OntheWilderSide

The old headline from Newsday was, “President George Bush pardoned Isaac Robert Toussie, who was involved in a Suffolk real estate scam.” Now, this:

(excerpt from) The New York Times
Pardon Lasts Just One Day for Developer in Fraud Case
By David Stout and Eric Lichtblau

WASHINGTON — President Bush changed his mind on Christmas Eve, pulling back a pardon he had extended a day earlier to a Brooklyn developer at the center of a Long Island real estate fraud case and adding a bizarre twist to the episode.

The developer, Isaac R. Toussie, who was listed Tuesday as one of the beneficiaries of the president’s constitutional power to wipe away a criminal record, is not being pardoned “based on information that has subsequently come to light,” the White House said late Wednesday afternoon.

The terse White House statement did not elaborate, but officials familiar with the case said that presidential aides — and perhaps President Bush himself — were concerned about appearances, because Mr. Toussie’s father, Robert, donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee last April…

…the name of Isaac Toussie is detested by many working-class people in the New York metropolitan area. In 2001, several hundred of them sued in Federal District Court, accusing Mr. Toussie and his father of masterminding a scheme in which inexperienced or first-time buyers were promised affordable and comfortable suburban houses but instead were sold shoddily built homes in poor neighborhoods and saddled by mortgage payments that shot up surprisingly.

Filed under: local, long island, Long Island Politics, News, Political Websites, president, social & economic justice, US Politics Tagged: | bush, Criminal Justice, Isaac R. Toussie, Isaac Robert Toussie, Isaac Toussie, long island, Pardon, real estate, Toussie