Hillary has money problems. No, not the kind John McCain has, but the kind where a lot of the money finding its way into her coffers is on the shady side, (go figure). Now the Justice Departments is starting to investigate [2]...
NEW YORK - On the wall of Hsiao Yen Wang's apartment, a cramped, 17th-floorpublic housing unit on the city's Lower East Side, are photographs of her husband, David Guo, a cook who specializes in Fujian cuisine.
One photo stands out: Guo shaking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's hand, a memento from a $1,000-a-person fundraiser for the New York senator held in New York's Chinatown last April.
Last week, Wang got another memento - a calling card from a Justice Department criminal investigator. The investigator asked Wang if she was coerced into giving money to the campaign and whether she knew of anybody else who may have been forced to contribute. ...
Why does it have to be "forced" anyway? Simply giving someone money and asking them to give it to the campaign (maybe even keeping a commission for the trouble) is enough. I'm sure there are plenty of poor immigrants who would take that deal. It goes on...
The April fundraiser, held in Chinatown's Golden Bridge Restaurant, illustrates both the pitfalls and the success Clinton has experienced with her fundraising operation.The event attracted nearly 300 donors from as far away as Maryland. Shortly after, about $380,000 poured into the Clinton campaign from attendees and their families. Many were owners or managers of other restaurants. Among the rest were lawyers, business owners, real estate agents and artists.
According to reports filed by the Clinton campaign with the Federal Election Commission, seven donors identified themselves as cooks, three as chefs, three as servers, two as cashiers, one as a dishwasher and cook and one as a waiter. ...
Yep, I come across waiters and dishwashers that can plunk down a thousand bucks to a political campaign all the time. I guess that explains why people in all those types of professions fill the speed dials of political fundraisers and bundlers. Silly me.
FEC records show that the campaign returned at least $8,000 in checks to at least eight donors, most of them at the end of June. Among those donors were four identified as cooks and one as a cashier. The campaign also returned $4,600 to a donor who appeared to have earlier given the maximum allowed by law. ...In one small store, a woman said she donated to the Clinton campaign but didn't have citizenship or a green card. A man living in a Brooklyn boarding house who identified himself as an artist said he also gave $1,000, but said he, too, has no citizenship and no green card. ...
The Associated Press conducted a spot check of 44 addresses listed in campaign finance documents as belonging to donors at the April 9 fundraiser. All the addresses checked out and reporters spoke to 19 persons who said they donated.
One address was a mahjong parlor. At another, a donor identified as a cashier could not be found, and the building superintendent said he had not heard of the person. Associates of some people listed as donors said they were in China and could not be contacted. Others did not return messages left with families. ...
But there's a logical explanation to all of this...
Chung Seto, the organizer of the Chinatown event, said Chinese have a culture of thrift and it wouldn't be surprising for workers with meager wages to make $1,000 donations. She said donors stood in line for up to three hours waiting for the fundraising event to begin. Any mistakes in vetting contributors, she said, were a result of enthusiasm, not coercion. ...
That makes perfect sense. All of those struggling, thrifty, saving immigrants...coming to the country...working hard...saving for a better life, just can't help blowing their nest egg on a candidate that gives them the kind of hope that Hillary does.
The better explanation is that it's part of a pattern...
The attention to the Chinatown fundraiser comes a month after the Clinton camp returned more than $800,000 to donors whose contributions were linked to Norman Hsu, who has been accused in a federal investigation of bilking investors and using some of his profits to make illegal donations to political campaigns. None of those returned contributions appear to have originated at the Chinatown fundraiser, and Seto said Hsu played no role in the event. ...
And let's not forget that the pattern goes back even further here...as in to the Clinton White House. We've seen this movie before [3].
The guys over at Blogs for Bush [4] have had enough of this sort of thing (and the fact that the press has generally looked the other way) and gone so far as to file an official complaint [5] with the Federal Election Commission. Hillary's campaign has about 2 weeks to respond to the complaint.
More: Newsbusters [6] - NY Post [7]
