Hsu Got What?

You have got to be kidding me that a judge thought that $5 million bail is sufficient to keep Norman Hsu from running again. He's already gone on the lam twice. The first time was to avoid being sent to prison for grand theft in 1992, and he was a fugitive for 15 years.

He was only arrested again after being at the side of Sen. Hillary Clinton and other leading Democrats in the past month. When he was supposed to appear for a bail hearing, he ran a second time. Hsu was captured in Colorado after he apparently attempted suicide on an Amtrak train.

A new bail hearing was underway over the past 24 hours. The judge determined that $5 million was appropriate.

Are you kidding me?

He twice jumped bail and is clearly a flight risk. He's unstable and his lawyers clearly cannot control their client to keep him on a very short leash. If there was an instance of requiring a higher bail, this was it.

The prosecutors had initially demanded a $50 million bail in light of Hsu's history, while the defense team claimed that such a bail was "ridiculous." Hsu's lawyers also said that they were willing to waive extradition so that he could return to California to face the music on the original charges.

The sums of money circulating around Hsu are staggering - and I'm not talking solely about the campaign contributions:

Hautzinger also told the court, Hsu may have no trouble paying a lower bail.

"Our sheriffs office tells me, the defendant had a checkbook in his possession when he was arrested that reflected a $6 million dollar balance in that checkbook at least," said Hautzinger.

The New York District Attorney is now investigating Hsu for defrauding a New York investment fund out of $40 million dollars and today in court the prosecutor said he heard Hsu was also the target of an investigation of a possible scam in Southern California.

"Orange County authorities are on the verge of filing charges on a very similar alleged scam involving $33 million dollars with 50 different investors," said Hautzinger.

Somehow I don't think that's all to that story. The more investigations produce information, the more questions there are about Hsu. Also, in light of the New York investigations, one has to wonder where all that money went, and how Hsu enriched himself with that money. Suitably Flip is flabbergasted over the setting of bail in this case. If a checkbook shows $6 million, then setting bail below that amount provides more than ample opportunity to pay the bail and run again, despite the defense team's claims that Hsu is too ill to run again.

It would not be unreasonable to conclude that Hsu kept some portion of that money for himself in addition to the $6 million in the one discovered checkbook, meaning that bail could easily be satisfied, putting Hsu back on the street.

Also, there is no word about the passport issue - has he turned it in?

Meanwhile, Flip continues running the numbers on various politicians who have claimed to return monies related to Hsu, and he keeps running into discrepancies between what the politicians say is being returned (and returned to whom exactly if Hsu is a criminal and the money is tainted?) and what FEC records show as being contributed to the politicians?