The Discerning Texan
-- Edmund Burke
Saturday, September 01, 2007
UPDATED The Hsu hits the Fan
Norman Hsu prepares to be taken into custody Friday on fraud charges at the San Mateo County Courthouse, where he later posted $2M bail. The FBI has opened an investigation into Hsu’s campaign donations. (Photo by Robert Durell, Los Angeles Times)
That earthquake that happened last week in San Francisco has turned into an enoumous Hsu-nami which threatens the Democrat majority; from what I can tell, this is going to make the Abramoff affair look like a Sunday school picnic. This may be the biggest scandal since Watergate--and the recipients of Hsu's funny money reads like a who's who of the Democrat party:
It all started this week with Ma and Pa Paw's little green shack...Read it all; as usual Gateway Pundit is a virtual cornucopia of links, including this Google compilation by Kurt Hoglund.
And, it's turned into a democratic donor fraud Hsu-nami.
Earlier today democratic mega-donor and fugitive Norman Hsu turned himself in to the authorites.
Hsu is no longer on the lam- free to float $1,368,055 to his favorite democrats.
And now the Justice Department is probing the matter. You think Chuck Schumer will want to look behind that curtain when he interviews the Bush AG nomineee?
UPDATE: Captain Ed comments on just how ugly this thing can (and probably will ) get for the Democrats; I doubt that even "populist" America is ready to learn that Red China is buying American elections with laundered cash:
It may prove more than just embarrassing. No one can determine where Hsu got his money -- and that's just the cash he personally donated. If the Justice probe shows that he used other people as fronts to move money illegally to Democratic candidates, that will deepen the mystery of the source of Hsu's funds even further.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Hsu fled to China after his fraud conviction. Records show him working for a Hong Kong exporter for the two years after jumping bail. If Hsu turns out to have gotten his funds from international sources hostile to the US, giving the money to charity will do little to restore reputations.
Even just for using fronts like the Paw family, Hsu faces some stiff prison time. In 2002, Congress made such activities criminal, and Hsu could get 5 years and a $250,000 fine on each count. That's federal prison time, where parole doesn't exist and good behavior gets at best a 15% reduction in time served.
If the DoJ finds a foreign source for those funds, Hsu's sentencing will take a back seat to the sentence of the American people on those who took his money without checking him out. This could get very ugly for the Democrats.
UPDATE: It is heartening to see that the LA Times has not backed off of this story, despite its editorial leanings. (Meanwhile The Politico and the Washington Post continue to ignore the story... and doing so does exactly what for their credibility?):
As Democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu confronted an old criminal case and faced a new FBI investigation Friday, a fundamental question persisted: How did Democratic presidential front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign fail to see the red flags in Hsu's contributions?
Until this week, Clinton counted Hsu as one of her most prolific money bundlers. He gave her campaign $22,300, regularly appeared as a co-host for major fundraising lunches and dinners, and raised more than $100,000 from his friends for her presidential run.
Labels: Democratic Criminal Activity, Hillary, Hsu Scandal
