The Discerning Texan

Over the holiday weekend, I pointed you to Flip Pidot’s excellent investigative post charting Norman Hsu’s campaign finance contributions. He’s done more digging and has a new report:

[I]t turns out there’s quite a bit more under the campaign finance rock than previously realized.

The Journal originally collected contribution data largely from federal campaign disclosures. After re-constituting that FEC data, I collected state-level campaign data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics, which served as the basis for the previous post. That tally totaled roughly $1.37 million in contributions to dozens of candidates since the 2004 cycle, slightly less than half of which were made by Hsu directly.

I’ve since added data from municipal elections (most of which turned up in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) as well as the most current data available in each state’s respective campaign finance database. Additionally, the NYC Campaign Finance Board collects “intermediary” data, which frequently identifies the bundler associated with a given contribution. This revealed three new individuals in Hsu’s network: Noah Yago, Youn Hadar, and Susan Chilman. While Yago’s and Hadar’s contributions appear to have been isolated incidents, a search for Chilman among the state and federal records turned up scores of additional donations. Totaling nearly $40,000 over three years, the size and timing of Chilman’s contributions frequently fit the suspicious patterns that have already led the FEC and the DOJ to investigate Hsu’s fundraising history. In the disclosure reports, Chilman lists herself as a self-employed actress. I’ve included Chilman’s contributions in the aggregate data, but not Yago’s or Hadar’s.

The grand total currently sits at roughly $1.6 million.

Labels: Campaign Contributions, Corruption, Democratic Criminal Activity, Hillary, Hsu Scandal, Scandal