Breaking News: Big Dem fundraiser wanted on swindling charges

[RamboLiberal]

Source: LA Times

The Los Angeles Times will report on this website later tonight and in Wednesday's print editions that a major Democratic Party fundraiser named Norman Hsu is wanted by authorities for skipping out on an agreement to serve up to three years in prison after pleading no contest to grand theft swindling charges.

In an exclusive story by Chuck Neubauer and Robin Fields, The Times will report that for three years Hsu has been carving out a place of political and financial influence by funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions into Democratic Party coffers, much of the money earmarked for Sen. Hillary Clinton. He has earned the ranking of Hillraiser for pledging to raise at least $100,000 for her.

In just the last 36 months Hsu has been involved in raising more than $1 million for Clinton and other Democrats. Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, confirmed today that Hsu had been a "longtime and generous supporter" of the party including Clinton. "We have no reason to call his contributions into question or to return them," Wolfson added.

Hsu has developed a specialty of bundling hefty campaign contributions from obscure citizens who live modest lives and have never before given money to campaigns. Many are not even registered to vote.

Over the years other recipients of Hsu donations have included Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Edward Kennedy.



Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/08/breaking-news-b.html

[KittyWampus]

1. Remember Katrina Leung, The GOP Fundraiser Who Was A CHINESE SPY?

And she was fucking the agent 'investigating' Gore for his supposed issues with Buddhist temples?

[Stephanie]

17. Yeah.

And the temple thing was totally hairsplitting bullshit.

[blitzen]

2. a non-story....if nobody cared about this when he pled guilty, why would they care now?

[davepc]

5. so we shouldent care about dirty money in politics as long as its our team who's benefiting?

It does go on, and efforts need to be made to keep it in check, regardless of whos getting the cash at the end of the day.

Otherwise, why bother having any campaign finance laws at all?

[RamboLiberal]

6. Agree with you - Dems need to lead the way

And make sure they are not taking sleazy donations. We shouldn't be the hypocrites like Repukes and Wingnuts.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. self delete

[John Q. Citizen]

12. Big money is great as long as it's us who is raking it in. If it's illegal, who cares.

After all, the party is more important than the law...

[blitzen]

14. Y'all are misreading my comment--which I guess is my fault--so I'll rephrase:

I truly don't believe that this story will attract much attention. Sure, Hannity et al. will push it, but it won't go very far.

There is nothing in my post to suggest that I condone anything done by Hsu....For what it's worth, I think all private campaign financing is bullshit and that campaigns should be funded 100% with public money.

[John Q. Citizen]

15. Me too. our country has been bought and paif for by the top 1%

[noyb3]

13. The reason that they might care now is because....

...the Wall Street Journal just ran an article in Tuesday's edition about a Chinese postal worker (named Paw) and his family living in a 1200 sq ft, $270,000 house in Los Angeles who have donated $200,000 to Hillary and other Democrats since 2005. And Norman Hsu's name was listed as a possible source of the money...and a former owner of the house.

The fact that the LA Times is breaking this story just a day after the Wall Street Journal article isn't good for Mr. Hsu's and Mr. Paw's donation recipients. Fortunately, the news has latched onto a Republican who likes to play footsie with men in bathrooms, so this won't get much play on the major networks.

Here's the WSJ article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118826947048110677.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

[Le Taz Hot]

28. A 1200 sq. ft. house in L.A.

for $270,000????? Sorry, I digress. :evilgrin:

[karynnj]

29. The news media's obsession with Craig is an unbelivably good break for us

This gives Clinton's people are chance to get to the bottom of the story and, if warranted return the money and sever all ties to Hsu. The amount of the Paw donations are just not believable. Seven adults living together in a 1200 sq ft house giving $200,000 in three years as political contributions? Either that or we need to profile them as people who are willing to sacrifice greatly to change the world and believe Democrats are the party to do it.

If they deal with this NOW, it would not be fair to blame Hillary Clinton's campaign. There is nothing here that says they did anything wrong. No campaign could possibly look at all their donors and check them out. (It may suggest that the party, even though it would be tricky, does need to investigate the big donors who bundle lots of contributions - to avoid these stories.

If they don't act on it - this could become a repeat of the Buddist Temple, which was competely blown out of proportion and was used to imply that foreign money (illegal) was used by Democrats. The fact that they are Chinese Americans will be used to bring up some latent American zenophopia.

[soothsayer]

3. Fortunately this story ain't as juicy as Larry's, so is sure to get zero interest

[AlGore-08.com]

20. I disagree - - most of the 1990s Clinton pseudo-scandals were about fund raising

Since HRC is reported to be one of the recipients - - and since this fits in with the MSM's script that "Democratic fund raising is corrupt" - - I think it has the potential to be one of the first big "hits" of the 2008 race.

I'm just sayin'...

[calimary]

33. Probably not. Everybody's sunk their teeth into larry craig. That, on top of

alberto gonzales (but MOSTLY larry craig, 'cause it's sex. Even more deliciously salacious, it's GAY sex), means nobody's gonna care about some fundraising scam with some political bigwig nobody ever heard of, with a name that's weird and funny-looking. Stories like that take awhile to explain - not just the ins and outs of the story itself but why it's supposedly important - and nobody gives a crap about that at the moment. Now, if it were a slow news day, on the other hand, we'd be seeing some of this. But not with larry craig just having hit the headlines in the last 24 hours.

The timing on this is EXCELLENT. If it's potentially bad for the Dems, this is better than a Friday Night News Dump. larry craig's gonna trump EVERYTHING for awhile, unless bush goes into Iran or Congress FINALLY indicts somebody.

Oh yeah, there's also the Owen Wilson thing breaking now. THAT'S gonna suck some air out of the room, too.

[WCGreen]

4. Well, with all that money sloshing around and around is it any

wonder more money isn't raised by nefarious characters such as Hsu...

I'm not making excuses for the Dem's but it is virtually impossible to trace ever single dollar raised by every single donor in a political campaign...

At least they haven't given Hsu a nifty name like Ranger or Sod Buster or what ever silly names the Bush team named their big donors...

[Stephanie]

18. No it's true you can't trace the individual donations.

But when you are dealing with a guy who's bundling $1,000,000 for you, it wouldn't hurt if someone on the staff did a little cursory background check.

[WCGreen]

22. Of course and there really is no excuse for this type of behavior...

The problem is that most of the time, you can only react once it becomes known...

The right thing would be to take that money and use it to hire auditors to make sure nothing like this happens again...

But in the heat of the campaign, that type of reaction is a non starter...

[karynnj]

30. They did give him a nifty name like Ranger etc - he was a Hilraiser

a silly name the Clinton team gave their big donors.

[Patsy Stone]

7. That's Hannity's show done then.

The "writers" can start their Labor Day break a little early.

[skiddlybop]

8. I don't think this guy would even qualify

for a "VIP" ticket in the nosebleed section of a GOP fundraiser if that's all he's bundled over his lifetime. Repugs are expected to raise much more, just in a quarter. That's the kind of lobbying/slush fund operation the Gay Old Perverts party has.

[chill_wind]

9. This will get blownup endless coverage when cable news MSM takes real hold--- count on it.

K and R.

[madfloridian]

10. Wolfson is a Hillary spokesman and advisor.

When did he become a spokesman for the DNC?

[Stephanie]

19. I read yours after I posted mine.

When did that happen? News to me. And, ethical? Not so much.

[Stephanie]

16. Holy cow. Hillraiser?

Why is Wolfson spokesman for both the DNC and HRC?

[madfloridian]

32. I don't think he is. He is the one Hillary sent to work with Ned Lamont.

He may at one time have been a DNC advisor, but I sure doubt it now.

[Alexander]

21. Are we watching the beginnings of Hillarygate here?

Could this be the scandal that denies her the nomination?

[Up2Late]

23. Yeah, RIGHT! Maybe we should wait until the actual story is published, this guy's a RW NUT!

This guy is a Clinton hater who claims to be the author of 4 books, but non of them at sold at Amazon.com, what does that tell you?

Probably could get them all for $1.00 at NewsMax.

Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. (see the sidebar at this link) <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/08/rudy.html>

More about this guy at this links:

<http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-91236195.html>

And look at this genius bit of writing: <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2007/08/post-5.html> :sarcasm:

[comtec]

24. Pennies compared to the GoP scandals

This is utter bullshit!
A BIG CONTRIBUTOR?! what crap!
Tom delay SHITS more money than this guy has given to the ENTIRE DEM PARTY OVER 3 YEARS!!!!!!

but yeah this will be blown way out of proportion. 1 million over 36 months LOL that's not enough to wipe denny hasters ass!

[Bitwit1234]

25. Bet this will occupy the headlines for the next two, no

three or four weeks. The media will forget everything else. gonzales, craig, bush the war. The got the chance to tell about a democrat who did something wrong.

Of course we all know raising money, which they say was illegal, is more important than bush screwing the American people, stealing more billions for his war. Responsible for more killings, sex perverts in the GOP you know the stories. But we are gonna hear about this guy raising money illegally for the next two or three months maybe.

[karynnj]

31. I don't think it will even be much of a story now - it will be Craig, Bush, Iraq ,Iran etc

BUT, if Clinton ignores this, it will resurface. Possibly after she is the nominee. They need to get the facts and respond more cleanly than anyone in history. If not, this will bring up the 1990s stories of Chinese and Indonesian money - even though there is NO link. (That is one of McAuliffe's lagacies to the party - he did however greatly improve the financial footing.

Here - there is NOTHING they have done wrong. Hsu may have done wrong and they need to look at it.

[ccpup]

26. this has no traction

the American Public has been inundated since 1991 with one "Hillary scandal" after another and, I believe, they're completely inoculated to them by now. In fact, I suspect they hear "Hillary scandal" and they immediately think "the Republicans are after her again". After seeing someone get chased for nearly 10 years with "scandals" that garnered HUGE headlines but ended up having no teeth, something like this -- in light of the new (and real) scandals of the party of Grand Old Perverts -- won't move far.

I guess I should amend the above to say it won't get traction and won't get far unless you're a Red State Freeptard who's already predisposed to absolutely hate her regardless of the facts. And those are votes no Dem would ever get anyway.

[rocktivity]

27. He's BEEN convicted of swindling. He's WANTED for evading justice.

Note how completely the headline and lead contradict each other. Are they THAT desparate to bash a Dem in the light of all the Repub scandals?

:headbang:
rocknation