Media Still Not Interested In Hsu Money

Change font size:  A |  A

Fugitive Democratic Party donor Norman Hsu was arrested today in Colorado, according to the Associated Press. However, while discussing the fact that many of the politicians to whom Hsu gave money are returning it or giving it to charity, the AP seems strangely reluctant to discuss the mysterious sources of Hsu's contributions. The story talks about several Democrats who are returning Hsu's gifts, and states,

The growing flap over Hsu's contributions prompted Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd to release a statement Thursday vowing "to refuse to accept or possess campaign contributions raised, solicited, or delivered by fugitives from justice."

"Growing flap". That's nice. But it would be even nicer if one of the so-called professional media organizations would devote some time to digging into the actual source of Hsu's large contributions. As of this writing, not one has managed to find an actual business that could be said to have supported Hsu- certainly not to the extent of being the grand-scale fundraiser he was, and none of the supposed mainstream media organizations has spent any invetigative resources whatsoever trying to discover exactly where Hsu- a failed businessman with apparently no real business- got the money to live on, let alone give so much to Democratic politicians. Although few of the mainstream media seem interested, the Wall Street Journal is a prominent exception, and has actually done some investigating. The Journal wrote,

In recent years, he moved to New York, and told acquaintances he was working in the fashion industry. While he did run apparel companies at various times, some of the firms listed as his employer on campaign-contribution records are hard to track. Mr. Hsu has maintained a very low profile within New York's apparel industry. Representatives of one of the country's main import groups, the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, said they had never heard of Mr. Hsu. Firms that track shipments to significant U.S. importers also found no record that companies listed by Mr. Hsu had imported goods into the U.S. over the past year. And now, many acquaintances in New York say they aren't sure what he did for a living.

Good for the Journal. But it would be nice if the rest of the media would take a harder look at this as well, instead of continuing to post front-page stories on Larry Craig. Considering the amount of resources that have been deployed to follow the Abramoff story, the Valerie Plame non-scandal and the equally non-scandal of the fired US attorneys, it would seem possible that the media would be able to devote some resources to dig into a story that may actually lead to evidence of foreign meddling in the US political system- which is a genuine scandal. Don't forget that Charlie Trie, Bill Clinton's Asian financier, fled the country to avoid answering questions. We still don't know the real source of that money. For all we know, it could have come from the Chinese government or the Chinese military- neither of whom are allowed to contribute to U.S. candidates. Norman Hsu is a major question mark. If the media are as professional as they like to claim, they need to follow this one up- no matter how embarrassing it might be to the Democrats. Oh, wait. Embarrassing to Democrats? I won't hold my breath. Hat tip to Sweetness and Light for the Wall Street Journal story. Cross-posted on StoneHeads.