Clinton Fundraising Scandal
29th August 2007
by gordo
(click to inflate)
William Paw is a generous man. Since 2005, he and five family members have donated $200,000 to Democrats, and the $45,000 they gave to Hillary Clinton puts them in the top tier of her donor families. Only one problem: the household income for the Paw family is just $49,000 per year. So how do the Paws manage to come up with all that campaign cash? The Wall Street Journal thinks it has to do with a man named Norman Hsu:
The Paws’ political donations closely track donations made by Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records. Mr. Hsu is one of the top fund-raisers for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. He has hosted or co-hosted some of her most prominent money-raising events.
Kent Cooper, a former disclosure official with the Federal Election Commission, said the two-year pattern of donations justifies a probe of possible violations of campaign-finance law, which forbid one person from reimbursing another to make contributions.
“There are red lights all over this one,” Mr. Cooper said.
According to public documents, Mr. Hsu once listed his address at the Paw home in Daly City, though it isn’t clear if he ever lived there. He now lives in New York, according to campaign-finance records, on which he also lists a half-dozen apparel companies as his employer.
Mr. Hsu is also a major fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats. When Democrats won control of Congress in November, he threw a party at New York City hot spot Buddakan with many prominent party leaders. Press reports said that toward the end of the night, he grabbed the microphone from the deejay and shouted: “If you are supporters of Hillary for President 2008, you can stay. Otherwise, get out.”
Mr. Hsu has pledged to raise $100,000 or more for Mrs. Clinton, earning the title of “HillRaiser” along with a few hundred other top financial backers of her campaign. Earlier this year, he co-hosted a fund-raiser that raised $1 million for Mrs. Clinton at the Beverly Hills, Calif., home of billionaire Ron Burkle. He is listed as a co-host for another Clinton fund-raiser next month in northern California.
The Paw family is just one set of donors whose political donations are similar to Mr. Hsu’s. Several business associates of Mr. Hsu in New York have made donations to the same candidates, on the same dates for similar amounts as Mr. Hsu.
On four separate dates this year, the Paw family, Mr. Hsu and five of his associates gave Mrs. Clinton a total of $47,500. In all, the family, Mr. Hsu and his associates have given Mrs. Clinton $133,000 since 2005 and a total of nearly $720,000 to all Democratic candidates.
Here’s another interesting fact about Mr. Hsu– he’s a fugitive from justice:
Beginning in 1989, court records show, he began raising what added up to more than $1 million from investors, purportedly to buy latex gloves; investors were told Hsu had a contract to resell the gloves to a major American business.
In 1991, Hsu was charged with grand theft. Prosecutors said there were no latex gloves and no contract to sell them.
Hsu pleaded no contest to one grand theft charge and agreed to accept up to three years in prison. He disappeared, Smetana said, after failing to show up for a sentencing hearing. Bench warrants were issued for his arrest but he was never found.
It’s clear what’s going on here. Hsu is either swindling people out of money and funneling part of his booty to the Clinton campaign or, more likely, he’s taking more than the maximum legal amount from some donors, and spreading the donations through his contact list. It’s likely that the campaign did not know of Hsu’s shady deals, but at this point the only honorable thing to do is to return the obviously tainted contributions. But that’s precisely what Clinton is not doing. Instead, she’s taking the $23,000 contributed personally by Hsu and giving it to charity, leaving her with $110,000 in tainted cash.
This is exactly the sort of sleaze that hobbled Bill Clinton’s presidency (remember John Huang?). And it makes me wonder how much independence Senator Clinton can maintain, given how dependent she is on big fundraisers like Norman Hsu.
While they controlled Congress, the Republicans turned Capitol Hill into an open sewer of corruption and sleaze. That opened up a big opportunity for Democrats, but they won’t be able to exploit it with an old-style, big-money politician as their standard bearer in 2008. Democratic voters should do themselves a big favor and nominate John Edwards or Barack Obama.
(via Donkelphant) (cross posted at Liberal Avenger)
August 29th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
..
All Clinton era shenanigans are baaaaackkkk…..
how come I am not surprised? Jeebus. Next thing we know it’s blow job and blue dress again.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Easy question to answer, squashed. You’re not as naieve (nor dishonest), as millions of other are.
August 30th, 2007 at 1:32 am
Oops! I meant to include — nor, as self deluding.
August 30th, 2007 at 3:18 am
The irony, I think, is that many Democrats will vote for Hillary in the primary for the same reason that they voted for Kerry: electability.
In election after election, Democrats hold their noses and vote for the “electable” candidate. In the case of Bill Clinton, the “electable” candidate was actually a great campaigner, but usually this strategy leads to disaster. The problem is that the “electable” candidates tend to be those who connect well with donors, while the “unelectable” candidates connect with voters.
August 30th, 2007 at 4:56 am
This is going to be loads of fun.
The left wing is faced with the very likely prospect of Hillary Clinton as the Democrat candidate for president. So their choices will be a “woman”(thank God!) who won’t even speak to the Kossies of the world, let alone cow tow to them (Oh, shit!), or a hard line conservative of Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson or -lesser so-Rudy Guiliani stripe. Rock and a hard place.
The Kossies will continue to attack Clinton of course, in hopes of having her dumped for Dennis Kucinich, Willie Nelson or Michael Moore, and while it will never wash they could possibly damage her to the extent that they end up with Newt Gingrich as president.
The Kossie dilemma:”She’s WOman”!, “But she’s main stream!”, “But she’s a WOman!”, “But she’s main stream!”, “But…..
I’m really looking forward to this. Ain’t had so much fun since the hogs ate my brother…
August 30th, 2007 at 5:12 am
The biggest problem with Clinton is that she has almost equal ‘hate’ numbers as she does ‘approval’ numbers. Thus, she would enter a general election with the largest percent of the electorate already permanently apposed to her as any presidential candidate in history. Her margin of error is far too small and any screw up and we will be stuck with another Republican president for four years. While Kucinich is not a viable option, Obama, Edwards and maybe even one or two others could be. I just hope the big fall happens prior to the general campaign for Hillary and not in it as the candidate.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:58 am
BRT–
Your stereotyping of the American left is just that… stereotyping. The idea that the left supports people just because they’re black, or female, or Jewish, is simply not the case. This has been demonstrated time and again over the years.
As for whether or not to support Clinton, the fact is that there will be no dilemma at all. Obviously, she’d be far better than any of the “4 more years of the same” crowd, which is all the Republicans have to offer.
Clif–
Not surprisingly, those numbers have come down considerably. When confronted with the possibility of having Giuliani as president, a lot of people start saying, “I guess there ARE circumstances under which I would vote for Hillary.” She had similar negatives when she ran in New York, and wound up winning by a landslide both times. While I’d rather she wasn’t the nominee, I think that any Democrat who can get the nomination will win the election.
August 30th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
It amuses me how dailykos makes rightwing blogs so worked up.