Fishy Donors Haunt Hillary’s Run

Sept. 20, 2007 — -- If you can't trust a millionaire who wants to funnel millions to a presidential candidate, who can you trust these days?

It's the ugly flipside of the most expensive campaign in American history. Every day brings a new set of revelations about fishy donors and fishier "bundlers" whose complicated business interests -- and, often, questionable pasts -- that offer no barrier to their ability to shower cash on eager candidates (particularly, it seems, if that candidate has the last name of "Clinton").

The Wall Street Journal's Brody Mullins and Ianthe Jeanne Dugan today find another suspicious "bundler" who's helping Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.: William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm. They quote a donor, Pamela Layton, as saying she was reimbursed by Danielczyk -- her husband's boss -- for the donations -- which is quite illegal: "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican," Layton said. The Clinton campaign says it's sending back the $9,200 donated by the Laytons, and will review all of the contributions brought in by Danielczyk (strarting to sound familiar?).

This, of course, comes on top of the Norman Hsu debacle (and there's more on an old alleged Hsu-devised Ponzi scheme in today's Los Angeles Times).

Another Hsu could drop today -- this from a press release this morning from the US attorney for the Southern District of New York: "A press conference will be held today to announce the unsealing of a criminal complaint charging an individual with perpetrating a $60 million 'Ponzi' fraud scheme. The complaint also alleges that the defendant committed related federal campaign finance crimes."

In addition, Clinton is still refusing to say whether she'll return money from Oscar Wyatt, who is on trial for fraud, conspiracy, and other charges related to Saddam Hussein's abuse of the UN's oil-for-food program. Wyatt appears to have had a close relationship with President Bill Clinton during the 1990s, according to testimony that's emerged at federal trials, per ABC News.

And The Washington Post's John Solomon and Matthew Mosk examine Clinton's top fund-raisers and find "several figures who were involved in the 1990s Democratic Party fundraising scandal that tarnished her husband's record."

"Among them is an Oklahoma oilman who testified in the mid-1990s that the firm he worked for, owned by Democratic fundraisers, sought to curry favor with Bill Clinton's administration by providing payments and a golf club membership to a Cabinet secretary's son," Solomon and Mosk write. "Also on the list [of "Hillraisers"] is former senator Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), who withdrew from a 2002 reelection campaign after being 'severely admonished' by the Senate for taking lavish gifts from a businessman and contributor."

So far, this is more of an issue for Clinton than any other candidate -- and the issue revives the bad memories of the scandal-ridden White House years. But she's not the only candidate touched by the creeping shade of such scandals. Alan Fabian -- a fund-raiser for former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass. -- was charged in a 23-count indictment last month alleging money laundering and obstruction of justice.

One of former senator John Edwards' top money folks -- trial lawyer William S. Lerach -- is now headed to prison for at least 12 months under a plea agreement on a conspiracy charge. The Washington Post's Solomon and Carrie Johnson report that Edwards "used the bully pulpit of his presidential campaign to publicly pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission" on Lerach's behalf in May. Edwards on Tuesday returned his personal donations from Lerach -- and he's given to other Democrats as well -- but Edwards "isn't returning the money he raised from others," Solomon and Johnston write.

Elsewhere in the campaign (and not to jinx anybody's streak here), former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y., is as hot as his beloved Yankees this week. But Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., looked more like the Mets yesterday -- stumbling en route to the playoffs.

To review Giuliani's past few days: He's tussling with Clinton (even though he seems oddly taken with the Clintons' fame), and is talking tough against Iran. In Iowa, his campaign is engaged in an ad war not with his challengers but with the liberal group MoveOn.org -- a fight Rudy will take any day. And he spent yesterday hobnobbing with the Brits, with Winston Churchill's granddaughter calling the former New York City mayor "Churchill in a baseball cap."

ABC's Jake Tapper sees Giuliani trying to look past his GOP rivals: "His focus on Clinton rather than his GOP opponents is clearly calculated to demonstrate to Republicans, many of whom are wary of some of his more liberal views, that he is best equipped to defeat Clinton in a general election," Tapper writes. "He is also hoping that his London visit will feed into the image of him as a statesman that he's worked to project, as opposed to past moments when he seemed more a rough-and-tumble New York City street fighter."

This is a frontrunner's campaign that's hitting its stride. But before he can coast to any nomination, he'll have to answer skeptics like those he'll face tomorrow when he and the rest of the GOP field appears before the before the National Rife Association (Rudy's Red Sox --