If the Hsu fits ... Posted by: McQ
on Saturday, September 22, 2007
I continue to watch this story about Norman Hsu and the donations to various parties and politicians among the Democrats he's managed over the years, and it appears the story has some legs.
As I've noted many times, corrupt politicians aren't anything new or particularly noteworthy, but when it appears that the corruption may be more broadly based, well, its at least worth a mention.
The time frame is from January 2003 to July of this year. The total amount is over 2.5 million and all is traced back to Hsu. Hillary Clinton is receiving the major heat for this, but as you'll see on the list, other Dem Presidential candidates (Biden and Obama) are on the list as well. In fact it is a veritable "who's who" of Democratic politicians from the Mayor of San Francisco to governors, senators (yes, Ted Kennedy is on the list, as is John Kerry, Barbara Boxer and DiFi) and Congressional reps. Also on the list is an organization Chuck Schumer headed up - Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee took in big bucks from our boy Norman.
Hmmm - wonder if Henry Waxman will want to investigate this?
Flip has always been a good read, but he is doing sterling service here. Guess that’s why he’s a top-notch fraud analyst. You might think that, say, a national newspaper would have somebody of that caliber getting paid to do the analysis that Flip does for free. I would have thought that; but, once again, I would have been too trusting.
Thanks to the blogosphere, particularly Flip Pidot, this story has the potential to get a lot bigger. The media has been aggressively spinning this story as the intersection of a greedy con man, and the "broken system" of campaign financing. The Clinton campaign, according to the MSM is just a victim, "burned" by Hsu in the words of a NYT editorial.
Like a true journalist, Flip has resisted drawing conclusions, and focused on following the money. He asked:
[I]f Hsu was simply buying his way into the inner circles of various celebrity politicians, whether for his own ego or to project more credibility and gravitas to his marks (or both), why would his fundraising have been so unwaveringly partisan - targeting only members of the minority party and only very specific members of that party[?]
Noting that Hsu’s contributions followed certain predictable, idiosyncratic, patterns, Flip concludes:
The points is that Hsu’s specific slate of favored candidates (itemized here) seemed to be deliberate and predetermined and was not satisfyingly explained away by any of his speculated motivations.
Then comes the bombshell. It turns out that Hsu’s donations track closely with those of one Fred Hochberg: same dates; same amounts; same candidates. Hsu is a political novice, who started donating to politicians only in 2003, but Hochberg is a longtime member of the Clinton Machine, who served in Bill’s cabinet.
In other words, it looks like Hsu’s donations were directed by the Clinton Machne. This looks like an Harold Ickes operation to me:
Rewind to 1996, when Hillary headed her husband’s legal defense fund during his re-election bid.
On April 4 of that year, she received a damage-control briefing from fund trustees and a top White House aide about more than $600,000 in questionable donations bundled by Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, a Chinese bagman who ran a restaurant in Little Rock, Ark.
The largest chunk of the haul — $463,000 — raised flags among fund trustees, because it was delivered by Trie in two manila envelopes stuffed full of sequentially numbered money orders from different parts of the country. All bore the same handwriting.
It was agreed at the meeting that the the dirty cash would be kept secret until after the election — and even then, the names of donors would never be disclosed. It was also agreed donors would be free to re-send any returned money.
The existence of Trie’s funny money wasn’t publicly acknowledged until the scandal broke in the media a month after the election.
The Clintons reluctantly returned the funds, along with an additional $122,000 raised by Trie from Asian donors with low-paying jobs.
Soon the FBI and Congress launched probes, and the White House was compelled to turn over documents from the April 1996 briefing that Hillary attended.
The smoking gun came in the form of handwritten notes taken by deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes.
"Charlie Trie — Money orders — Don’t report names if $ are returned," Ickes wrote. "Could return all $ & ask people to resend it if they want."
If Ickes can be tied to this scheme it will take more than a Special Prosecutor. They will need to go after the Clinton campaign with a RICO Act prosecution.
