Hsu, Ickes, Clinton – a bad sequel gets worse

Yes, I KNEW I’d seen this damn movie before! Instapundit links to this article, and writes:

SHE HSU’D HAVE KNOWN BETTER”: “Hillary Clinton claims ignorance over Norman Hsu’s dirty money. But she was right in the middle of a nearly identical fundraising scandal a decade ago. In fact, she was briefed about the prior scandal by an aide who’s advising her today.”

From the editorial:

Rewind to 1996, when Hillary headed her husband’s legal defense fund during his re-election bid.

On April 4 of that year, she received a damage-control briefing from fund trustees and a top White House aide about more than $600,000 in questionable donations bundled by Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, a Chinese bagman who ran a restaurant in Little Rock, Ark.

The largest chunk of the haul — $463,000 — raised flags among fund trustees, because it was delivered by Trie in two manila envelopes stuffed full of sequentially numbered money orders from different parts of the country. All bore the same handwriting.

It was agreed at the meeting that the the dirty cash would be kept secret until after the election — and even then, the names of donors would never be disclosed. It was also agreed donors would be free to re-send any returned money.
[…]
The smoking gun came in the form of handwritten notes taken by deputy White House chief of staff Harold Ickes.

“Charlie Trie — Money orders — Don’t report names if $ are returned,” Ickes wrote. “Could return all $ & ask people to resend it if they want.”

Then this: “BC/HRC to put it out of his mind and wait until after the election.” BC stands for Bill Clinton, HRC for Hillary Rodham Clinton. Ickes cited “HRC” several other times in his notes.

If this sounds like deja vu, it is.

Hillary’s presidential campaign knew since at least June that there were serious questions about China-born Hsu, her own top fundraiser now behind bars.

Yet she agreed to return the $860,000 he bundled for her from mostly Asian donors only after the scandal broke in the press. Even so, she’s declined to publicly identify the 260 donors, and may ask for some of the funds back.

Now as then, Ickes is involved, this time as an adviser to her campaign. And the same guy who courted all the shady Asian donors in last decade’s Clinton campaigns is heading Hillary’s fundraising now. His name: Terry McAuliffe…

Hillary claims she had no reason to vet big Asian donors to her presidential campaign, no reason to be suspicious of them. She suggests critics who think she should have been more suspect are racist.
[…]
But the Ickes notes clearly show Hillary had every reason to check out Hsu, with whom she and Bill snapped photos and whom she let fete her campaign manager in all-expenses-paid trip to Las Vegas.
[…]
She should have known better than to look the other way as he raised more money for her than anybody.

For crying out loud. Ghostbusters II was one of the worst sequels ever made, and what made it awful was the fact that the filmmakers had NO new ideas; they essentially re-shot the same movie they’d made first time, but without the glibness, the fun or the adventure…without the energy. They just switched Mr. Sta-Puff to Miss Liberty.

Hillary’s whole presidential campaign is beginning to feel the same way – like a dreary sequel with one character change, put together for no discernible reason, other than a cynical expectation that the public will buy again what it has bought before. And because the marketing will reap a fortune.

And sadly, who knows…they may just be right.