Tom Vilsack, Come On Down!

You're the first Norman Hsu recipient to play 3rd Quarter Reconciliation!

While no longer an active candidate for President, Vilsack received a total of $4,300 from Hsu and his previously identified suspected straw donors, between May 3rd and May 10th of this year.

Until now, I'd only known about $3,800 of it, despite each of these donors being on the list, since the Vilsack campaign had recorded Soe Win Lee's name incorrectly at the time of her contribution.  Happily, Lee's name appears to have been spelled properly on the refund, as filed minutes ago by Vilsack's campaign committee.

Also reflected in that filing are refunds to Paul Su ($1,000) and Susan Chilman ($500).

Indulge me in a moment of quiet self-blandishment for having correctly identified Susan Chilman (aka the actress Susan Pari) as a Hsu bundlee, something you've read only on this blog.

*moment*

Those three refunds (each issued on 9/22) total $2,000, which takes care of everyone on the list, except Mr. Hsu himself, who contributed $2,300 on May 3rd.  Vilsack likely turned this money over to the United Way of Iowa, as his campaign cut them a check for $2,300 on August 30th.  Wave goodbye to that money, victims of Hsu's alleged Ponzi schemes.

Vilsack's Q3 filing also leaves us with a shiny little gem by the name of Seema Hingorani of Darien, Connecticut, the only other individual to receive a refund from Vilsack on 9/22, hers for $2,300.  Glancing at Hingorani's contribution history, we see her donations fit the Hsu donor pattern very nicely (including nearly $14,000 to Hillary and HillPAC and more than $26,000 to the DSCC since 2005).  I'd come upon Seema (and the two other Connecticut Hingoranis) previously, due to their fitting the Hsu contribution pattern so well, but never included them in the data primarily because Seema appears to have a legitimate and presumably high paying job, which is a decently predictive exclusionary criterion among suspected Hsu straw donors.  The Vilsack refund, however, seems to plant at least Seema if not the other Hingoranis firmly into the presumed Hsu-connected donor group.

Hingorani is sure to be just the first of (quite literally) hundreds of new Hsu-connected donors that will be unearthed by the end of the day.  Most will emerge when Hillary's filing is uploaded, though many of them will be alleged victims (coerced into making contributions as a condition of their participation in Hsu's ostensibly legitimate business deals), rather than allegedly reimbursed straw donors of the Paw ilk.

I won't be updating the data review in real time like this throughout the day, but I wanted to walk through this first very fertile filing step-by-step as a preview of things to come.

It's going to be a long night, on the other side of which we're likely to find ourselves discussing a much larger scandal.

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Previous coverage available in the Norman Hsu archives.