Posted on 12/05/2007 7:35:15 AM PST by vietvet67
As the race for the White House moved into its final weeks in 1996, Republicans were accusing the campaign of Bill Clinton and Al Gore of unethical fundraising tactics, including Gore's attendance at a fundraiser at a tax-exempt Buddhist temple in California.
Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks the White House, the indictment yesterday of a former chief fundraiser, Norman Hsu, may see her confront potentially harmful fundraising questions of her own.
"Will this help? Of course not," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Polling Institute at Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn. "You accumulate enough hurts and you have a problem."
In September, Clinton returned $850,000 to Hsu after it was revealed he was a fugitive from a prison sentence following a ponzi scheme conviction.
In October, she returned more campaign cash after it was revealed her campaign took in some 150 donations of between $500 and $2,000 each from Chinatown dishwashers and street vendors - many could not be located or denied making donations.
Hsu was indicted yesterday on 15 counts of defrauding investors of at least $20 million, and of violating campaign finance laws by donating to candidates in other people's names.
Clinton spokesman Blake Zeff refused to comment. Prosecutors said there is no indication the Clinton campaign knew Hsu may have been operating illegally.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
“hsu’s indictment has clinton battling perceptions.”
might it be possible that the truth is sticking its nose underneath the tent flap?
You mean the AP didn’t follow up?
/sarc
Wikepedia:
The Justice Department alleged Hsia facilitated $100,000 in illegal contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore reelection campaign through her efforts at Hsi Lai Temple, a Chinese Buddhist temple in California. Hsia was eventually convicted by a jury in March 2000.[40] The Democratic National Committee eventually returned the money donated by the Temple’s monks and nuns. Twelve nuns and employees of the temple, including the temple’s abbess, refused to answer questions by pleading the Fifth Amendment when they were subpoenaed to testify before Congress.[41] Two other Buddhist nuns admitted destroying lists of donors and other documents related to the controversy because they felt the information would embarrass the Temple. A Temple-commissioned videotape of the fund raiser also went missing and the nuns’ attorney claimed it may have been shipped off to Taiwan.[42] Vice President Gore said he had no idea the Temple meeting was financial in nature:
I did not know that it was a fund-raiser. But I knew it was a political event, and I knew there were finance people that were going to be present, and so that alone should have told me, ‘This is inappropriate and this is a mistake; don’t do this.’ And I take responsibility for that. It was a mistake Vice President Al Gore on NBC TV’s Today show, Jan. 24, 1997.[43]
In response, the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee that investigated the controversy said:
The Vice President’s staff... knew that the Temple event was a fundraiser. In March 1996, Deputy Chief of Staff David Strauss had helped arrange a meeting in the White House with the founder of the temple, Hsing Yun a meeting which Strauss believed would ‘lead to a lot of $.’ The White House staff repeatedly referred to the event as a ‘fundraiser’ in internal correspondence, and assigned to it a ‘ticket price’ of ‘10005000 [dollars per] head’.[44]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy
How long does he have to live?
Crockola.
Hitlery returned Hsu’s “direct” contributions but kept all the “bundled” money.
She deserves jail time.
WHO DID SHE RETURN THE ILLEGAL MONEY TO??? Did WINKLE PAW and Ma and Pa PAW get checks???
So she returned ILLEGAL money to the ILLEGAL DONOR??OMG! where’s the FBI???
If there one thing I have learned from a long career in science and a nearly as long career in interpreting Clintonspeak, it is this:
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
It is inexcusable (and requires the willing suspension of disbelief) for the "smartest woman in the world" with her finely tuned political machine to be unaware of the nature of the Hsu donations.
I guess I am just "picking on the girl" LOL!
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