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.

Hillary’s Smear Standard

Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen makes a good point about Hillary’s double standard when it comes to smears:

It is an odd standard Clinton has when it comes to smears. When the entertainment mogul David Geffen, once a Clinton supporter, called both Bill and Hillary liars, Hillary not only decried the remark as a particularly vivid example of the “politics of personal destruction,” but she also demanded that Barack Obama do the same — and return a $2,300 donation from Geffen. Yet when Clinton herself was asked to repudiate the abuse of Petraeus, she either saw no reason to do so or, much more likely, was afraid to alienate an important constituency, the 3.3 million members of MoveOn.org, who stand symbolically at the frontiers of New Hampshire and Iowa. She would, it seems, rather be president than be right.

Hillary is taking a calculated risk right now. She is trying to appear as a centrist without having to disavow the leftist base of her own party. She wants to win the primary first and then lay on the heavy centrist rhetoric to appeal to the middle. The question is whether her opponents can force her to take a principled stand and force her hand.

Is Hillary hiding from the press?

Michael Goodwin at the NY Daily News wonders why Hillary won’t face the press on a regular basis:

To say the cat’s got Hillary’s tongue doesn’t begin to address the mystery of why someone who wants to be President can’t speak spontaneously more often. When the goin’ gets tough, Clinton sends out a messenger or a carefully crafted printed statement. Would the imperial candidate be an imperial President? Is the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain?

Wolfson – naturally, he spoke for her when I called – argues that she talks with reporters often. Granted, she has chats with reporters in primary states about local issues and she has an occasional sitdown with her favorite friendlies at The New York Times. Sometimes reporters on the campaign trail can get close enough to shout out a question – if they can fight through the autograph seekers, schoolchildren and Secret Service agents.

But Clinton hasn’t had a full-scale press conference since last January, of the kind where she takes questions on virtually any subject from any reporter. It’s the sort of thing that Bush now does about once a month and Clinton’s hidey act seems to be unique among the major candidates.

Those who know Hillary’s history know that she has not had a good relationship with the press and if scandals continue to be an issue this relationship could get ugly again. President Bush has been criticized for hating the press and for secretive and paranoid tendencies, but ironically Hillary has all the same tendencies of this caricature developed by Bush haters. Her obvious dislike of the press, her unwillingness to be open and upfront, and her penchant for secrecy may come back to haunt her yet in this campaign.

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.

Trouble in Hillaryland?

DC Fishbowl find some indication the answer is yes and points us to this sneak peak at this weekend’s Chris Mathews Show:

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC NEWS:
“Up until now, Bill Clinton has been a complete plus among Democratic primary voters for Hillary Clinton. But now, with the Norman Hsu money-raising controversy, for the first time there’s a real concern in the Clinton camp that this is real baggage from the Clinton White House years. There’s a lot of stress, a lot of damage control, a lot of finger-pointing — and in fact, stress is so high that there was a shouting match observed among Clinton staffers in public last week.”

Perhaps the campaign is not as discipled as we were led to believe.

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.