The Federal government has filed new charges against Norman Hsu, as they promised yesterday. The complain paints an ugly picture of the bundling system for campaign cash. The potential for corruption is enormous.
The 16-page complaint, signed by an FBI agent, says that Hsu "pressured victims" into making the contributions "in an effort to raise his public profile and thereby convince more victims to invest in his fraudulent investment scheme." That scheme defrauded people across the United States of more than $60 million, it says.
At a news conference in New York, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said that although the scheme's overall purpose was to support a "lavish lifestyle," Hsu gave money to political candidates in an apparent attempt "to purchase a place on the celebrity campaign circuit," the Associated Press reported.
Neither Hsu, his attorneys or a publicist he has hired replied directly to the government's allegations. Spokesman Robert Emmers said only that Hsu is eager, first, to dispense with the legal entanglements stemming from Hsu's 15-year-old guilty plea to theft charges in California that arose from a similar investment scheme……..
………Campaign finance experts said that the ease with which Hsu turned a steady flow of campaign donations into access to presidential candidates, senators and other dignitaries — which in turn furthered his continuing solicitation of investors — offered a cautionary tale about the rising prominence of bundlers in the political process.
"We now have a dangerous and corrupting system at work in our presidential election in which the pressures of unlimited, arms-race spending has put the highest premium on presidential candidates finding bundlers who can raise huge amounts of money and the lowest premium on filtering out problematic bundlers," said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a group dedicated to campaign finance reform.
Every candidate should be wary of this system, but the exposure for Democrats, given their recent pledges to clean things up, is potentially greater. With new revelations yesterday that another Clinton bundler may have violated Federal law, her exposure is greatest of all.
