In the 2008 presidential campaign, now-convicted felon Tony Rezko's role in helping Barack and Michelle Obama purchase their dream home at 5046 S. Greenwood Ave. in Chicago's Hyde Park area created a scandal that threatened to derail Obama's presidential hopes.

Tony Rezko and Barack Obama

As the elements of the scandal emerged, Obama went into overdrive, holding extensive interview meetings with the staffs of Chicago's two major newspapers, with his supporters rebutting and attacking critics and justifying Obama's decisions.

The deal

Here are the key points in how Obama wanted to represent the home purchase once the criticism began:

• When a prestige house across the street from Tony Rezko's came on the market at 5046 S. Greenwood, Rezko must have thought it was just perfect for Barack and Michelle Obama and their two daughters. Rezko found the house for Obama. Salon.com reported that Donna Schwan of MetroPro Realty, the real estate agent who listed the property, recalled that the deal started when Rezko expressed interest in the listing, according to the Chicago Tribune.

   

• The house was evidently perfect, a 96-year-old, multi-story, 6,400-square-foot, brick Georgian Revival home with four fireplaces, six bedrooms, six bathrooms, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a wine cellar large enough to store 1,000 bottles, the Tribune reported. The house was situated on a large double corner lot, with the vacant lot adjoining the home at the street corner. With a foot-tall concrete barrier and a wrought iron fence surrounding the property, there was no access to the vacant lot, except through Obama's driveway.

   

  The neighborhood was in Kenwood, a South Side oasis of pricey homes attractive to the University of Chicago professors who liked to live close to work. The property would be a nice step-up for the Obama family seeking to move from the small Hyde Park condo the couple bought in 1993 for $277,500, where they lived in the eight years Obama was state senator, to a prestige home suitable for the family of a U.S. senator, the Boston Globe reported.

   

  The problem was that the doctor and his wife who owned the property, Fredrick E. Wondisford and Sally R. Radovick, wanted to sell the vacant lot and the house at the same time, even though the two properties were separately listed. Also, while the sellers wanted to find a buyer as quickly as possible, they did not want to close the deal until June 2005.

   

• The list price just for the home was $1.95 million, outside the reach of the Obama family, even with Obama's re-issued 1995 autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," hitting bestseller lists, his U.S. Senate salary of $157,082, and Michelle's 2005 income of $317,000 at the University of Chicago Hospitals, Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

   

• Rezko came up with a solution. His wife Rita bought the vacant lot at the full asking price, permitting Obama and Michelle to negotiate buying the house for $1.65 million, a discount of $300,000 from the asking price.

   

• Rita Rezko closed on the vacant lot the same day the Obamas closed on the house, paying $625,000 for the vacant lot.

"Both actions would be clear violations of Senate ethics rules baring the granting or asking of favors," wrote John Fund in the Wall Street Journal.

The Boston Globe reported Obama asked Rezko's advice in negotiating the deal – after all, Rezko was supposedly experienced with real estate, having negotiated so many low-income housing deals in Chicago – and Obama toured the house with Rezko before making an offer.

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