Squeaky clean continues to rub off of Obama’s star

The Smoking Gun reports that the Blago scandal may not be the only political scandal PEBO is linked to going into 2009:

DECEMBER 31–As if being linked to one high-profile criminal case weren’t enough, President-elect Barack Obama’s name may soon pop up in another federal prosecution, this one involving a massive Ponzi scheme (no, the other massive Ponzi scheme). In addition to the Rod Blagojevich pay-for-play probe, Obama could figure in the upcoming fraud trial of Norman Hsu, the disgraced Democratic fundraiser who was charged last year with operating a $60 million pyramid scheme. According to investigators, Hsu, a major Hillary Clinton fundraiser, pressured investors to donate money to political candidates with whom he was aligned. In a letter last week to U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero, Hsu’s lawyer, Martin Cohen, requested a 60-day delay in the start of Hsu’s trial, scheduled to open January 12 (Cohen cited the “extraordinary level of negative publicity” generated by the recent arrest of alleged Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff). In his December 22 letter, a copy of which you’ll find below, Cohen also noted that Hsu was already “notorious for his political activities” and that it was “inevitable” that his client’s “connections” to Bill and Hillary Clinton “and other democratic notables–including perhaps the president-elect–will be introduced at trial.” Before becoming a key fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, Hsu co-hosted a 2005 California fundraiser for Obama’s political action committee and introduced the Illinois Democrat to Marc Gorenberg, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who later joined the Obama campaign’s national finance committee. Prosecutors allege that Hsu directed his investors to donate money to specific candidates, and then reimbursed them in violation of federal campaign laws. Unswayed by Cohen’s argument, Marrero declined to delay the trial, which will begin a week before Obama’s inauguration. (6 pages)

Considering his ties to Hsu (like so many other controversial figures) were barely discussed by the media over the course of Obama’s campaign for president, no doubt Sec. of State-to-be Hillary Clinton, who was dogged about her ties to this scandal for weeks during run-up the Democrat presdiential primaries, will watch with glee from the sidelines as the connections between Hsu and Obama are made more clear in the weeks to come – made clear mostly by the conservative media. The left wing media, of course, will seek to gloss over those connections … that is, if they even care enough about this trial to cover it at all.

It may very well be just an innocent tie, one many prominent Democrats (like DNC Chair Howard Dean and the disgraced Eilot Spitzer) have, but all the same, it puts Nancy Pelosi’s whole “culture of corruption” phrase in a whole new light. See, with Pelosi and Co, any Republican only needed to have the thinnest connection with the likes of Jack Abramoff (etc) in order to be a corruptocrat of the worst order. Funny how we never hear that, though, in connection with her own party’s extensive ties to former fundraisers and fugitives from justice like Norman Hsu …

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