What about Bill’s Funny Money?

Lest you think the only fishy money these days is the money raised by Hillary fundraiser extraordinarie Norman Hsu, it bears noting that husband Bill has been earning and raising some pretty hefty sums and in some questionable ways.

Note this Wall Street Journal story on Bill’s aide Douglas Band:

Mr. Band, a Florida native, joined the Clinton administration as an intern in 1995 and rose to become the president’s personal aide. In 1998, he was interviewed by investigators for independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who were looking into Mr. Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Mr. Band told them he got to know Ms. Lewinsky at the White House and, at her request, had accompanied her to the 1995 White House ball, according to an interview memorandum prepared by investigators.

[. . .]

When Mr. Clinton left office in 2001, Mr. Band stayed with him. Without his young aide, Mr. Clinton said in a 2003 speech, “I could not get through the day.” Adds one longtime Clinton associate: “When Doug calls up, it’s like having the president call up.”

Given the large sums of money involved, and the presidential campaign, it is only a matter of time before these funds and relationships come under some scrutiny:

As he embarked on his post-presidency life, Mr. Clinton and his wife had relatively few assets and millions of dollars in legal bills. Over the next half decade, he hopscotched the globe, often with Mr. Band at his side, giving speeches at up to $450,000 a pop. He raised large sums for his library and his foundation and snagged nearly $10 billion in commitments through the Clinton Global Initiative.

To help keep Mr. Band from accepting job offers in the private sector, arrangements were made to supplement his income, people familiar with the matter say. Mr. Burkle’s Yucaipa operation, for example, paid Mr. Band through a company called SGRD, these people say. In 2001, Mr. Band and a family member set up two entities in Florida using the SGRD name, public records indicate. Mr. Clinton’s spokesman didn’t respond to questions about Mr. Band’s financial relationships, other than the one with Mr. Follieri.

Do we really want the Clinton’s back in the White House with even more funny money and who knows how many promised payoffs? Bill and Hillary have brought scandal and questionable ethics wherever they have gone. Don’t look for that to magically change just because Hillary is the candidate and Bill the loyal spouse.

Hsu Strings Tied to Hillary

Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters uses this Boston Globe report to lay out the corruption at the heart of the Hsu scandal:

This revelation shows that Hillary and her campaign didn’t just passively receive funds from Hsu. The campaign actively worked with Hsu to distribute the funds to other campaigns, and in return, Hillary bought endorsements with the stolen money. And since the Boston Globe did the reporting, this can’t be chalked up to some conservative hit piece, either.

For example, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack dropped out of the presidential race early, surprising some analysts who thought he might have a chance against Hillary. Vilsack had a $450,000 debt to retire, and Hillary lent her assistance — and her chief fundraiser. In Nevada, whose primary got pushed to the front end of the schedule, Clinton arranged for Hsu to raise funds for Dana Titus’ gubernatorial race. Both Titus and Vilsack endorsed Hillary.

Hsu made a lot of contributions to Hillary endorsers. He have almost $50,000 to Tom Harkin, whose wife Ruth is a major backer of Hillary. Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan got over $20,000. Dianne Feinstein got $17,000. Mark Pryor took $11,000 from Hsu. All of them support Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

State and local politicians didn’t get ignored by Hsu, either. Some people wondered why Hsu would donate eye-popping amounts to people like New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who got over $100,000 between them. Both endorse Hillary Clinton. Hsu even managed a $3500 donation to a Chicago alderman whose sister, Patty Solis Doyle, runs one of Hillary’s campaigns.

It’s quite the web the Hsu spun, or perhaps Hillary spun it herself with Hsu’s money. This story will cling to Hillary like a spider’s web, and if reporters and the FBI dig deeply enough, she may never extricate herself from it.

More fishy donors for Hillary

The fundraising issue just wont go away for Hillary. The Wall Street Journal has found more questionable donors and bundlers:

When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband’s boss for the donations. “It wasn’t personal money. It was all corporate money,” Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. “I don’t even like Hillary. I’m a Republican.”

The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising “bundler” for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton’s gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.

ABC’s The Note points out that the fundraising scandals – or potential scandals – just keep coming:

Another Hsu could drop today — this from a press release this morning from the US attorney for the Southern District of New York: “A press conference will be held today to announce the unsealing of a criminal complaint charging an individual with perpetrating a $60 million ‘Ponzi’ fraud scheme. The complaint also alleges that the defendant committed related federal campaign finance crimes.”

In addition, Clinton is still refusing to say whether she’ll return money from Oscar Wyatt, who is on trial for fraud, conspiracy, and other charges related to Saddam Hussein’s abuse of the UN’s oil-for-food program. Wyatt appears to have had a close relationship with President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, according to testimony that’s emerged at federal trials, per ABC News.

And The Washington Post’s John Solomon and Matthew Mosk examine Clinton’s top fund-raisers and find “several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband’s record.”

The question remains, however, if any of this is going to have an effect on the primary. So far Hillary seems to have extended her poll leads as the Hsu scandals emerged. Is America really ready for another cycle of Clinton scandals? Can her opponents make a compelling case that these scandals, and those of the past, disqualify her for the presidency? Stay Tuned. We will keep making the case and raising the questions, but it is up to the voters to deliver the verdict.

There was an old lady who lived with a Hsu

Great carton from Michael Ramirez at IBD:

The Corruption of Clinton’s Campaign

In case you missed it on the front page, Richard Collins has another column on the continuing Hsu affair. As I have noted here, Collins asserts that this latest scandal has to put a dent in the vaunted discipline of the Hillary campaign:

If there is one thing the media agrees upon it is that Hillary Clinton runs a shrewd and disciplined campaign. This mantra runs through practically every media mention as they report the tried and true horse race story lines.

But the ongoing Norman Hsu fundraising scandal has to call into question this basic premise. The New York Times noted this week that Hillary was afraid that a fundraising scandal could harm her campaign. And yet faced with an unknown figure coming out of nowhere to become one of her, and her party’s, biggest fundraisers didn’t raise any red flags.

Read the rest.

HILL BILL FOOTED BY HSU

The Hsu story just keeps on going. More today from the NY Post:

Members of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign staff got a nice payoff last year for their work to get her re-elected – a trip to Las Vegas funded by her fugitive former fund-raiser.

Among the Sin City guests of disgraced former fund-raiser Norman Hsu was Patti Solis Doyle, one of Clinton’s most trusted advisers who now runs the senator’s presidential campaign.

According to The Los Angeles Times, Hsu – who raised more than $850,000 for Clinton before being jailed last month on charges related to an investment scheme – treated the senator’s campaign staff to several days at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, complete with free show tickets and dinners at posh restaurants.

Doyle was accompanied by two junior staffers and a New York-based fund-raiser, the report said.

Read the rest.

Could Hsu be out on bail?

In an amazing turn of events, a judge has set bail for Hillary fundraising fugitive Norman Hsu. Sure, a $5 million cash bond is pretty serious, but given that Hsu has twice skipped out on charges, he is apparently suicidal, and the millions of dollars he has stolen, it seems ridiculous to even have bail as an option. I think the Mesa County district attorney was right and the judge wrong:

Citing Mr. Hsu’s wealth and his propensity to elude authorities, the Mesa County district attorney, Pete Hautzinger, asked Judge Bruce R. Raaum to set the bond at $50 million.

Mr. Hsu’s lawyer, Mr. Elliff, called the amount “ridiculous” and said he suspected that Mr. Hsu would be unable to pay that amount.

Mr. Hautzinger, however, said that the authorities in Mesa County had found a checkbook with a $6 million balance belonging to Mr. Hsu upon his arrest.

Mr. Hautzinger also told Judge Raaum that his office had received a telephone call from a resident of Orange County accusing Mr. Hsu of heading a bogus investment company involving $33 million and 50 investors.

“Given the history of this case, and the allegations about multimillions of dollars, it seems like Monopoly money at this point,” Mr. Hautzinger said.

[. . .]

But Judge Raaum set the bond at $5 million. “Two million wasn’t enough to keep him from absconding,” he said.

If that isn’t enough, Hsu is suspected of even more fraud:

The revelation that Mr. Hsu, a fugitive for 15 years in a California fraud case, might be implicated in another fraud investigation came after New York investors learned this week that $40 million they had invested with Mr. Hsu might be in jeopardy.

Only time will tell I guess if how this story ends, but if Hsu is a fugitive again or commits suicide that judge is going to look mighty foolish.

H/T Captain Ed.

Mark Steyn on Media and Hsu

Mark Steyn makes a good point about the media coverage and Norman Hsu. He points out the interesting take the New York Times had with the article noted her yesterday: Clinton Sees Fear Realized in Trouble With Donor.

Mark comments:

So the story is not the scandal but Hillary’s “fear” that she might be “vulnerable” to such a scandal. How come Republic Senators can’t get that kind of sympathetic treatment?

Craig Sees Fear Realized in Trouble With Adjoining Stall

Insofar as I understand the Times spin, it’s that Mrs Clinton’s brilliant political antennae had cannily anticipated that she might be vulnerable to charges of taking illegal campaign contributions from shifty foreign bagmen. Which is easy to believe, given that she had, after all, taken them.

True.

Quote of the Day

This week, Newsweek has a cover story on how Hillary will govern and asks on the cover: “What Kind of Decider Will She Be?” The magazine never really answers the question, but we at least we have learned one thing about her decision-making this week. When it comes to accepting contributions from a Hong Kong fugitive or a Chinese family of modest means, micromanager Hillary Clinton, with all her experience, just put out her hand and decided not to ask some very obvious questions.

- Myrna Blyth

Hsu undercuts competence argument

Much of the praise that has come Hillary Clinton’s way has been due to her campaigns seeming discipline and competence. But that reputation is taking a blow as the Hsu fundraising scandal continues to play itself out.

Two stories today underline this trend. The Washington Post notes that although the campaign blames the problem on a lack of red flags thrown up by a public records search, such flags were there if you looked:

Though a commonly used public record search shows that Hsu had multiple business lawsuits filed against him dating to 1985, filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and was a defendant in two 1991 California court matters listed as possible criminal cases, the campaign said its computer checks used insufficient search terms that did not include the two middle names Hsu used in the California case. “In all of these searches, the campaign used the name Norman Hsu, which, like the search results of other committees and campaigns, did not turn up disqualifying information,” Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson explained.

But even without more sophisticated searches, they had warnings before the scandal broke. The New York Post echoes earlier stories that reveal that the campaign was warned:

Wolf [Clinton campaign staffer] was reportedly contacted by California Democratic Party officials after an Irvine-based businessman named Jack Cassidy, who’d learned of Hsu’s business ventures from a pal, reached out to contacts within the party, and inside Team Clinton.

On June 18, Cassidy wrote to a party official with an urgent warning in an e-mail, saying, “There is a significant probability that a man using the name of Norman Hsu is running a Ponzi scheme . . . The math does not work!”

That prompted the Democratic operative to turn to Wolf, who wrote back that such allegations were baseless.

So Cassidy tried Wolf himself, the Times reported.

“I am more than ever convinced that a man claiming to be a big fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton is running a Ponzi scheme,” he wrote, adding that he was concerned someone he knew could “lose her home” over the possible scam, adding that he feared Hsu was “using your good name in vain.”

As noted previously, this warning provoked Wolf’s infamous claim that Hsu was “COMPLETELY legit.”

So, even though Hillary knew this kind of story would be likely to harm her campaign, and despite the fact that there was supposed to be an emphasis on stringent background checks, despite warnings specifically about Hsu, Hillary’s campaign simply couldn’t resists the money. This says a lot about her character and management.

Even the WaPo notes the problem:

That such a basic mistake could slip through the famously disciplined Clinton campaign has raised eyebrows among strategists in both parties. Clinton herself is known for doing background research on people before she meets them, digging for personal details she can introduce into a conversation. The sheer amount Hsu raised as a virtual unknown in a short period of time should have raised questions, some say.

Hillary is banking on voters belief that she has learned from the mistakes of the past – or ignorance of those mistakes – but this story undercuts that theme. It appears that the Clinton’s still choose money and power over character and ethics.