How Your Media Operates

News:

Sen. Hillary Clinton will return $850,000 in campaign contributions raised by a major fund-raiser who has come under federal investigation on multiple fronts.

The New York lawmaker and Democratic presidential candidate said she would refund contributions to about 260 donors who were recruited by Norman Hsu, a businessman and Democratic fund-raiser now in custody in Colorado on a warrant stemming from a 1990s investment-fraud case. The Clinton campaign also announced new procedures to make sure top fund-raisers don't have criminal records.

Mrs. Clinton's move is a turn in what has become the first big setback for a campaign that until now had been an amazingly smooth juggernaut. The $850,000 is the largest ever returned by a candidate because of questionable fund-raising methods, according to Kent Cooper, a former disclosure official at the Federal Election Commission.

Not news:

That seems to be especially true in presidential campaigns recently. Rudy Giuliani’s South Carolina state chairman has just been indicted on charges of cocaine possession. And Mitt Romney’s campaign is already in hot water after an aide allegedly impersonated a state trooper. But the most recent case strikes close to home for the former Massachusetts governor.

This week The Hill reported on several lawsuits that continue to follow Robert Lichfield, Romney’s co-chair of his Utah finance committee. Lichfield owns and operates boarding schools for troubled teens, but many former students are speaking out about their treatment while in school. From The Hill:

The complaint, which plaintiffs amended and resubmitted to the court last week, alleges children attending schools operated by Lichfield suffered abuses such as unsanitary living conditions; denial of adequate food; exposure to extreme temperatures; beatings; confinement in dog cages; and sexual fondling.

A second lawsuit filed by more than 25 plaintiffs in July in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of New York alleges that Lichfield and several partners entered into a scheme to defraud them by operating an unlicensed boarding school in upstate New York. The suit does not allege physical or emotional abuse.

Lichfield is one of six co-chairs for Romney’s finance committee in Utah, a state that provided almost $3 million of $23 million first-quarter campaign funds. Already this season he and his family have given $15,000 to the Romney presidential campaign. Lichfield helped to bring in $300,000 at a recent fundraiser.

So predictable.