so I’m pouring it on you, in the name of love.

Sweet and thick as molasses, the story and you AP :)

flip, thank you for all your efforts.

Don’t ever count on the LAT to be unbiased, accurate, detailed, or to correct a story after their hype. It doesn’t work that way with them and examples abound. Just ask John & Ken at KFI 640 AM in LA.

It really takes a lot of following the money.

CommentGuy on October 16, 2007 at 12:49 PM

How about if Clinton produces some cancelled checks?

With that name list, we will cross check to other federal campaigns for donations by them that are also tainted. There are many representatives and senators who have taken money and only have returned the most public of the names.

Then there is the local level funding. Governors and state treasures and many other state officials and state parties have received funds from Hsu connected donors. It even gets down to local city council donations in some places.
For example there seems to be a lot of money hooking back to Gov Rendell in Penn.

Also there is money going to various things like the DSCC and various pacs such as the Searchlight fund and the Hope fund.

Money has also run into issue campaigns like voter referendums in california.

It really takes a lot of following the money.

This could be due to spelling errors of the names, but I have been crosscheck via zipcode and such and still can’t come up with any record of donation by some of the people getting refunds.

There are dozens getting refunds larger than the total the FEC shows they contributed to the campaign.

Now this is just from data so far on the Hillary Clinton for President Committee. There is still data to be reviewed for HillPac which is a separate entity and also the trail will have to be followed though other pacs that transferred funds to the Hillary committees.

I have been working with Flip on this issue for a while. We were working without knowledge of each other and now are working to provide info. He does the math work and local looks at the Hsu offices and such and I spend my time building the social network diagram of how the money trail ties together to show the emerging pattern.

As to the report released last night, some facts emerge.

The number of refunds by all the other dem candidates combined is less than 20 or so total.

Only the Clinton filing there are 671 line items that are refunds. Some people have up to 3 separate line items.

There are over 400 people who are receiving refunds, well beyond the Hsu related 260 Hillary is claiming.

A lot of the refunds appear to be very bad compliance by the Clinton campaign. Many appear to be improper double billings of donations via credit card that exceed the total cash limits from an individual donor of 2300/2300 pri/general or 4600 total per person. There are some people getting refunds in excess of 6000.00

This is not the first time for Hillary. Her’s is the only campaign (unless I missed it) that has already had letters from the SEC informing them of excess donations detected by their review of the past quarterly submissions.

Also Hillary has since declaring had near 100 refunds in past quarters processed, partially to meet the requirements the FEC reported that were in error according to the law.

For other campaigns they were almost non existent.

What has changed?

If the $125k discrepancy holds, it would likely mean that the Clinton campaign’s $850k estimate was simply low by $125k to begin with, and that we should see $975k if everyone were fully refunded.

flip on October 16, 2007 at 11:47 AM

Interesting, but as Hillary’s two campaign commitees are seperate legal entitys, how can she do that?

If she is transfering money back and forth, doesn’t this blow away campaign finance limits? As someone can donate the max amount to each of her campaigns? But she can still use them in the Presidential bid?

flip on October 16, 2007 at 11:47 AM

THANK YOU for your continuing analysis and reporting.

Vanceone on October 16, 2007 at 11:26 AM

And Bill Clinton is supposed to be smart as well… as he waved his finger at me and said he “never had sex with that woman”…

and lied in court…

They’ve been able to get away with so much, for so long, that they no longer care.

What may have happened is that Hillary refunded additional contributions through her Senate campaign committee (Friends of Hillary), rather than her Presidential committee (Hillary Clinton for President). Or possibly that any contributions the alleged Hsu straws made to her Senate campaign, she’s simply keeping. Senate disclosures are paper filings so we can’t see what happened in the 3rd quarter yet. It would surprise me to learn that she’d been keeping large amounts of money in the Senate committee, most of which she rolled over in the first quarter.

Still, after about 20 emails back and forth last night with the lead Journal reporter working this story, this was the best theory we could come up with.

Hillary could rob a bank at gunpoint, with Bill driving the getaway car, lead police on a car chase, have the whole thing caught on camera, and no one outside the internet would cover it.

reaganaut on October 16, 2007 at 9:34 AM

With reservations I type, If the cigar don’t fit you must aquit.

However, in all seriousness–this is insane. Does Hillary really think she’ll get away with this? Let’s assume (I know, assumptions are bad) that she didn’t refund a significant chunk of this money. Did she possibly think that no one would notice? After all, the “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” solely exists to besmirch the virtue of the Holy Hillary, et. al…. and all it would take is for the FEC to file a lawsuit against her and she takes a broadside right to the campaign.

The amount of money is just not worth the risk here. She kept what, around 125 grand according to Flip? Or even all of it, according to the more cynical view? That’s not that much money, especially when she’s raking it in hand over fist like she is.

She’s allegedly smart, right? Why not Hsu this story away from her as fast as possible? That’s what I don’t get.

Hillary could rob a bank at gunpoint, with Bill driving the getaway car, lead police on a car chase, have the whole thing caught on camera, and no one outside the internet would cover it.

reaganaut on October 16, 2007 at 9:34 AM

Exactly! I’ve always said this. When Bill Clinton was in office, I used to argue that he could be caught on video robbing a liquor store, executing the victims, and laughing at the camera … and liberals would still vote for him while blowing it off as just another right-wing smear campaign.

[sarc]
No , No , No ; this story is not getting old. Keep it fresh. If you don’t, Hillary wins. Get it?
[/sarc]

That’s better

We’ll have to do much better than this.

I think the practical limits on the electoral prospects of convicted felons are meant to suffice here. And lying to the FEC, were someone to do this and be convicted, is a felony, I think.

She needs to be declared ineligible for the election by the FEC for violating campaign laws.

The trouble is, it’s the Constitution that sets the eligibility requirements. The FEC can’t trump Article II Section 1.

I agree with the frustration, however.

What, exactly, are the teeth in the campaign finance laws? Why should anyone ever follow them if all they have to do is issue an ‘oops, sorry that you caught me, give me a do-over?’

I don’t think there’s anything more than smoke in this sad saga.

This sin’t Tree where there was some definte coverup and collaberation – and the fact that most of Hsu’s bundlees are redonating the money seems to me to be at best poor judgement and control.

I am not a Hillary supporter and I sincerely want her defeated at the polls not based upon rumors but people finally standing up to the Clintonian system and saying Heck no.