Health, and the Sun-Times framed it as if I was in the center of a lot of things. I would say that’s inaccurate


    http://www.suntimes.com/news/watchdo...as-friend.html

  2. #2
    Veteran Wild Cobra's Avatar
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    This election season will really get interesting.

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