DebateGate

Fugitive fundraiser Hsu captured in Colorado
September 7, 2007
by Jaxon Van Derbeken & John Cote

Fugitive political fundraiser Norman Hsu, who skipped out on San Mateo County authorities this week rather than face sentencing for a 1992 fraud conviction, was apprehended Thursday night by federal and local lawmen in Grand Junction, Colo.

Authorities said Hsu was taken into custody at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction at 7 p.m. local time. He had been on the lam for almost two days after failing to appear in a Redwood City courtroom Wednesday to surrender his passport.

Hsu was taken off a passenger train at the Grand Junction train station earlier in the day by paramedics who requested a backboard to move him, said Sgt. Lonnie Chavez with the Grand Junction Police Department.

Authorities received a request for medical assistance at the train station at about 11:15 a.m., but the exact nature of Hsu's condition was unclear, Chavez said.

Hsu was traveling on an Amtrak train when he became ill, and Amtrak personnel called an ambulance when the train stopped in Grand Junction, said Pete Smarr, a nursing supervisor at St. Mary?s Hospital. Hsu was listed in fair condition early Friday, but Smarr declined to comment on the nature of Hsu's illness or a timetable for his release from the hospital.

Hsu was arrested in Colorado on federal charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution after the California attorney general's office sought assistance from federal authorities in apprehending him, FBI spokesman Joseph Schadler said. The federal charges will be dropped once Hsu is returned to California to face sentencing in state court, Schadler said.

Hsu's attorney told state prosecutors that Hsu had been on a charter flight that arrived at Oakland International Airport at about 5:30 a.m. Wednesday and then dropped out of sight, said Gareth Lacy, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office.

Amtrak's California Zephyr train offers service from nearby Emeryville to Grand Junction before heading to Denver and Chicago. The Zephyr left Emeryville at about 7:10 a.m. Wednesday and was scheduled to arrive in Grand Junction before noon Thursday.

Hsu's disappearing act seemed to be a reprise of a move he pulled 15 years ago, when he failed to show up for sentencing in the same grand theft case. Hsu was facing up to three years in state prison, a $10,000 fine and restitution payments after pleading no contest to a single count of grand theft in what prosecutors described as a $1 million fraud scheme.

But while free on bail after his plea, Hsu dropped from sight for 15 years, apparently spending time in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Taiwan, only to emerge in recent years as a seemingly wealthy New York resident who donated generously to Democratic political campaigns, regularly attended fundraisers and was photographed with party leaders.

A week ago, Hsu, 56, surrendered to San Mateo County sheriff's deputies in Redwood City after press accounts linked him to the earlier grand theft case. He spent a few hours in county jail before posting $2 million bail and agreeing to surrender his passport.

The state attorney general's office, which is prosecuting the case, initially sought bail of $1 million, but San Mateo Superior Court Judge James Ellis doubled that to $2 million - the amount specified in the arrest warrant.

After Hsu posted bail, his attorney, Jim Brosnahan, sent a legal assistant to Hsu's New York condominium Monday to retrieve the passport but was unable to find it after a 90-minute search.

Before Hsu was captured Thursday night, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell became the latest Democratic figure to distance himself from the fundraiser, announcing earlier in the day that he would donate to charity almost $40,000 Hsu contributed to his campaign.

"Though Norman is my friend, and remains so, his failure to appear casts a new light on his assertions regarding the original case," Rendell said in a prepared statement. "As a result, I will follow other elected officials and donate the money he contributed to me to charity."

Hsu, listed as a "Hillraiser" committed to bringing in $100,000 or more to the presidential campaign of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, has given an estimated $600,000 of his own money to candidates ranging from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma to presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. Hsu has helped raise hundreds of thousands more through high-profile events in New York and California and served on the board of trustees of New York City's New School university at the request of Bob Kerrey, the university's president and former Democratic senator from Nebraska.

The size and scope of Hsu's contributions made him one of the party's largest individual contributors. While he gave $23,000 to Clinton and $7,000 to Obama, he also gave $62,000 to New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, $50,000 to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and $50,000 to the New York State Democratic Party.

His contributions also included $38,000 to the Tennessee Democratic Party, $750 to Newsom, $1,250 to San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, and $3,500 to the 25th Ward Democratic Organization in Chicago.

In the 1991-92 grand theft case, Hsu was charged with bilking about 20 investors, including his ex-girlfriend, out of about $1 million in connection with a business that was supposed to provide latex gloves to another firm - only no gloves were ever bought or sold, prosecutors said.

"What Mr. Hsu was in the business of was running a Ponzi scheme," prosecutor Ron Smetana said at a preliminary hearing, according to the transcript. "He was taking money and spending part of it on himself and returning it as it was available. As with any Ponzi scheme, the first ones in and the first ones out always do quite well. Those (who) hope that their investment will continue and stay to the end tend to lose their shorts."

After the glove business collapsed in April 1990, Hsu was kidnapped four months later in San Francisco by a Chinatown gang leader in an effort to collect a debt from him, police said. The abduction was foiled after the car they were riding in ran a red light in Foster City and was pulled over by police, who rescued Hsu, authorities said.

E-mail the writers at jvanderbeken@sfchronicle.com and jcote@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/09/07/MN9OS10B5.DTL&tsp=1

memo:
i think they have had enough
war will soon break out involving israel
gaza will be hot spot and possibly other areas

Click Link Below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PGhMqR5SUY

Donor surrenders as Clinton camp ponders


How could the senator's campaign have missed the red flags over Hsu?
By Dan Morain, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 1, 2007



REDWOOD CITY, CALIF. -- 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.
   
"Obviously, we were all surprised by this news, and we have a procedure that we follow and upon verifying it, we returned his money," Clinton said this week.

When a campaign has attracted more than 500,000 donors, as Clinton's has, there is no way a candidate's staff can check out each contributor. Clinton and her aides said there was little they could have done to protect themselves, but fundraising experts from both parties pointed to warning signs that should have given aides pause.

"If I were raising money for the prohibitive front-runner for president of the United States, I would be very, very careful about who these donors are and do some level of research," said Marty Wilson, a Republican strategist and fundraiser for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and others.

The most obvious red flag: A check of a commonly used database produces a 1990 San Francisco Chronicle news story detailing how Norman Hsu had been kidnapped by gang members in the San Mateo County suburb of Foster City. A second widely used database discloses that Norman Yuan Yuen Hsu of Foster City had a bankruptcy in 1990.

Having established that he lived in San Mateo County, a check of the San Mateo County Superior Court's website reveals that Norman Yuan Yuen Hsu had a criminal case.

In the early 1990s, Hsu, 56, pleaded no contest to grand theft in a scheme that cost investors $1 million, and then disappeared. On Friday, Hsu turned himself in to San Mateo County authorities.

Superior Court Judge H. James Ellis ordered him held on $2 million bail. Hsu, dressed in a sharply tailored black suit, was led from the court in handcuffs. After posting bail, the depth of his woes became more apparent. A Justice Department source disclosed that the FBI has opened an investigation into Hsu's campaign donations.

Aides to Clinton and others say Hsu never asked for favors. But, like many donors, he would have his photo snapped with prominent people. A vanity wall lined with pictures of senators and governors can impress potential business partners, particularly those not be savvy enough to know that politicians regularly pose for such pictures.

"I recall him as a regular face at Democratic candidate fundraising events," said John Emerson, one of Clinton's major Southern California backers. "He strikes me as one of those guys who likes to be in the room, likes to be the guy who is there and has taken a picture with a candidate."

Although Hsu was particularly active on Clinton's behalf, she was hardly the only candidate who received Hsu's contributions. After making his first federal campaign donation in September 2003, Hsu generated more than $1 million for Democratic politicians.

Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said Friday that Clinton, like all candidates, relied on publicly available information to vet major donors. The system did not detect details about Hsu's past. "There is a series of steps to examining donations when they come in, and obviously, in the case of Mr. Hsu, these did not uncover this decade-plus-old warrant," Wolfson said.

Because Hsu had been giving to other candidates, Democratic recipients assumed he was a reputable source of money.

In most instances, a donor's background is well-known. But if the person is not known to the campaign, that person will be vetted.

All major campaigns employ researchers who investigate their opponents, and pick over their candidates' donors, particularly those who are raising six-figure sums. Some campaigns retain consulting firms specifically to vet donors.

One consultant said some campaigns ask donors for permission to run background checks because political opponents almost certainly will investigate the sources of their foes' campaign money.

Another problem was the pattern of donations made by Hsu and his friends, particularly those from a family that lives in a modest home in Daly City, a working-class town south of San Francisco.

Members of the family have given more than $200,000 to politicians in recent years, often on or about the same days that Hsu gave money. Federal law prohibits donors from reimbursing others who give at their behest.

Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) each received money from the Daly City clan. After the proximity of the donations became the focus of news accounts, Obama and Clinton sent letters to the family seeking assurance that the donations came from their own bank accounts.

"There is a concern, though nothing is proven, that there is some potential reimbursement of campaign contributions," said Richard L. Hasen, a Loyola Law School professor and election law expert. "Anytime you have an entire family or group of employees of apparently modest means making large contributions . . . it raises a red flag."

At an appearance in New York this week, Clinton vowed that her campaign would "continue to analyze all contributions and take action if that's warranted."

dan.morain@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-hsu1sep01,1,4862233.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=1&cset=true

Associated Press

Romney: Keep Feds Out of Health Care
8/31/07

AIKEN, S.C. - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney focused Friday on stopping illegal immigration and keeping Washington out of increased health care coverage.

During a morning campaign stop in Aiken, Romney said he doesn't want the federal government to take over providing health care for the nation's uninsured.

"Don't have 'Hillary Care,'" Romney said, referring to his favorite Democrat target, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The former Massachusetts governor said he doesn't want to "have the guys who ran the Katrina cleanup" in charge of health care. He said he'd leave it up to states to design their own systems.

Romney had several stops planned in this early voting state Friday, and some were to take him through counties with some of South Carolina's largest immigrant populations.

Romney said he'd help stop illegal immigrants by sanctioning employers that give them paychecks, and oppose so-called sanctuary cities that give illegal immigrants housing and other benefits.

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/31/ap4072086.html

resign now trash and go get help for your sickness
(wonder when the Dems will demand the same of their guy with the cash in the freezer?)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RntWGPEjoo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZXaaFbo6Oo

this is why Mitt is going to win
if this was Hillary, it would be "well, uh, I will wait until the investigation is complete"
this guy is the real deal




Romney throws Craig under bus
August 28, 2007


In his first public comments since word of Larry Craig's arrest broke yesterday, Mitt Romney unloaded on his former backer, calling reports that the Idaho senator allegedly solicited an undercover cop in an airport bathroom "disgusting." 

"Once again, we've found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence," Romney told CNBC's Larry Kudlow in a broadcast to be aired later. "Very disappointing. He's no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine. ... I'm sorry to see that he has fallen short."

Craig was one of Romney's top two backers in the Senate and had worked to round up support there for the former governor. After Craig's bathroom encounter was reported, the Romney campaign moved to distance itself from the Idahoan, issuing a terse statement last night that it was no longer associated with Craig and that it didn't want the senator to be a distraction. 

But the candidate himself went much further today, seeking to tie Craig's alleged search for a gay liasion to the broader pattern of corruption permeating Washington in recent years.

"I think it reminds us of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton, (nice punch at Hillary)" Romney told Kudlow, in remarks reported on the network's First Read blog. "I think it reminds us of the fact that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint, and they somehow think that if they vote the right way on issues of significance or they can speak a good game, that we'll just forgive and forget."

"And the truth of the matter is, the most important thing we expect from... an elected official is a level of dignity and character that we can point to for our kids and our grandkids, and say, `Hey, someday I hope you grow up and you're someone like that person.' And we've seen disappointment in the White House, we've seen it in the Senate, we've seen it in Congress. And frankly, it's disgusting."

Romney's quick move to not even give an early supporter the benefit of the doubt reflects two apparent calculations. First, the lurid details of this story and past whisperings about Craig make him politically radioactive right now. Locked in a wide open battle for president, a candidate who has so emphasized his traditional family and broader family values the way Romney has can't afford any connection whatsoever to such a tawdry tale. 

But there is also in Romney's remarks a clear hint of trying to make lemonade out of lemons.  Besides spotlighting his longtime wife ? "my sweetheart," he calls her ? and five sons, Romney has gone to great lengths during his run to make plain that he's not a career politician nor a creature of Washington. By tut-tutting Craig and construing his actions as yet another in a litany of Beltway transgression, Romney hopes to remind Republicans of the need for an outsider. 

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0807/Romney_throws_Craig_under_bus.html