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If there’s one thing that can be said about Clinton financial scandals, it’s that they tend to be complex. And thus far, the Norman Hsu debacle is living up to the archetype.

This rabbit hole is proving to be a fair bit deeper than anyone might’ve guessed and we’re about to plumb its depths. If you’re reading this, it means you’re taking the red pill.

Two of the biggest open questions were always 1) where is Hsu - a convicted con man and fugitive with no documented ability to turn a legitimate buck - getting these gobs of money, and 2) why is he squandering it on all these Democrats?

These specific Democrats.

We seem to have gotten at least part of the answer to the first question, as Hsu has recently been accused of swindling investors out of as much as $70 million in a variety of Ponzi schemes and other bogus investments. The second question though, has been naggingly impenetrable. After all, if Hsu was simply buying his way into the inner circles of various celebrity politicians, whether for his own ego or to project more credibility and gravitas to his marks (or both), why would his fundraising have been so unwaveringly partisan - targeting only members of the minority party and only very specific members of that party. Hsu’s network finance the campaigns of more than 80 Democrats - from Presidential candidates to state legislators and town supervisors. From the newest newbies (including a majority of the first-time candidates who became Senate freshmen this year) to some of the body’s dustiest relics (Kennedy, Biden, et al).

Yet Chuck Schumer, for example, Hillary’s senior counterpart in New York, never saw a dime. Fellow New York politicians Eliot Spitzer, Andrew Cuomo, Anthony Weiner, Kristen Gillibrand, and others received hundreds of separate contributions, totalling many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Schumer: bubkes.

Debbie Stabenow (D-MI): $29,613… Carl Levin (D-MI): squat. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): $23,000… Robert Byrd (D-WV): zilch.

You get the idea. The points is that Hsu’s specific slate of favored candidates (itemized here) seemed to be deliberate and predetermined and was not satisfyingly explained away by any of his speculated motivations. This has actually been helpful in ferreting out Hsu’s donor network though - when you happen on an individual with a huge string of contributions not only to Clinton and Obama, but to several specific Democratic committees and to specific Democrats like Tom Harkin, Patrick Kennedy, Kristen Gillibrand, Dianne Feinstein, and Hsu’s other favorites, you’ve found someone worth looking into.

[...]

Read the whole thing.

This is a massive scandal, but you wouldn’t get that impression by the scanty coverage in the MSM. Wonder why?

The article contains a link to a spreadsheet of the contributors and their contributors, along with the recipients. Follow the money.

Update from Ace of Spades:

Questions For the Media and Prosecutor:

1) What kind of thief/hustler gives away so much of the money he's risked incarceration for? What is his motive for doing that? For "self-promotion"? Wouldn't it make more sense for him to "self-promote" by investing in Hollywood projects and "self-promote" among nubile young actresses? Why "self-promote" among the dreary past-middle-aged pot-belied gray-cheeked Democratic operative set?

2) Greed? How can greed be a motive for giving away so much "defrauded" money?

3) The media, and prosecution teams, are generally loathe to content themselves with the Lone Rogue Operative theory of a crime, especially when the crimes committed largely benefit others and not the Lone Rogue Operative himself. In the Plame case, in Abu Ghraib, the media, in particular, was furiously skeptical that Lone Rogue Operatives had simply acted with apparent criminal purpose for the apparent benefit of higher-ranking political or military figures. They still don't buy the Lone Rogue Operative theory in either case. And yet the media and the prosecutor seem almost eager to dismiss this current case as one of those Lone Rogue Operative cases here, as quickly as humanly possible. Why? Why the sudden onset of credulity that a criminal acts so selflessly to advance the interests of others, without their knowledge or at least connivance? Why has the Lone Rogue Operative theory become so tantalizingly plausible?

4) Why is it that Hsu's preferred candidates track so closely with Fred Hoechner's? Especially given that Hoechner was donating big to Democrats long before Hsu was? Was Hsu simply impressed by the slate of political actors that Fred Hoechner had been donating to? If so, why? Is Norman Hsu desperate to see HillaryCare universal health coverage? Or did he have... more tangible, more mercenary reasons for pushing Hoechner's field of candidates?

And finally:

5) Why is everyone so eager to wrap this case up nice and tidy and pinned on a Lone Rogue Operative/Patsy without asking all those "tough questions" the media claims it's uniquely qualified to ask?