The Hsu, The Bagmen, and the Ugly

Flip has been out ahead of the crowd on trying to piece together the complicated puzzle that is Norman Hsu. He's found something that may make life for Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats far tougher in the weeks to come.

It would appear that Norman Hsu was himself bundled into the campaign contributions of one Fred Hochberg.

Who is Fred Hochberg? Well, as Hot Air notes, Hochberg is the CEO of Lillian Vernon (the catalog company), a fellow "HillRaiser" and trustee of at the New School along with Hsu, and former cabinet member in the Clinton administration.

Was Hochberg whispering in Hsu's ear which candidates to support? When you note that Hsu's campaign contribution patterns seemingly fit with Hochberg, that becomes a distinct possibility.

Flip runs the numbers for Hochberg and Hsu, and the pattern appears. That may explain why these various candidates and politicians were recipients of Hsu's efforts, but it still doesn't fully explain where all the money came from, unless - and this is speculation on my part - Hsu was a conduit for Hochberg to avoid the campaign contribution caps.

Flip specifically notes the following:

The significance of the Hsu pattern actually being a borrowed Hochberg pattern is that it strongly implies a close and ongoing association between Hsu and Hochberg.

He goes out of his way to avoid linking the two in a scandal, but the question must still be raised based on the way the numbers are being run.

This cannot be chalked up to mere coincidence - not when you have dozens of contributions that suggest a pattern.

Still, one has to wonder how Hsu managed to put himself in a position to become a major campaign contributor despite being a convicted felon who was wanted by the state of California for going on the lam after failing to appear at his sentencing. Did no one think it odd that this guy appeared out of the blue and began throwing around big checks to leading Democrats across the country? Or, was the only question asked was whether the checks cleared?

Others blogging: Flopping Aces, Captain Ed.

UPDATE:
Ace wonders why the media and the prosecutors are approaching this case as though Hsu acted on his own, especially when the evidence seems to be pointing to a larger case of criminality. Good question. The answer may lie simply in who is being accused and who stood to gain from the shady campaign contributions.

UPDATE:
No bail for Hsu.

Norman Hsu, the Democratic fund-raiser with a habit of fleeing the law, confessed to F.B.I. agents last week that he had swindled investors in what the government describes as a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, and acknowledged pressuring at least some of them to contribute to political campaigns, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday in New York.

Today in San Mateo Superior Court, Mr. Hsu was ordered held without bail after returning to California from Colorado on an outstanding warrant for his arrest in a grand theft case, and after being charged in the New York fraud case.

The judge did the only appropriate thing in this case, because of Hsu's flight risk. Also, Hsu didn't have a habit of fleeing the law - he had a habit of openly flaunting it for more than a decade. There had to be more than one opportunity for someone to notice that Hsu was a convicted felon.

The article also notes that the investigators are being fed a line that the political donations were being used to help raise funds for Hsu's fraudulent schemes. That seems to run counter to Flip's findings, although Hsu's motives are far from clear other than he seemed to like living large on a house of fraudulent cards and liked to rub shoulders with leading Democratic party movers and shakers.