Man’s Country, one of Chicago’s “grand old bathhouses” and located at 5015 North Clark Street in Chicago’s “Boystown,” was a frequent hangout for State Senator Obama and Rahm Emanuel
From Opinion Maker
By Wayne Madsen
President Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel are lifetime members of the same gay bath house in uptown Chicago, according to informed sources in Chicago’s gay community, as well as veteran political sources in the city.
The bath house, Man’s Country, caters to older white men and it has been in business for some 30 years and is known as one of uptown Chicago’s “grand old bathhouses.” WMR was told by sources who are familiar with the bath house that it provides one-year “lifetime” memberships to paying customers and that the club’s computerized files and pre-computer paper files, include membership information for both Obama and Emanuel. The data is as anonymized as possible for confidentiality purposes. However, sources close to “Man’s Country” believe the U.S. Secret Service has purged the computer and filing cabinet files of the membership data on Obama and Emanuel.
Members of Man’s Country are also issued club identification cards. WMR learned that Obama and Emanuel possessed the ID cards, which were required for entry.
Obama began frequenting Man’s Country in the mid-1990s, during the time he transitioned from a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School to his election as an Illinois State Senator in 1996. Emanuel, reportedly joined Man’s Country after he left the Clinton White Hosue and moved back to Chicago in 1998, joining the investment firm of Wasserstein Perella and maintaining his membership during his 2002 campaign for the U.S. 5th District House seat vacated by Rod Blagojevich, who was elected governor.
Man’s Country appears to be a “one stop shopping” center for gay men. The club’s website advertises steam rooms, “fantasy rooms,” bed rooms, male strippers, adult movies, and lockers.
However, Man’s Country was not the only location for Obama’s predatory gay sex activities. The Chicago gay community is aware that Obama often made contacts with younger men at his famous “pick-up basketball” games. It was at these “pick up” matches where Obama first met Emanuel and a young Democratic campaign worker and senior bank vice president named Alexi Giannoulias. Currently running for Obama’s old U.S. Senate seat now occupied by Roland Burris, Giannoulias successfully ran for Illinois Treasurer in 2006 after being drafted for the run by Chicago’s Democratic machine.
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Giannoulias was a vice president and senior loan officer for his father’s bank, Broadway Bank, from 2002 to 2006. Broadway Bank made real estate loans to Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the chief of Rezmar Corporation. On May 13, 2008, Rezko was found guilty, after being indicted by a grand jury at the behest of the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick J. Fitzgerald, of six counts of wire fraud, six counts of mail fraud, two counts of corrupt solicitation, and two counts of money laundering. Rezko has been in solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Detention Center at Van Buren and Clark in Chicago since June 2008. However, Rezko has not yet been officially sentenced to a federal prison. A Syrian-American, Rezko is considered to be a flight risk, even though his one-time fortune of $50 million has been reduced to zero.
One Republican politician in Chicago told WMR that Rezko will be a prime witness for Blagojevich’s defense. “Figure it this way, Rezko’s been in solitary confinement in the city jail since June 0f 2008 . . . if he is released to appear at Blagojevich’s trial as the primary witness, everyone expects him to squeal like a pig,” said the Republican politico.
In 2005, Rezko reportedly engaged in a complicated real estate “flip” through which his wife Rita and Obama agreed to split an empty lot adjoining a home that Obama bought in Chicago’s Kenwood district. The deal saw Obama buy the home for $1.65 million, which was $300,00 below market value. Obama then bought a strip of the adjoining property from Mrs. Rezko, a speculative deal that stood to make Obama a handsome profit. Since Rezko’s conviction, the property has has reportedly gone into bankruptcy. Giannoulias’s Broadway Bank was seized by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation on April 23, 2010, reportedly as Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner was on his way to Chicago to present the bank with a bailout check. Geithner quickly changed his plans.
Giannoulias, Broadway’s then-senior loan officer, has denied being involved in the decision to loan money to Rezko.
Blagojevich’s trial judge, U.S. District Court judge James Zagel, a crony of former Illinois Republican Governor Jim Thompson, ruled that all 500 hours of phone calls intercepted and taped by Fitzgerald could not be played during Blagojevich’s trial as demanded by Blagojevich and his defense lawyers. Blagojevich demanded that Fitzgerald “show up in court and explain to everybody . . . why you don’t want those tapes that you made played in court.”
WMR has learned that the tapes may contain salty references Obama’s and Emanuel’s private lives.
WMR attempted to interview Blagojevich’s senior defense lawyer Sam Adam to no avail but other informed sources told us that the tapes, if played, would highlight the corruption of not only Obama, Emanuel, and other member of Obama’s Chicago “brain trust” but also Fitzgerald himself. WMR was told that Fitzgerald’s tactics have included providing sex and drugs to imprisoned felons to get them to provide perjured testimony at federal trials.
It is exactly the type of federal prosecutorial misconduct by Fitzgerald that former Republican Governor said was used by state prosecutors when he commuted the death sentences of Illinois’s death row population. Ryan was indicted by Fitzgerald for fraud and he is currently serving out a federal prison sentence.
Blagojevich’s trial was scheduled to begin on June 3 and Fitzgerald’s main interest was to keep the trial focused on Blagojevich, especially after he managed to “flip” Blagojevich’s former chief of staff John Harris to testify against the impeached and ousted governor. WMR learned from informed sources that one lawyer on Harris’s defense team is involved in a gay partner scandal that was discovered by the attorney’s wife.
Some of the wiretaps may reveal that it was not Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s longtime friend and current White House policy adviser who was Obama’s top candidate to fill his U.S. Senate seat, but the young 32-year old “pick up basketball” friend of Obama, Giannoulias, then serving his second year as state Treasurer. However, Obama had avoided campaigning for Giannoulias in Illinois and there were initial indications that the president had “thrown Giannoulias under the bus,” according to some Democratic political circles in Chicago. However, Obama has since had a change of heart and began to campaign for him.
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