Hsu Don't Say

Norman Hsu should be a bigger problem for Hillary than has been assumed til now. He was far more closely aligned with the campaign and was apparently directing money to candidates around the country that were supporting her campaign. For those that forget, Hsu is a convicted felon in California, who is now up on multiple charges in multiple states for running Ponzi schemes and other shady schemes to bundle money for Democratic party candidates.

Disgraced fund-raiser Norman Hsu did a lot more than just pump $850,000 into Hillary Clinton's campaign bank account: He also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local, state, and federal candidates who have endorsed Clinton or whose support she courted.

A major fund-raiser for Democrats since 2003, Hsu became one of Clinton's biggest bundlers - gathering scores of individual checks and sending them to her campaign. But since revelations last month that Hsu was a fugitive in a 15-year-old California fraud case, Clinton has said she would return the $850,000 she has taken from him and his associates.

In at least some cases, Clinton or her aides directly channeled contributions from Hsu and his network to other politicians supportive of her presidential campaign, according to interviews and campaign finance records. There is nothing illegal about one politician steering wealthy contributors to another, but the New York senator's close ties to Hsu have become an embarrassment for her and her campaign.

Last fall, as the Nevada governor's race was heating up, Clinton agreed to help raise money for Democrat Dina Titus, a prominent party leader in a state that holds a key early presidential caucus. Clinton arranged for Hsu, at the time a little-known New York apparel executive with no apparent reason to take interest in Nevada politics, to give Titus $5,000 on Nov. 3, according to a person with knowledge of Clinton's fund-raising.

And in February, when former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack ended his own White House bid, he was about $450,000 in the red. A month after dropping out, Vilsack endorsed Clinton, and Clinton agreed to help him retire his debts. (Both insisted there was no quid pro quo.)

There is nothing illegal about one candidate helping out another candidate. The problem for Hillary is that she has repeatedly claimed that Hsu isn't that closely tied to the campaign, and yet there is mounting evidence that he was a serious player on the money side of the campaign - especially to shore up support among Democrats who back Hillary's run for the White House.

Fundamental questions still remain over where all the money came from in the first instance, and with multiple investigations into Hsu across the country, some interesting evidence is bound to pop up. The evidence is not going to look good for Clinton, whose reputation going back to Arkansas isn't exactly squeaky clean.