There are so many layers to this story that it may well stretch well into next year. The Wall Street Journal started the ball rolling and it’s picked up so much speed that the Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle have no choice but to jump in. This Inquirer story shows that this is not a localized case but is nationwide in scope. In fact, the Times seems to be going full-bore into this story even though it may directly effect the electability of their candidate Hillary Clinton (who seems to be involved with a new scandal every day):

The records show that Components Ltd., a company controlled by Mr. Hsu that has no obvious business purpose and appears to exist only on paper, has paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu. The payments occurred in the spring of 2003, several months before Mr. Hsu emerged as a contributor to Democrats and more than a year before he started bundling checks from those same people for various campaigns. In all, he has raised more than $1 million for Democrats.

Yes, that says "$1 million for Democrats." And this only what the Times uncovered this week, how much in total remains a mystery but I would suspect not for long.

Hold on though, it gets better:

…The records included a bank statement and a set of canceled checks for Components Ltd. that were made available to The New York Times for review by someone associated with Mr. Hsu. Because they covered only a single month in 2003, it could not be determined if the pattern of payments to the nine people was a singular occurrence, or continued closer in proximity to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions that Mr. Hsu eventually bundled.

The timing of Mr. Hsu’s payments is important because federal law sets a $2,300 limit on individual contributions to presidential campaigns and bars fund-raisers from reimbursing donors.

So the Times has a source and that source provided them with a bank statement and cancelled checks that prove Hsu was bundling illegally. Again, this was only one month in 2003, yet put together with other news accounts, it appears it was an ongoing enterprise and spread throughout the major Democrat candidates. These are not piddly Mayors and Assemblymen, the names astound: Ted Kennedy, Ed Rendell, Rep. Patrick Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Senator John Tester, John Kerry…In other words, this was an ongoing money conduit to the heart of the Democrats and no one in that party took the time to research Mr. Hsu? That seems extremely doubtful, especially in the Case of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell who served as DA in Philly and is no political neophyte. Rendell is being hammered for his actions when Hsu was revealed to be a fugitive.

The Democrats are all tainted by this and this week Barack Obama’s name came up repeatedly:

Before becoming a major bundler for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, disgraced Democratic donor Norman Hsu helped host a 2005 California event for Barack Obama’s political action committee and introduced the senator from Illinois to one of the biggest fundraisers for his presidential bid.

Federal Election Commission records show that Hsu gave $5,000 to Obama’s Hopefund PAC in connection with the fundraiser and that people publicly identified with Hsu and his companies gave an additional $19,500 to the PAC in 2005 and 2006.

Note that the Times story shows that Hillary had dealing with Hsu back in 2003, not 2005 as the Post says above so the timeline is getting longer and the roster people implicated could be the size of a three year olds Christmas list by the time this is all over.

This story isn’t going away and Hillary and Obama have done a very poor job of killing it before it gets too big to stop. This story will be what the GOP pummels the eventual candidate with and if it’s Hillary, the links to the 1996 scandal will trumpeted every single day.

Others covering this story include Bryan, Michael and previous posts on Hsu can be found here, here , here and here.

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