-By Warner Todd Huston
A close friend of President Obama was forced to admit, Friday, that he is cooperating with authorities over a probe into a $433,000 kickback scheme at an Illinois agency he once headed.
Obama pal, Dr. Eric Whitaker, the former head of the Illinois Department of Public Health, has said he is cooperating on an investigation into alleged corruption perpetrated by his former chief of staff.
On August 9, James A. Lewis, the U.S. Attorney for the Illinois Central District, indicted Quinshaunta R. Golden, Whitaker’s chief of staff at the Illinois Department of Public Health, on charges of conspiring to divert state funds into her own pockets and then attempting to cover it all up.
Quinshaunta Golden is the niece of current U.S. Representative Danny Davis (D, Chicago) and is the 13th person indicted in the probe involving millions of dollars in state grants.
Golden is accused of having Leon Dingle, Jr. hire a “security consultant” at a cost of one million dollars in state funds. Dingle was director of a non-profit receiving grants from the state This consultant, referred to as “Individual A” in the indictment, then kicked some of that money back to Golden.
Dingle and his wife, Karin, have also been indicted in the probe for having diverted $3.7 million in medical grants. The Dingles spent the money on such things as Mercedes-Benzes, sporting events, yacht club fees, a condo at the tony Marina Towers, fur coats and vacation homes, according to prosecutors.
The corruption probe has already convicted one Illinois official. Former state rep. Connie Howard recently pleaded guilty to diverting to her own use upwards to $28,000 from a scholarship fund she created for needy students in her district. She will serve six months in prison and an additional six months under home detention.
Prosecutors have not said that Whitaker himself is a target in the probe.
Dr. Eric Whitaker has very close ties to the Obamas. It was the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Whitaker became a highly placed official, that gave Michelle Obama her $316,962 per year job in 2005. Also, in the book The Amateur written by Edward Klein, it was alleged that it was Whitaker that gave Reverend Jeremiah Wright a $150,000 bribe to stay quiet during Obama’s 2008 election for president.
Whitaker goes back even further with the President than the late 2000s, though. He attended Harvard Graduate School with Barack Obama in the 1990s and was the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health when Barack was in state government.
And Whitaker isn’t a merely a “past” associate, either. This month he was seen golfing with President Obama during the President’s 52nd birthday.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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