Tony Rezko is no Jim McDougal

I've been thinking for some time that there might be an attempt to turn Tony Rezko into Barack Obama's Jim McDougal. (For those who didn't follow the Whitewater scandal, Jim McDougal was the realtor and banker who, after being prosecuted, turned on Bill Clinton and essentially got the whole scandal started.) Ben Smith has a story that says that Tony Rezko is now claiming that federal prosecutors were trying to do just that.

Your Honor, the prosecutors have been overzealous in pursuing a crime that never happened. They are pressuring me to tell them the “wrong” things that I supposedly know about Governor Blagojevich and Senator Obama. I have never been party to any wrongodoing that involved the Govenror or the Senator. I will never fabricate lies about anyone else for selfish purposes.

If true then kudos to Rezko for resisting the pressure to falsely throw Obama under the bus in order to save himself.