2 Witnesses Detail Illegal Donations They Made to DNC

Speaking haltingly in Mandarin, two women who gave $28,000 in illegal donations to the Democrats testified Tuesday that they signed checks--at the behest of an associate of fund-raiser Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie--that unbeknownst to them ended up in party coffers.

Yue F. Chu and Xi Ping Wang, who received legal immunity in exchange for their testimony before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, detailed how a Trie employee, Keshi Zahn, reimbursed them from Trie’s bank account for their checks immediately after they wrote them.

The two Chinese immigrants were the first donors to testify in the foreign-money hearings, which have heard from a steady stream of bureaucrats, federal agents, attorneys and party leaders on the periphery of the scandal.

The women’s insider description of the money-laundering scheme, combined with testimony from an FBI agent assigned to the Senate inquiry, provided the clearest picture yet of the rogue fund-raising shop of Trie--a one-time Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur who tried to parlay his friendship with President Clinton into international business deals.

FBI agent Jerry Campane, who studied Trie’s money trail, said there was clear evidence that Trie, a U.S. citizen who was born in Taiwan, used funds wired to him from overseas to make $220,000 in political contributions in his and his wife’s names. Campane portrayed Trie as a hustler and failed businessman whose six-figure donations were mysteriously financed from overseas.

“I think we’d stipulate that Mr. Trie egregiously violated the campaign finance law,” said Jim Jordan, the committee’s Democratic spokesman. “Our party was the ultimate victim of it.”

Investigators have found that the source of much of Trie’s foreign money was Ng Lap Seng, also known as “Mr. Wu,” a wealthy Macao-based real estate developer who wired Trie at least $900,000 from 1994 to 1996. It was unclear whether the two men were engaged in business ventures together, although they did hold a joint bank account in Washington.

Using intricate charts, Campane detailed four transactions in which a total of $72,000 could be traced from Ng, a foreigner not legally able to contribute to U.S. campaigns, through Trie to the Democratic National Committee.

“It seems to me that Mr. Trie relied on [Ng’s] foreign wire transfers to make his contributions to the DNC,” Campane said.

What investigators could not show, however, was whether Ng’s money originated with the Chinese government and was part of an alleged plot to influence U.S. elections.

Republican senators attempted to establish that connection by pointing out that Ng was a member of a Chinese government advisory commission. But Democrats called it a giant leap of faith to tie Ng’s wealth to the Chinese government.

“Those who want to make out of this a Chinese plot still have to bring forth additional evidence to this committee,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

Campane said investigators have been unable to speak with Ng to learn his reasons for transferring so much money to Trie--who is in China and is considering whether to cooperate with congressional investigators. But there is evidence that Trie helped Ng gain access to U.S. officials, some during six visits to the White House.

In an interview broadcast Tuesday, Ng told ABC News: “My philosophy is I should not break the law but I wouldn’t mind bending it.”

In their testimony, Chu and Wang provided some answers as they outlined a total of $28,000 in donations they unknowingly made to the DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the reelection campaign of House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).

Zahn, who also made questionable contributions to the DNC, was the behind-the-scenes player in arranging the Chu and Wang checks. She has also received immunity from the committee and is expected to be called to testify after she returns from a vacation in China.

In one instance, Chu said she wrote out two checks totaling $20,000, and then sought another $5,000 from Wang because Ng, her husband’s boss, needed the money to buy a ticket to visit the White House.

“All I thought was I was going to help the boss to buy a ticket to pass the gate,” said Chu.

It was not the White House Ng was visiting though, but a Feb. 19, 1996, fund-raiser at Washington’s Hay-Adams Hotel attended by Clinton.

Trie, however, visited the White House 23 times, a number senators said raises questions about the access he received in exchange for his largess.

But White House special counsel Lanny Davis said in an interview that more than half of Trie’s White House visits were for social receptions and most of the visits were actually to the Old Executive Office Building, not the White House.

None of the visits was a “one-on-one” meeting with the president, but six of them were with former Clinton aide Mark Middleton. Several Trie associates have told investigators Middleton may have directed Trie’s fund-raising efforts.

Today, the committee will examine Trie’s controversial donations totaling $640,000 to the Presidential Legal Defense Fund, set up to pay legal fees incurred by the president or First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Michael Cardozo, the fund’s director, is expected to describe his suspicions about the donations and how he met with the first lady at the White House to find out if Trie was known to the Clintons, an investigator said.

Cardozo also is expected to be questioned about how the fund accounted for Trie’s donations, which were raised at meetings in Los Angeles, Houston and New York of a Buddhist organization based in Taiwan. Trie had recently joined the Buddhist group, the investigator said.