Mr. Hsu, Mrs. Clinton, and Winkle Paw - campaign finance investigation seems likely

Posted on August 28, 2007 in Politics by DM

8/29: Updated to add - Hsu’s a fugitive!
8/30: Updated to add - Clinton, et al dropping Hsu like a hot potato! (What’s to become of Winkle Paw??)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting a story that may not go away any time soon for Hillary Clinton. Of course, it’s possible there are NO shenanigans going on at all. But come on - $47,500 in donations in a year from a one-income family that earns $49,000 a year? Can anyone NOT say, “big-donor money laundering?”

Now I think one might be able to argue that perhaps the Paw’s grown/adult children are making donations to Hillary’s presidential campaign and simply using their parents’ house as a “permanent address.” But, the Paw’s contributions - or more precisely, the contributions attributed to their home address - total more than $200,000 to Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats. It seems like one would have to have a lot of adult children, all making the maximum contribution and using the same address, for this to make sense.

Giving the benefit of the doubt to the Clinton campaign in this situation would be a lot easier if:

a). The Paws did not have one son named Winkle. Winkle Paw. Yes, voters, Winkle Paw. Beatrix Potter has risen from the grave to bring you a kindly presidential election story about Winkle Paw and sweet Mrs. Clinton who lives down the lane; and

b). Their contributions did not coincide with the dates and times of various contributions made by one “Norman Hsu, a wealthy New York businessman in the apparel industry who once listed the Paw home as his address, according to public records.”

Hsu is a long-time (and big-time) Clinton supporter, and “The Paw family is just one set of donors whose political donations are similar to Mr. Hsu’s. Several business associates of Mr. Hsu in New York have made donations to the same candidates, on the same dates for similar amounts as Mr. Hsu.”

Hsu’s lawyer, Lawrence Barcella, implies in his comments to the Journal that perhaps the ethnicity of Hsu’s surname has something to do with why this is a story. I’d argue that perhaps if the person at the center of the story was not a candidate for President of the United States who has a history of suspicious financial dealings, it wouldn’t be a story.

I won’t be a bit surprised if poor Winkle Paw turns up beaten and bloody in MacGregor’s vegetable garden, clutching a box of conveniently misplaced campaign finance documents.

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