Zoltan, thought I'd toss you a bone.............
Since my disdain for G-wh-ore supercede my concerns
and differences with and about not-enough-in-the-Bush.
Though you may not remember, I mentioned before that I met
the G-whore in a small group once, and came away thinking
he was a complete "prick" (for lack of a better term) who
liked to usurp other's ideas and claim them as his own
while changing his core convictions like he changed his
clothes (ie.the aid of consultants and polls).
Well, here's your bone....Seems like the G-whore is
also even a bigger liar than his skirt chasing boss...........
phillynews.com
"New questions on Gore's account of '96 event Memos indicate that his aides knew that a Buddhist temple lunch was a fund-raiser. What he knew has serious legal and political implications."
By Chris Mondics
INQUIRER WASHINGTON BUREAU
LOS ANGELES - For several years, Vice President Gore has maintained he knew little about the real purpose of a 1996 luncheon in his honor at the Hsi Lai Buddhist temple in a suburb here.
But a growing body of documents, including new records obtained by The Inquirer, shows that Gore would have had reason to believe the luncheon at a tax-exempt religious institution, which was attended by some of the Democratic Party's top fund-raisers, was for raising political money.
One e-mail written by the vice president shows that at some point weeks before the event, he knew he would be attending a fund-raiser in Southern California on April 29, 1996, though the e-mail does not mention the temple itself.
Even his security staff understood the event to be a money-raising luncheon, according to one memo. A copy of a previously unreleased Secret Service electronic memo, obtained from congressional sources, says that Gore was flying to Los Angeles for the luncheon, and describes it as a political fund-raiser. The entry about the luncheon was made on April 29, according to the document.
Other Gore staff memos refer to a fund-raising luncheon that day; one lists a ticket price of $1,000 to $5,000 per person.
Also, luncheon participants told Senate investigators that two speakers at the luncheon referred to the event as a fund-raiser in Gore's presence.
The vice president said shortly after the fund-raiser that he understood it to be a "community outreach" event. In 1997, a Gore spokeswoman, Lorraine Voles, said that Gore "knew it was a finance-related event" with donors present, but that he was not aware money was being raised at the event. Another aide called it a "donor maintenance" event. Gore has said he had no information at the time suggesting it was a fund-raiser.
"This has been looked at time and time again by the Justice Department and various congressional committees; it is the most recycled and reviewed issue in Washington," Gore's presidential campaign spokesman, Chris Lehane, said recently when contacted about the documents described in this story.
Eventually, federal prosecutors determined that donors at the luncheon had been among the people involved in a scheme to launder campaign money - by using "straw men," in this case monks and nuns, to mask the real source of about $100,000 given to the Democratic Party from temple funds.
That scheme was the subject of the trial that ended on Thursday with the conviction of Maria Hsia, a longtime Gore friend and Democratic fund-raiser, for violating federal campaign law. There is no evidence that Gore knew of the scheme, prosecutors say.
Raising political money on the site of a tax-exempt religious institution also could constitute a violation of the federal tax code by temple officials.
But the question of whether Gore knew it was a fund-raising event has had larger political implications, particularly after Thursday's conviction of Hsia.
Republicans are sure to use the temple fund-raiser in campaign efforts to paint Gore and the Clinton administration as playing fast and loose with the law; it has already been mentioned in presidential debates.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman declined to release a videotape of the temple fund-raiser during the Hsia trial, fearing it would become grist for political advertisements that could sway the jury.
"It becomes a symbol for the larger issue - abuses of the campaign finance system; technically Gore stretched the limits of the law in 1996," said Mark Rozell, a professor of politics at Catholic University. "It's baggage for Gore, because his calling card is that he is Mr. Clean and that he is above any whiff of scandal."
Temple monks and officials have told federal prosecutors they funneled thousands of dollars into Democratic Party coffers at the fund-raiser and that they were reimbursed out of temple accounts the same day, a scheme investigators said Hsia concocted. In all, federal prosecutors charged, more than $100,000 of the temple's money was laundered into Democratic party accounts.
Temple leaders including Hsing Yun, the leader of a 1.5-million-member Buddhist sect based in Taiwan, signed off on this use of money, but say they were simply trying to show gratitude for the vice president's visit, which they believed was good for the temple and the Chinese-American community.
Yun has said temple officials did not understand they had violated federal election law, and prosecutors in the Hsia case support this. They argued during Hsia's trial that temple officials who laundered money into Democratic National Committee accounts in fact had been duped by Hsia.
"We feel we have been misunderstood," Yun said. "There have been many bumps in the road."
The strikingly beautiful gardens and temples of the Hsi Lai complex in suburban Hacienda Heights have long been a destination for Southern California politicians who wish to build bridges to the local Chinese community.
When Gore arrived the afternoon of April 29, 1996, at the Hsi Lai temple, the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere, he was greeted by dozens of saffron-robed temple monastics who waved Buddhist flags, chanted and bowed toward him in a traditional Buddhist greeting.
Gore was accompanied by Don Fowler, who was then the Democratic national chairman; Hsia; and Democratic Party fund-raiser John Huang, who later pleaded guilty to unrelated campaign finance law violations. Gore exchanged gifts with Yun and made a traditional offering of flowers to the Buddha.
A flurry of memos by Gore's staff members in the weeks just before the event shows his staffers were aware that the Southern California stop was a party fund-raiser.
A March 15, 1996, memo from Gore scheduler Kimberley Tilley to the vice president, contained in a Senate report on the incident, reported he had been invited to an event in Lawrence, N.Y., on April 29.
That was the same day he had been booked for two Democratic National Committee fund-raisers, one in San Jose, Calif., and the other in Los Angeles.
Gore responded with his own e-mail saying he would have to decline if the fund-raisers already had been scheduled. Since the Hsi Lai event turned out to be his only Southern California stop on April 29, he could have had reason to believe he was attending a fund-raiser.
Another memo, distributed to Gore's staffers on April 11 but apparently not to the vice president himself, says his Southern California fund-raiser had a ticket price of $1,000 to $5,000 per person.
An exchange of e-mails in mid-April 1996 between two White House staffers, concerned that a visit with Yun by the vice president might upset U.S.-China relations, also describes the event as a fund-raiser.
"Hsing Yun has invited the vp to visit the Hsi Lai temple in LA," John J. Norris wrote to colleague Robert Suettinger. "Hsing Yun would host a fund-raising luncheon for about 150 people in the vps honor."
Long before the Hsi Lai Temple luncheon, Gore had known Hsia largely within the context of Democratic Party money-raising. Hsia, an immigration consultant who had lobbied Gore and others for assistance with her immigration cases, began raising money for Gore in 1989. Gore regularly sent her thank-you notes over the years.
In addition, John Huang told a House committee last year that both DNC Chairman Fowler and Gore's deputy chief of staff at the time, David Strauss, knew the luncheon's purpose was to help replenish Democratic Party coffers.
"Mr. Fowler knows about this, knew about it, and Mr. Strauss knew about it," Huang told the committee, adding that the luncheon seating was determined in part by how much guests had donated.
It is clear that top DNC officials expected the event to produce money and were disappointed when Huang reported initially that he had raised only about $50,000. In sworn statements to Senate investigators, former DNC finance director Richard Sullivan said he complained to Huang the day after the event that the numbers were too low, and sent him to seek more donations.
"I remember . . . being somewhat personally disappointed," Sullivan said under oath. "The fact that it had been so important to somebody out there that the event be at the temple, that you would have thought we would have gotten a big contribution out of somebody."
Sullivan said he then asked Huang, "Can you get more money in."
Huang went to Hsia, who in turn persuaded temple officials to donate additional money through temple nuns and monks. |
