Hillary’s dirty money: Part 3,209,830
October 29th, 2007 at 1:59 pm . by el nuko
This article is a week or so old. I can’t recall if it was before the Chinese dishwashers started making maximum contributions to Hillary, or after.
All the dirty money scandals with the Clintons start to blend together after a while, till it just seems like one giant stinkhole.
This is from the Miami Herald…
Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is raking in so much dough that it’s hard for her staff to keep tabs on all the donors. Consequently, some embarrassing checks have been cashed.
A bunch of them came courtesy of Norman Hsu, the natty schmoozer of high-level Democrats who was recently busted on fraud charges. Hsu raised about $800,000 for Mrs. Clinton, who has said she’ll give back that money to the individual donors.
Now comes the revelation that Mrs. Clinton and several other Democrats, including presidential candidates John Edwards and Joe Biden, accepted contributions from trial lawyers implicated in a sleazy kickback scheme.
The facts, as reported in The New York Times, make it difficult to believe that taking money from these characters was an innocent oversight. The scandal was already in full bloom, and well publicized, when the candidates banked the donations.
At the center of the case is the New York law firm of Milberg Weiss, which made billions in legal fees by initiating class-action suits against large, publicly traded corporations.
The firm’s approach was aggressive and effective. When a company’s stock dropped significantly, Milberg Weiss would quickly sue, having recruited a shareholder as a plaintiff.
Typically, the lawsuit accused executives of misleading or defrauding investors. More often than not, the company would settle the case for big bucks in order to avoid a trial.
Milberg Weiss soon became the leading class-action firm in the country, though its activities drew the scrutiny of federal investigators. In May 2006, the firm was indicted for fraud and bribery.
Prosecutors called it a ”racketeering enterprise,” and alleged that Milberg Weiss paid people kickbacks to act as plaintiffs in 250 cases. The law firm has denied all charges, but at least three former partners have pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
One of the lavishly bribed was Howard J. Vogel, 61, of Aventura. Prosecutors say he got $2.5 million under the table for acting as lead plaintiff in several Milberg Weiss class-action suits. Vogel and former Milberg partner Steven G. Schulman have pleaded guilty.
So has ex-Milberg partner William S. Lerach, a former fundraiser for Edwards, who is himself a trial lawyer. Lerach is also a buddy of Bill Clinton dating back to his White House days, and donated more than $100,000 to the Clinton presidential library.
The odor of the criminal probe has been hovering around Milberg Weiss for some time, but apparently many top Democrats don’t mind the stink. Twenty-six candidates, including Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida, have accepted campaign checks from donors connected to Milberg Weiss since the 2006 indictments.
Edwards took $4,600 from Lerach this year. Biden collected $2,700. Hillary Clinton grabbed $3,000 from Lerach, and a total of $4,600 from two other former Milberg Weiss lawyers.
She has also accepted $4,600 from the firm’s co-founder, Melvyn I. Weiss, who stands charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Surprisingly, a Clinton spokesman told The Times last week that Clinton doesn’t intend to return Weiss’ money. We’ll see.
Trial lawyers have traditionally supported Democrats with the same gusto with which oil companies and defense contractors have backed Republicans. Every party has its fat-cat interest groups who believe, quite correctly, that hefty political donations buy influence.
In this instance, the mystery is why Clinton and the other Democrats would take a nickel from anyone so prominently linked to such slimy allegations. There are plenty of reputable (and affluent) trial lawyers who’ve never been indicted for anything.
One possible excuse is that the candidates didn’t know about the Milberg Weiss scandal, which would mean they’d been living in a subterranean cave without the benefit of newspapers, TV or the Internet.
Another defense would be that they didn’t know about the Milberg Weiss donations, which seems farfetched considering the firm’s heavy connections to the party. After all, its lawyers kicked in $500,000 toward the construction of a new headquarters for the Democratic National Committee.
The final possibility — and the only believable one — is that the candidates knew all about the indictments and accepted the money anyway, hoping nobody would notice.
It’s not illegal for a politician to accept campaign contributions from a defendant in a pending bribery case, or from somebody who’s copped a guilty plea.
But it sure looks bad, not to mention hypocritical.
It also becomes extremely hard to position yourself credibly on the side of ethical reform, and to attack your GOP opponents for fostering a ”culture of corruption” in Washington, D.C.
There’s nothing worse than corrupting the justice system for profit, which is what Milberg Weiss is accused of doing. With the trials pending, the Democrats should have treated those campaign checks like an anthrax valentine.
Now it’s too late. All that is left to do is plead ignorance and sheepishly give back the money.
Especially if you’re Hillary.
Yeah, that’s going to happen
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“Please donate for the benefit of our friends and neighbors in Southern California”
You’ve become such a cynic.
Of course she is going to give the money back, all of it…she said so, and she is the smartest woman in the
countryroom she is in.yes, I admit, I’m a victim of clinton fatigue.
But, since I’m a victim, it’s not my fault.
There you go, a card carrying member of the Society of Uppity Victims.
/SUV
BTW, did you see this story?
/the LSM is reporting this?
No. eggselent!
Good piece about media matters and David Brock.
Hoo-hoo…HOOOOOOOH!
Biff-Bop-Boom!
That left a mark.
Ouch! heh
Good grief…what a cry baby!
Now that’s funny.
What a cool story!
This one goes to jkn…fo’sho’.
I saved it too. You been using jkn?
Yes I have, ever since you posted about it.
Sadly, I never completed my bookmark migration to jkn, before I turned the flame thrower onto my old puter.
I can still connect my old hard drive to my new puter, as a slave, to retrieve all of my old documents and bookmarks, but I only know about it in theory, not practice.
You are making a good case for using one of the on-line backup services
[…] post by Nuke This was written by . Posted on Monday, October 29, 2007, at 2:59 pm. Filed under Politics. […]
Yes…yes I am!
I recognized the utility immediately, when I examined jkn.
I had been planning on getting a new puter, anyway, but maybe it was a premonition of events, as I began the migration.
/i vow to never install two or more program over-writes simultaneously…ever again
Time for a little link dumpage.
Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week in review.
Inhofe slams the big green scare machine, and it’s loons.
Huckabee stirs up 3rd party fear.
Mississippi Miracle!
/henh
Siky Pony Accepts Federal Matching….?
Uhhh…pimf=silky
See? I wouldn’t have even noticed that!
there was a story about a guy who won the hamburger eating contest by eating 108 Krystals in 10 minutes.
Burrrrrrp, fart. Ahhhh
I heard it on TV, so it must be true.
Yeah, I saw that burger eater story on the innernut, so between tv and innernut, it has to be true.
I can’t imagine the health effects being a “gurgitator” holds.
One of my all time favorite Loggins and Messina songs, and this is the only video of it I could find.
Guess I better take my chips and cash in.
A little late night blues.
Nite
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