It's after 8 pm here on the East Coast -- let's go ahead and wind down the Labor Day truce, shall we?
Quick on the heels of the surrender last week of Clinton high-dollar bundler and 15-year fugitive from justice Norman Hsu comes
news today -- on the front page of the Washington Post, no less -- that yet another of Hillary Clinton's big money men has a hard
time "playing by the rules," as the Clintons like to say:
Sant S. Chatwal, an Indian American businessman, has helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Sen. Hillary Rodham
Clinton's campaigns, even as he battled governments on two continents to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens.The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential
campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while
they press to raise record amounts.Chatwal's case reached from his native India to New York City. The IRS pursued him for approximately $4 million in unpaid business
taxes, while New York state placed a lien seeking more than $5 million in taxes. He forfeited a building to New York City on which he
was delinquent on property taxes and was sued by federal regulators seeking to recoup millions of dollars in loans from a failed bank
where he served as a director.
But there's more:
Across the ocean, three Indian banks forced him into U.S. bankruptcy, and he was charged with bank fraud. He was out on bond
when he showed up in India in 2001 during a visit by his longtime friend Bill Clinton.
Apparently all of this was -- and remains -- A-OK with the Clinton campaign:
Yet none of the legal and financial woes -- occasionally touched on in American or Indian newspapers or highlighted by political
opponents -- raised red flags inside Hillary Clinton's fundraising operation. Chatwal recently said he plans to help raise $5 million
from Indian Americans for Clinton's presidential bid.Asked whether anything in Chatwal's background caused concerns about his activities on behalf of the campaign, Clinton spokesman
Phil Singer answered, "No." He declined last week to be more specific, saying only that major fundraisers are routinely vetted "through
publicly available records."Rajen Anand, a longtime friend of Chatwal and another Clinton fundraiser, said the campaign encourages strict vetting for fundraisers.
"They advise me to be very careful not to associate the campaign with people where there is something wrong," he said.
Of course, Chatwal is an F.O.B. & H., so -- "Nothing to see here":
Anand said, however, that Chatwal may have slid through any vetting, no matter how vigorous, because of his longtime friendship
with the Clintons. The Clintons maintained a close association with Chatwal; both attended one of his sons' weddings in 2002, and
the former president attended another son's wedding in 2006.
Isn't this the same Hillary Clinton who's been telling Democratic voters for months that one of the main reasons she's the strongest,
safest candidate is that she's been thoroughly vetted and inoculated, that...
because she's been in the public eye for so long
because she's been thoroughly vetted over the course of multiple campaigns
because everyone, Republicans included, already knows everything there is to know about her
...that, because of all this, Democratic voters can breathe easily with her? Isn't this the same Hillary Clinton who's been telling Democrats
that, because of all this, her negatives can only go down? Isn't this the same Hillary Clinton who's been telling Democrats that, because
of all this, no unwelcome suprises -- surprises with the potential to derail her candidacy -- lurk just around the corner?
Well, then, what about Sant Chatwal? What about Norman Hsu? In the last week alone, we've learned, with these two -- and we've
learned it not from the Clinton campaign, mind you, but from the press -- of two criminals at the highest levels of the Clinton
money operation.
Clinton's assurances obviously account for S-Q-U-A-T.
Indeed, does anyone honestly believe there's not more of this bullshit just waiting in the wings? Does anyone honestly believe
that the post-Gary Hart press, for all its faults, will not find it over the next 14 months?
Reality check: Hillary Clinton is a seriously flawed, seriously compromised, and -- for Democrats seeking to make a wise
decision as to who will put us in the strongest, safest position in November 2008 -- seriously vulnerable and
seriously unpredictable candidate.
What else has not been "vetted"? What else is she not telling us?
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