Morning Shows Ignore Another Clinton Scandal

The mainstream television media, for the most part, ignored yet another potential Clinton scandal. As NewsBusters’ Richard Newcombe reported, the Los Angeles Times, certainly not a conservative publication, broke the story of the Clinton campaign raising a large sum of money from very poor Chinese immigrants. One third of these immigrants could not even be located and the vast majority of those located were not even registered to vote. Additionally, there is a possibility of coercion among those immigrants.

How did the morning shows cover it? On Monday, October 22, only FNC’s "Fox and Friends" covered the story. The remaining shows, NBC’s "Today," ABC’s "Good Morning America," CBS’s "The Early Show," and CNN’s "American Morning," all covered for Senator Clinton, ignoring the story.

"Fox and Friends," at the same day at 7:17 AM, interview "Wall Street Journal" columnist John Fund about the scandal. The entire transcript is below.

STEVE DOOCY: Okay, today on the "Power Block," Hillary's questionable campaign bonanza from the Chinese donors. Is it a bad sign of history repeating itself? Apparently there are a whole bunch of Chinese donors in Chinatown who nobody knows who they are, even though they say, according to documents, they gave cash to Clinton.

GRETCHEN CARLSON: "Wall Street Journal" columnist John Fund helps us take a closer look at the issue. Good morning to you John.

JOHN FUND: Good morning.

CARLSON: Alright, so we heard about this, we knew about this ten years ago in '96 when there was similar allegations with regard to campaign fund raising. What is the latest situation with Hillary?

FUND: Well, we have these Chinese waiters and dishwashers, people who don't have a lot of money, who apparently gave $1,000 or even more in various fund raisers in New York's Chinatown. "The LA Times" looked at this. They contacted 150 of these types of donors. Over a third of them could not be located. They had no address.

CARLSON: That's a problem.

FUND: And most of those who could be located weren't even registered to vote. Now, their contributions might have been legal because they were permanent residents of the United States, but many of them, apparently, were ordered to give this money by neighborhood associations that might have brought them to this country. So there's an element of potential coercion here.

DOOCY: Uh huh, it does smack of the Hsu business of the past month.

FUND: That was just a couple of months ago. Remember Norman Hsu, the fellow who was the fugitive from justice who bundled all of this money. People were giving money that apparently he didn't have any assets. And the Clinton people said "well we're really sorry about this. We're going to crack down. We're going to make sure this doesn't happen again."

DOOCY: And they said "we'll give the money back." But in this case, with the Chinatown people, they, if the Clinton campaign gives them money back, the problem is, they can't find the people.

FUND: Well, yes. And again, this goes back to 1996. And this is why there's some suspicion here. In 1996 in the Clinton fund raising scandals, which involved a lot of foreign donors and people like that, over 100 people either took the Fifth Amendment of fled the country, so we never got to the bottom of it. But 24 who stayed did plead guilty to various charges.

CARLSON: The interesting thing here is that if Hillary is the candidate for the immigrant, because she said that she is in favor of giving them citizenship-

FUND: Absolutely

CARLSON: -then, in a way, she's, she's not, allegedly because if there is coercion going on here, then these are-they're being given false promises, right?

FUND: Well, she can't be held responsible for what she didn't know about. But, again, the Clinton people said we are going to vet this very carefully. Now, Harold Ickes, Terry McAuliff, who were the people who were in charge of the '96 Clinton fund raising operation, are now in charge of Hillary Clinton's fund raising operations. They can't seem to get it done right. The due diligence seems to be lacking. So again and again, Norman Hsu just happened, they said it wouldn't happen again and here we are.