February 24th 2009
Another Commerce Secretary Bites The Dust?
Gary Locke’s appointment as the president’s third try at securing a Commerce Secretary hasn’t even reached the official announcement stage yet, and it looks like his Dem-sordid past is sneaking up to bite him.
Michelle Malkin covered Locke’s political fundraising shenanigans extensively when she was at the Seattle Times, and she blesses us today with a synopsis of that coverage from 1997 and 1998. Hoo, boy!
Let’s preface this by saying Locke’s still a free, unindicted, unjailed citizen.
But enough of that! Locke took $1,000 from John Huang, the Dem fundraiser who most definitely is not free, unindicted or unjailed, and another $30,000+ through Huang-arranged events. When confronted, Locke did what Dems do; he played the race card:
“The fund-raising scandal will have repercussions for several years. It will make our efforts doubly hard to get Asian Americans appointed to top-level positions across the United States. If they have any connection to John Huang, those individuals will face greater scrutiny and their lives will be completely opened up and examined – perhaps more than usual.”
As it turns out, examination is warranted. Locke donors connected to Huang and his cohort, Ted Sioeng, an Indonesian real estate and tobacco baron suspected by the FBI of supplying Chinese government money to American candidates, included:
Hoyt Zia, a Commerce Department counsel, who stated in a sworn deposition that Huang had access to virtually any classified document through him; Melinda Yee, another Commerce Department official, who made routine phone calls to Lippo and is under investigation by the Justice Department for destroying notes she took on a China trade mission; Ginger Lew, who allegedly helped pilfer classified intelligence documents when she left Commerce last summer; Praitun Kanchanalak, mother of indicted Thai influence-peddler Pauline; Kent La, exclusive distributor of Sioeng’s Chinese cigarettes in the U.S.; and Sioeng’s wife and son-in-law.
Then there was the time Locke channeled Al Gore and held what looks and smells like an illegal fund-raiser at a Redmond WA Buddhist temple, collecting fistfuls of $1,000 checks from “monks and nuns who barely spoke English, couldn’t recall donating to Locke, or were out of the country and could never be located.”
Concludes Malkin:
It’s illegal to funnel campaign contributions through straw donors. It’s illegal for tax-exempt churches to hold campaign fund-raisers. It’s illegal to accept money from foreign citizens who are not permanent residents of this country. It’s illegal to file false public disclosure forms (four years after the temple fundraisers, PDC records were not amended with the Buddhist monks’ correct addresses and occupations). It’s illegal to commit perjury to cover up a political money-laundering scheme.
In a trade-dependent state such as Washington state, the incentive to engage in quid pro quos is high. At Commerce, it’s even higher. Locke’s campaign finance scandal-tainted past raise sserious issues about his judgment.
As I’ve said before, Obama should hire the Palin vetting team; they were much more competent than the bozos vetting the president’s prospective men of hench.
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