RUSH: Let’s go to yesterday’s program. Remember, we had two stories on Mrs. Clinton’s fundraising. One was from ABC. This gets interesting, by the way. One was from ABC and their blog, and the other was from the Washington Post, both blogs. I said, ‘They’ve given themselves cover here because they can run stories on this and say, ‘Hey, we put it on our blog.” I have to be very careful here. I love bloggers and they’re extremely valuable and they do great, great work, but they’re still small. They’re growing. They do not have the reach of the newspaper websites, and they don’t have the reach of the dead-tree newspapers yet. Basically the bloggers out there talk to themselves. They do have some readers and subscribers, but it’s a small audience right now. So what happens is that the Post and ABC put these research stories on Mrs. Clinton’s fundraiser, on their blogs, and not in their primary broadcasts or publications, and then they can say, ‘We covered it. What do you mean we’re biased? We covered it,’ but not with one of their seasoned journalists. So I said this yesterday on this program:
RUSH ARCHIVE: Cookie, I know you’re out there. We’ll do a little study. We’ll find out if this shows up on the ABC television network — what do they call it? — World News Tonight with Charles Gibson. I’ll bet somebody a couple of iPhones that it doesn’t. I’ll bet it doesn’t show up on Good Morning America, and I’ll bet they don’t talk about this on Nightline. (Well, they might do it on Nightline, when everybody but the perverts, are in bed.) Who knows? You want to make a bet about this?
RUSH: Nobody took me up on this. I had a couple iPhones, willing to bet people, nobody took me up on this. So Cookie did the research, results are in, and we have a montage here of all the mentions we found on the ABC broadcast network of the Norman Hsu, Hillary Clinton fundraising scandal.
(Silence)
By the way, none of those examples are repeated, ladies and gentlemen. (Laughing) I was right. I know these people like every square inch of my shrinking and glorious naked body.
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RUSH: I want to set this up for you. I’ve been wondering whether the Norman Hsu-Hsu Xiao Ling-Hillary Clinton-Democrat Party finance scandal would take root and take off. The place that you have to look to find out if this is going to happen (it’s sad, but this is the reality) is the New York Times. If the New York Times decides that this scandal is too threatening to Mrs. Clinton and the party, then the New York Times is going to start saying so in its own way. Now, I don’t know that that’s happened yet, but I got two stories here from the New York Times that may indicate they’re having real problems with this story as it relates to Mrs. Clinton. If it’s true, then I suspect that they’re going to have a problem with this. They will then have to have an alternative candidate, which would be Obama. He’s not as hip-deep in the Hsu scandal as Mrs. Clinton is, but he’s deep in it. The headline here of this Times story: ‘Clinton Sees Fear Realized in Trouble with Donor,’ and another story from the New York Times: ‘Take the Money and Rue.’ That is their editorial on this, and they say that Hillary is in a ‘scandal’ in this editorial. They use that word and associate it with her. The editorial is basically just (sobbing), ‘Oh, can’t we go back to the days of public financing and clean up this mess?’ Go talk to the McCain-Feingold boys, New York Times. You guys got what you want here, and now it turns out you don’t like it because it’s leading to a scandal of your front-runner. It’s gonna be fascinating to watch this.
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RUSH: The Washington Post, by the way, is giving Mrs. Clinton a pass on the fundraising, but the New York Times is not, ladies and gentlemen. In fact, the AP is even worse, calling her a hero. ‘In returning $850,000 to donors associated with the disgraced fundraiser…’ — who is not named — ‘Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton sets a significant new standard for how campaigns should respond in the face of potential…’ A new standard? For crying out loud! Who wrote this? Jim Kuhnhenn. Jim, you’re an idiot! How many millions did the Clintons have to give back already in the mid-nineties? What do you mean, setting new standards? The new standard being set here is having foreign countries in Asia finance Democrat presidential campaigns. What an absolute absurdity. Setting a new standard. Oh, yes, she’s a victim and she’s a hero. Well, the New York Times isn’t playing it that way, and that’s what counts. That’s the house organ to keep an eye on here to see how they treat this. The Washington Post gives her a pass today: ‘Clinton campaign cites flawed background check. No evidence of fundraisers, lawsuits or bankruptcy turned up in records search, said a campaign spokesman.’ We have a little bit here of what that spokesman said. Howard Wolfson, a montage of his explanation for how this could have possibly happened.
WOLFSON: There’s been additional reporting on some of Mr. Hsu’s business practices, and we think an abundance of caution would dictate returning the money. The accumulated weight of all of what we’ve seen and read compelled us to act out of an abundance of caution and return the money. Examination of publicly available databases and information was undertaken and unfortunately this decade-plus old warrant did not show up.
RUSH: Decade-plus old warrant — you think that’s all there was out there? The guy has a phony business. He scammed a bunch of people. This guy sold latex gloves made in China that he never delivered. Mr. Wolfson, I’m sorry, you’re just not credible on this, which requires a willing suspension of disbelief to accept the Clintons’ story on this. ‘Though a commonly used public record search shows that Hsu had multiple business lawsuits filed against him dating to 1985, filed for bankruptcy in 1990, and was a defendant in two 1991 California court matters listed as possible criminal cases, the campaign said its computer checks used insufficient search terms that did not include the two middle names Hsu used in the California case. ‘In all of these searches, the campaign used the name Norman Hsu, which, like the search results of other committees and campaigns, did not turn up disqualifying information,’ Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson explained.’ You didn’t want to find the information. I don’t understand. We keep hearing people care about money, and politics, and ethics; they don’t like earmarks; they don’t like all this pork-barrel spending.
I swear, folks, I don’t understand, how, when this starts happening again to this degree, I don’t understand why there’s just not a massive running — well, I do, understand it, but parts of it I don’t. ‘Hsu’s troubled past eluded the Clinton campaign’s detection even though he was a well-known figure who frequently appeared at campaign events.’ I can’t read this. They’re victims. They’re poor victims of a bad system. My gosh, take a look some of the pictures from the nineties. You got Charlie Trie in there; you’ve got John Huang; you got Pauline Kanchanalak; you got the Riadys; you got the Lippo group. You have money that was being brought in from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Chinese Red Army, the ChiComs’ army, that found its way to the Clinton administration. Let’s not forget something. At the time the Chinese were having trouble orbiting rockets, and they launched some rocket over there, the Ding-Dong II or whatever, and it fell down out of the sky, and so Bernie Schwartz of Loral Space went over there and basically taught them how to orbit the Ding-Dong rocket. Searched the debris, found out what they were doing wrong. We advanced their rocket technology 25 or 30 years.
Now, the way this was made to happen, normally the state department is in charge of allowing US corporations to interact with the nations that are considered on the quasi-enemy list. But the Clinton administration took that out of the state department’s purview and gave it to whom? The commerce department, where who was in charge? Ron Brown, former Democratic National Committee chairman and so forth, so that’s how this all happened. So the ChiComs sent all this money and we’re led to believe here that another Asian, Hong Kong, Chinese, has eluded the Clintons on the possible — I don’t believe a word of it. I think they knew and were trying to get away with it. The guy is running around in this country on the lam for 15 years and nobody can find him? There’s so much strange about this, folks. They didn’t take his passport either time he was arrested. He fled the country once. They didn’t take it this last time. I’m still suspicious about what the hell happened on this Amtrak train heading to New York from California in Colorado.
‘Clinton campaign chairman Terence R. McAuliffe — famous for his careful, methodical courting of big donors and fundraisers –‘ I’m going to choke. This is the Washington Post giving them all a pass here. ‘–said in an interview yesterday that he does not know where Hsu came from. ‘I don’t know how he became involved in the Clinton campaign,’ McAuliffe said. ‘I’ve never asked the man for a check.” My mind is Jell-O, Jell-O, Jell-O, I don’t recall; I don’t remember; it’s not my fault; can’t possibly be expected to remember all these donors, Jell-O, Jell-O, Jell-O. Later in the story, ‘ McAuliffe, the man who built his reputation by raising huge sums for Bill Clinton, said it was not until 15 months after Hsu wrote his first check to Clinton’s Senate bid that they met, ‘and I had very little interaction with him after.’ Major Clinton donors said this represents a departure for a campaign that prides itself on preparation and will not hesitate to lavish attention on those who raise money.’ I swear, this Washington Post story was written by the Clintons. It’s just laughable. McAuliffe ended up with $15 million from Gary Winnick, that phone company that went bankrupt, Global Crossing, yeah. It’s just amazing all this stuff that happens to the Clintons.
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RUSH: I just want to share with you some of the details here in today’s Wall Street Journal page one story. Who is Norman Hsu? Where did he get his money? You need to know this. The Clinton campaign is acting like they have no clue who the guy is. They never found out and their computers couldn’t find out, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s such BS. The Wall Street Journal has found out all kinds of stuff about this guy. ‘New documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal may help point to an answer: A company controlled by Mr. Hsu recently received $40 million from a Madison Avenue investment fund run by Joel Rosenman, who was one of the creators of the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. That money, Mr. Rosenman told investors this week, is missing. Mr. Hsu told Mr. Rosenman the money would be used to manufacture apparel in China for Gucci, Prada and other private labels, yielding a 40% profit on each deal, according to a business plan obtained by the Journal. Now the investment fund, Source Financing Investors, says Mr. Hsu’s company owes it the $40 million, which represents 37 separate deals with Mr. Hsu’s company. When Source Financing recently attempted to cash checks from the company, Components Ltd., the investors say they were told the account held insufficient funds.
‘Source Financing’s arrangement with Mr. Hsu’s company, according to court documents and investor accounts,’ that the Clintons couldn’t find, ‘echoes an older matter that came to light in recent weeks. In 1991, California officials charged Mr. Hsu with grand theft for failing to repay investors for money he raised to import latex gloves from China.’ Now, this is the same scam, only this time it’s with knockoffs of name-brand clothing. ”Norman Hsu has an extraordinary ability to deceive,’ says Seth Rosenberg of Clayman & Rosenberg, a lawyer representing Mr. Rosenman. Mr. Rosenman and a partner, Yau Cheng, wrote a joint letter on Monday to alert their fund’s investors. ‘Last week, our attorneys met with representatives of the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to inform them of the situation,’ they wrote. The district attorney is investigating, the letter says. A spokesman for the district attorney did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Hsu’s lawyers had no immediate comment to the allegations by Source Financing. Where Mr. Hsu got his money has been a burning question in recent weeks. He financed a web of political donations and a lavish lifestyle, despite two bankruptcies and a felony record. Telling acquaintances he was an apparel executive, he set up multiple companies, sometimes giving early investors profits, they say, so they would bring in friends. In some cases, investors in his businesses say they were so eager to please Mr. Hsu that they donated to political candidates alongside him.’
The LA Times told us this the other day. People who had no intention to vote for Hillary gave him money for Hillary because they wanted to stay on his good side. ‘Mr. Hsu himself has donated $750,000 to Democrats and Democratic parties out of his own pocket since 2004, according to campaign-finance records. In checks no larger than $2,300 apiece — the legal limit for donations to single candidates for a primary or a general election — Mr. Hsu also raised more than $850,000 for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. He co-hosted fund-raisers that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars more, including a recent event for Mrs. Clinton at the Modern, a restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.’ They were standing there side-by-side! He’s co-hosting fundraisers for her! ‘My mind is Jell-O, Jell-O, Jell-O.’ She has no idea, and the campaign has no clue who this guy is! ‘The contributions are now haunting the Democratic [P]arty. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign said on Monday it would refund all of the,’ money. ‘More Democrats announced yesterday that they would dispose of funds that Mr. Hsu gave or raised, including Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York ($25,000), Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts ($35,000), Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu ($11,700), Montana Sen. Jon Tester ($4,750), Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill ($20,700) and Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph Sestak ($2,500).
‘Others have given their money to charity, including Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau,’ the Manhattan DA, ‘whose campaign received $2,000 in March from Mr. Hsu,’ and they’re now investigating. Now, some of these people are fine. Morgenthau is a fine guy. They say they’re going to give the money to charity. I want proof! The Drive-Bys just accept it. Let’s see the checks. Let’s see the wire transfers. ‘More Democrats are expected to follow. A Wall Street Journal analysis of campaign finance reform records has linked Mr. Hsu with at least $1.8 million in donations to Democrats since 2004.’ Campaign finance reform, anyone, by the way? ‘Mr. Rosenberg, the attorney for Mr. Rosenman,’ the Woodstock guy, who gave Hsu $40 million, ‘asked politicians to hold on to the funds so that Source Financing and other investors can be made whole. ‘It appears that Source Financing Investors joins Hillary Clinton…and many others as his victims,’ Mr. Rosenberg said in an interview.’ Awww! Bring out the Stradivarius here, folks. Then, of course, they tell us the story of the family of Mr. Paw. Let me repeat this story for you in case you missed it. In late August the Journal had a story ‘that called attention to similar donations by Mr. Hsu and a California family who shared one of his many addresses. The family lives in a modest home and one member, William Paw, is a mailman.’ This is the family that has a lot of pets, but no money. ‘Campaign-finance records show the $55,000 in donations the family members have made to Mrs. Clinton since 2004 place them among her leading financial supporters.’
William Paw makes 45 grand a year as a mailman, and he’s one of her leading contributors! ‘The family has donated about $225,000 to Democrats since 2005. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating possible campaign-finance violations.’ This is the man that the Wall Street Journal can find out everything about, the feds can find out. The Clintons? The mind is Jell-O, Jell-O, Jell-O. I don’t recall. I don’t remember. She’s standing right next to him as a co-host at a fundraiser at a restaurant at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The parallels here are just striking. Let me give you a couple things here from the Investor’s Business Daily editorial from yesterday on this: ‘People forced to give to political causes and candidates they abhor — is there anything more un-American?’ They’re writing in reaction to the LA Times story that a couple of women were made to feel, by Norman Hsu, that they had to give to Clinton to stay in his good graces, but they had no intention to vote for her. But that marks only the beginning of the concerns. ‘Why would a suspected swindler be a top donor to a White House favorite? Is Hsu fronting for a group, a foreign government?’
Who is this guy? ‘Why did Clinton ignore warnings about Hsu? California businessman Jack Cassidy reportedly alerted the Clinton campaign in June of his suspicions that Hsu was a fraudster. The Clinton campaign is accepting future contributions from the same people to whom, because of their associations with Hsu, it is returning $850,000,’ as we mentioned yesterday. ‘That amounts to a shell game.’ Does anybody remember the name Jack Abramoff and how the Drive-By Media was just bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz bzz for two years over what might happen to Republicans because of their association with him? Of course, the Drive-Bys, for the most part, are ignoring this — except the New York Times, ladies and gentlemen. Roger Aronoff, writing at AIM (Accuracy in Media), says keep a sharp eye on the New York Times, and if the New York Times decides that this latest scandal is an indication that Senator Clinton carries too much baggage to be a viable presidential candidate, will they pull the plug on her and carry the banner for somebody else such as Obama? Well, let’s look at the New York Times today: ‘Clinton Sees Fear Realized in Trouble with Donor.
‘The Hsu case has revived ugly memories for voters about the Democratic fund-raising scandals when Bill Clinton was president… Even some of her own major donors are aghast that, given the Clintons’ past problems with fund-raising, Mrs. Clinton’s vetting process did not uncover Mr. Hsu’s criminal history… ‘People have often said about the Clintons, they don’t care who they hang out with as long as the people can be helpful to them,” this is one of Mrs. Clinton’s major fundraisers. ”The larger point in all of this is that the Clintons are the ultimate pragmatists in who they hang out with; if you can be useful to them, they will find a way to make it work.’ Advisers say Mrs. Clinton is not so much furious about the scandal, as she is worried about containing the political damage.’ Well, of course! Then the New York Times editorial today discusses this with the headline ‘Take the Money and Rue,’ and they say that she’s in a ‘scandal.’ So we’ll keep a sharp eye on the New York Times. The New York Times will provide the Drive-By Media with its guidance on how to treat this story and only time will tell. I know it’s unlikely. I think the Times, right now, is doing its obligatory duty to cover the story and they’ll drop it in due course, but we’ll see. It depends on what continues to surface and how many other people decide to get interested in all of this.
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RUSH: Three small little observations here, and this, to me, is the most obvious question about Norman Hsu. Here is the most obvious question: How is it conceivable that the Clinton people don’t know who he is and don’t know his background? For somebody to have contributed that much money, he would have demanded something in return. People do not make donations of this size for ideas. You people sending $25, $50, you’re sending your ideas in. Somebody like this, who is out there raising money, bundling money from people who don’t have it, is expecting something in return for this. For that to happen, they have to know who he is and who he represents. You cannot return favors, unless you know who you’re supposed to deliver to. This, to me, is the most obvious question about this, and this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I am host.
Also, you remember back in one of the first reporting periods of campaign fundraising when Obama had overtaken Hillary? You remember the, ‘Oh, my God, why, look at that, why, how can this be?’ There was a story around that time that came and went, folks. Hillary’s campaign had accidentally doubled some contributions, because she had to roll back her total number. She had accidentally doubled some contributions and noticed that some contributions were checks that bounced. This happened when the action line was the fundraising contest between Obama versus Hillary, and she originally put out some false numbers, that she was way ahead, and that was what was first reported. Then a week or so later, some days later, ‘By the way, we need revise our numbers.’ After everybody had already got the first number in their head, ‘Oh, wow, look at Hillary, she is really raising a lot of money.’ They had to revise the numbers down a little bit. And, of course, can we forget — we cannot, can we? — the cattles future scandal where Mrs. Clinton invested $10,000 in the cattle futures market, what, six months later the ten grand became a hundred grand, and they asked her, ‘How did this happen?’ ‘Well, I read the Wall Street Journal.’ Remember that? Well, when did she stop reading the Wall Street Journal for cattle tips? You talk about suspending belief? How about Hillary making a hundred grand off ten grand in a matter of a few months?
Here’s another thing, folks. Let’s take her at her word. She didn’t know who the guy was, couldn’t find him, couldn’t uncover one bit of information about Norman Hsu. Despite this incredible vetting process, Wolfson couldn’t do it, the punk couldn’t do it, Terry McAuliffe couldn’t do it. She wants to be president of the United States. Do you realize how many things over the years she’s admitted to not knowing? This makes her totally inept. If we take her at her word, that she didn’t know, she is totally inept, ladies and gentlemen, especially her own past with money. Her self-assumed victim-hood with the media. This is an accident waiting to happen if this woman takes it far.
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RUSH: Here’s another story on Norman Hsu. This is from NBC Channel 11, and the Associated Press also contributed to it. It’s a strange article. ‘An anonymous tip to the FBI led to the arrest of disgraced Democrat fundraiser Norman Hsu in Colorado, according to recently unsealed court documents. Hsu, who appeared suddenly in the New York political scene about four years ago, had been scheduled to appear in court last week for a bail reduction hearing, but skipped town, forfeiting $2 million in bail. He took the California Zephyr out of Emeryville at about the same time as his court appearance. He is under guard at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction, Colorado. He was arrested at the hospital after he was taken from the eastbound Amtrak train for treatment of an undisclosed ailment.’ Here’s the last two sentences of the story. ‘It is not clear when Hsu will be released from the hospital. NBC 11 reported he was taken to the surgical wing.’ He was taken to the surgical wing. By the way, ladies and gentlemen, you’ve heard the term ‘culture of corruption’ floating around out there, especially as it applies to Republicans? Culture of corruption. Clinton fundraising is not the culture of corruption. It’s the definition of corruption. That’s how you have to look at Norman Hsu and all this.