Daschle to Give Money Back to Probe Figures

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) says he will return more than $5,000 in contributions from donors at the center of investigations into Democratic Party fund-raising.

While the contributions “were completely legal at the time they were given,” Daschle said Friday that he decided to give the money back because the perception “may be problematic in the minds of some.”

Among those contributions are $500 that Daschle received in April 1995 from former Arkansas restaurateur Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie and $2,000 contributed two months later by Trie’s mother.

The Democratic National Committee has returned $645,000 in contributions raised by Trie because of questions about the origins of the money.

President Clinton’s legal defense fund has returned or rejected more than $600,000 brought in by Trie, who runs an international consulting firm.

Trie’s mother, E-Fong Do, answered the telephone at his home Friday.

When asked whether she knew Daschle, she handed the telephone to a woman who identified herself as a friend and said the family would have no comment.

Daschle also received $2,525 in May 1991 from former DNC fund-raiser John Huang, Huang’s wife, Jane, and James Riady, who controls the Lippo Group banking and real estate conglomerate in Indonesia and Hong Kong. It too was returned.

Huang once headed Lippo’s U.S. operations and was a Commerce Department official before becoming one of the DNC’s top fund-raisers last year. Nearly half the $3.4 million he raised has been deemed improper by the party.