Gov't watchdog says Clinton not returning all tainted campaign cash

Gov't watchdog says Clinton not returning all tainted campaign cash

Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) has found herself in yet another fundraising scandal. This time she's under fire for receiving thousands of dollars from a Democratic donor who, after being a fugitive from justice for 15 years, turned himself in on Friday.

The head of a Washington-based group that fights government corruption says political fundraising scandals involving Senator Clinton are "continuing at breakneck speed." For her 2000 Senate campaign, Senator Clinton's fundraising operation was fined $35,000 for underreporting and misreporting contributions. Now in the midst of her White House bid, Clinton is in hot water over her ties to Norman Hsu, a Democratic fundraiser who was under an outstanding arrest warrant in California for grand theft.

Clinton says she will give to charity the $23,000 in contributions she received from Hsu, but her campaign does not plan to return any money Hsu raised from other donors.

Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, says Hsu likely illegally bundled and funneled contributions through others to the Clinton presidential campaign -- so the junior senator from the Empire State, he says, has a lot to answer for.

"Any diligent person would have found that [Hsu] had a problem in his background," he asserts, "and yet it seems to me the Clinton campaign was willing to overlook his problems and take his money. And these new folks -- who are likely straw donors for ... Mr. Hsu -- should have known that the money was suspicious or suspiciously laundered to them, and yet they didn't really do anything about it," says the Judicial Watch president.

Hsu has also given substantial contributions to Democratic Senators Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein, as well as to Al Franken, a Senate candidate in Minnesota.

Fitton suggests why the Clinton campaign was willing to overlook Hsu's criminal background. "Their attitude is [that] they're above the law," he states, "and unless they're caught red-handed they're not going to really fix the problem. So the arrogance in assuming that Hsu, a criminal fugitive [at the time], had appropriately given them other money, I think, shows [the Clintons'] contempt for the law."

Fitton says he doubts the latest fundraising scandal will harm Mrs. Clinton politically, arguing it is nearly impossible to add to the number of people who dislike the former first lady.