The Out-Lawyer's Blog

Today, Idaho Senator Larry Craig (of the “Stall-Gate” scandal fame) announces his resignation from the US Senate (reportedly by September 30) yielding front stage to democratic fundraiser Norman Hsu (“Funnel-Gate”) who was jailed briefly yesterday on a felony arrest warrant out of Redwood California.

Mr. Hsu is a bagman for democrats, a specialist in bundling and funneling campaign donations.  These techniques arose as an end run around campaign finance laws: operatives like Mr. Hsu collect individual donations and bundle them for greater impact (perfectly lawful) but in other cases help create faux donors by using people of lesser means as donor fronts, using them as conduits to funnel money from well healed donors who have maxed out their individual contribution limits.

It seems that Mr. Hsu, who was living the high life in New York while evading – for fifteen years - an arrest warrant for felony grant theft out of Redwood City, CA.  Hsu’s guilt on the grand theft matter is not in dispute: he skipped out on his sentencing.

Among the democratic luminaries who benefited from Mr. Hsu’s donations during his decade and a half fugitive spree: Hilary Clinton ($23,000), Barak Obama ($7,000), the New York Democratic Party ($50,000) and San Francisco District Attorney Kamela Harris.  We can be sure that this is just the tip of an iceberg.

Here’s the hidden, larger scandal:

Bench Warrants – these are the arrest warrants that are issued by the court when a defendant skips out – are notorious for remaining unserved for years.  These arrest warrants are – for the most part – not proactively pursued by the authorities.  This is a case of institutional neglect, insufficient resource allocation, and nobody in charge. 

Contrary to the high expectations engendered by the CSI television dramas, most ordinary police departments and sheriff’s departments tend to perform on less than the “super-cop” level.

Want to reduce the crime rate across the board?  Create, fund and deploy a special task force with a nation-wide reach to hunt down the felons and violent misdemeanants who skip out on their court dates.  The recidivism rate of this subgroup of miscreants is very high.  Catch them sooner and spare the rest of us a lot of grief.

JBG