October 1, 2007
KEN STARR, LINE THREE:
For Hillary, There's No Such Thing as Dirty Money (Nicholas von Hoffman, October 1, 2007, The Nation)
Then there is Pamela Layton. According to the Wall Street Journal:Posted by Orrin Judd at October 1, 2007 6:45 PMWhen Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.
But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband's boss for the donations. "It wasn't personal money. It was all corporate money," Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican."
The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising "bundler" for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton's gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.
If Danielczyk did what the article alleges, he could go to jail. Reimbursing your employees for political contributions made in their names with your money is against the law. Whether Hillary's connection to Danielczyk will eventually bite her is anybody's guess. It is believed in the big-money circles where Hillary lives that the practice is common although done with more subterfuge than in Layton's case.
Both of the Clintons seem to have gone money-crazy. Bill is out loose on the world taking enormous amounts of money from anyone who pays him to appear anywhere and bragging about it. With a pension of $186,000 a year plus innumerable other perks, another ex-President might rein in the itchy palm urge, but Bill is not known as a self-control artist. Whether he is also acting as a bag man for his wife is something for future grand juries to investigate.
A lot of that money is laundered "donations" from the Chinese and other friends of Bill.
Posted by: erp at October 2, 2007 1:56 PM