Since the New York Times has now stepped up to cover Hsu/Hillarygate, that should send a clue that it is OK for the Argus Leader to put it front and center:
Of all the possible vulnerabilities facing Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign, Mrs. Clinton has long believed that the one of the biggest was money, friends and advisers say. Some sort of fund-raising scandal that would echo the Clinton-era controversies of the 1990s and make her appear greedy or ethically challenged.
As a result, Mrs. Clinton told aides this year to vet major donors carefully and help her avoid situations in which she might appear to be trading access for big money, advisers said. Also to be avoided, the senator said, were fund-raising tactics that might conjure up the Clinton White House coffees and the ties to relatively unknown donors offering large sums, like the Asian businessmen who sent checks to the Democratic National Committee.
Yet nine months into her campaign, Mrs. Clinton is grappling with exactly the situation she feared — giving up nearly $900,000 that had been donated or raised by Norman Hsu, a one-time fugitive and one of her top fund-raisers, whose actions raise serious questions about how well the campaign vetted its donors. As a result, Mrs. Clinton now finds herself linked to a convicted criminal who brought in tens of thousands of dollars from potentially tainted sources.
The Hsu case has revived ugly memories for voters about the Democratic fund-raising scandals when Bill Clinton was president, the senator’s campaign advisers acknowledge, a time when both Clintons were often photographed with people whose money later turned out to be dirty, including Johnny Chung and Charlie Trie. Mrs. Clinton is running on her White House experience in the 1990s, and any attention cast on past fund-raising controversies could threaten her image with voters.
Even some of her own major donors are aghast that, given the Clintons’ past problems with fund-raising, Mrs. Clinton’s vetting process did not uncover Mr. Hsu’s criminal history. Even though Mr. Hsu had previously donated to other politicians and charities without his past surfacing, these donors say, the Clinton operation had been widely considered one of the best-run in recent campaigns — until now.
"People have often said about the Clintons, they don’t care who they hang out with as long as the people can be helpful to them," said one of Mrs. Clinton’s major fund-raisers. "The larger point in all of this is that the Clintons are the ultimate pragmatists in who they hang out with; if you can be useful to them, they will find a way to make it work."
Advisers say Mrs. Clinton is not so much furious about the scandal, as she is worried about containing the political damage.
Just like she could care less about Bill’s affair with Monic, instead only "worried about containing the political damage…thus the Right-wing conspiracy theory.
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