Put On Your Sailin’ Hsus
The Los Angeles Times has not dropped the Norman Hsu-Hillary Clinton campaign funding scandal. They note today that not all the Hsu-linked funds have been returned.
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton returned more than $800,000 in contributions donated to her presidential campaign that were arranged by alleged swindler Norman Hsu. But campaign officials said Tuesday they had no plans to return more than $260,000 that many of the same donors gave to her Senate political accounts.
Officials said they would return those contributions only if requested to do so by individual contributors.
A Los Angeles Times analysis found that 77 donors whose contributions to the presidential campaign were returned last month also gave to Clinton's two Senate-related political funds.
Her Senate campaign committee, Friends of Hillary, received $235,000 in donations from the 77 donors later linked to Hsu. Ten of those contributors gave an additional $28,000 to Clinton's leadership political fund, HillPac.
In September, Clinton announced that she would return all donations to her presidential campaign that were connected to Hsu, who had been one of her most valued fundraisers. She made the decision after reports in The Times that Hsu was a fugitive from a 1991 fraud charge, that he had been pressing some of his investors to contribute to the senator, and that the FBI was looking into his investment schemes.
Of course the Times could have gotten a thorough analysis from Flip Pidot - and it would have revealed more information of who gave what to whom when.
Assuming the discrepancies represent donations made to Hillary's Senate campaign (rather than her Presidential campaign), it's still not clear whether she has already or intends to refund those contributions (since those paper filings are not yet available for review). Either way though, whether she's refunding them from the other committee or whether she's decided to keep those funds, the total Hsu-connected contributions to Hillary the candidate will wind up being far higher than the $850,000 figure she disclosed last month.
Neglecting to refund the Senate-side contributions from Hsu-related donors (if that's the explanation for the discrepancy) could be the product either of heroic brazenness or extreme sloppiness. And while I won't accuse Clinton of not being brazen, the more I look at the 3rd quarter filing, the more I'm leaning toward extreme sloppiness.
I realized something was seriously askew when I noticed a few California addresses among the refunded donors with New York City ZIP codes. And vice versa. With a little help from Google Maps, I ran the ZIP code for each of the nearly 250 refunds issued on 9/14 and found that 118 (47%) were incorrect. What's more, 66 of the ZIP codes used (27%) didn't even hit the right state. They're frequently hundreds or even thousands of miles off.
So how, exactly, did the funds get refunded? Were the checks actually delivered to the donors or did they go off into the Neverland of the US Postal Service? Generally, sending things with the wrong zip code will get that item returned as undeliverable. Strange, isn't it?
By Maggie, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 8:07 am
The Clintons? … Returning money? … Riiiiight!!! …
Yesterday, a caller to Rush Limbaugh’s radio show called for the Clinton campaign to publicly show receipts for the Hsu money that was supposedly returned …
Wrong zip codes? Anyone who watched the “Rosanne” TV show back in the 90s knows what Rosanne’s little ploy was when paying bills … Put the payment checks in the wrong envelopes (water check in the electric bill … etc.) … forget to sign check when paying bill …
Yeeeah.
By mockinbrd, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 12:54 pm
I worked for a small company that did this sort of thing saying “We sent it out to you”. Meanwhile, That Co. earned $$$ in interest income. I soon resigned.