New details about Hsia

November 2, 2000

WASHINGTON — Court and police records show Al Gore was in bad company
with friend Maria Lynn Hsia long before the Los Angeles fund-raiser in
1996 lured him into participating — unwittingly, he claims — in a
criminal conspiracy to launder campaign money at a Buddhist temple.

According to public documents reviewed by WorldNetDaily, Hsia has
cheated the government out of tens of thousands of tax dollars,
allegedly burgled an office building and may have lied under oath in a
civil matter.

Former business partners and lawyers who have dealt with Hsia
(pronounced “shaw”) describe her as a “vexatious litigant” who once even
sued an 80-year-old woman, and an “unscrupulous businesswoman” and
“hustler” known to pose as a lawyer to draw immigrant clients to her
green-card business.

“She’s really something, to put it mildly,” one Los Angeles attorney
told WorldNetDaily.

Maria Hsia, Master Hsing Yun and Vice President Al Gore at the
April 1996 fund-raiser at the Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles. (Reuters)

And that was all before the feds caught up to her.
Hsia’s now a felon. In March, a federal jury convicted
her on five counts of campaign fraud tied to
fund-raisers at the Los Angeles temple.

Despite her checkered reputation, Gore has maintained a 10-year
political partnership with Hsia, surprising people who claim to be
victims of her “devious schemes.”

“I’ll give the vice president the benefit of the doubt,” said one
litigant who wished to go unnamed. “But I find it hard to believe that
he didn’t know by 1996 that she’d go to the lengths she did.”

Even after her conviction in March, Gore hasn’t publicly denounced
Hsia’s actions or regretted their relationship, although he distanced
himself from her and downplayed their closeness in an April interview
with federal prosecutors.

WorldNetDaily’s extensive investigation into the background of
49-year-old Hsia, as well as her long-standing ties to Gore, turned up
state and federal tax liens against her and several civil suits listing
Hsia as either the defendant or plaintiff. In the course of the
months-long investigation, WorldNetDaily had to navigate through
different aliases used by Hsia, several Los Angeles residential
addresses and a raft of corporations and DBAs,
possibly shell companies, started by her.

A review of little-noticed congressional documents also reveals efforts
by Hsia to apparently cover up crimes, adding to a pattern of shady
behavior. Here are some of the overall findings:

In 1993 and 1997, California authorities filed liens totaling $11,349
against Hsia for back taxes. In 1997, the IRS filed a $13,453 lien
against Hsia. (In Hsia’s campaign-fraud case, jurors deadlocked on
related tax-fraud charges.)
No stranger to the courtroom, Hsia shows up in at least eight Los
Angeles County civil cases since 1989, when she and Gore first hooked up
on a political trip to Asia. In one case, a copying service sued her. In
another, she sued a dentist.
In 1997, a Los Angeles superior court judge ordered Hsia to pay Gail
Dulay Hom $9,178 in court costs after Hsia lost a suit against her. Hsia
tied up Hom, the wife of one of Hsia’s ex-business partners, in
litigation for nearly six years. Hsia even sued Hom’s
80-year-old mother-in-law.
In a court filing, Howard Hom, a former Immigration and Naturalization
Service lawyer, called his ex-business partner and lover “an ambitious,
aggressive and unscrupulous businesswoman.” Hom fired Hsia in 1991 after
he accused her of stealing from their immigration-services business. He
alleges she opened a secret bank account and funneled money into it from
the firm.
In a related lawsuit, Hsia allegedly filed a false statement in which she
“concocted” a key date. “She has no credibility or regard for what
perjury means,” said a lawyer involved in the case.
Hsia had a run-in with another business partner. In July 1995, she
allegedly broke into the offices of lawyer Arnold Malter in order to
retrieve a ceremonial pen after their business relationship fell apart,
according to a report filed by the Monterey Park (Calif.) Police
Department. President Bush had used the pen to sign into law the
Immigration Act of 1990, which made it easier for foreigners to obtain
visas and green cards here. Hsia, a top Gore fund-raiser at the time,
had lobbied Gore and other senators to pass the bill, which aided Hsia’s
business. Gore ended up co-sponsoring it.
Hsia, who has no law degree or license, allegedly has promoted herself
to clients as a lawyer. “Many of her clients, including ones at the Hsi
Lai temple, think she’s an immigration attorney,” said a Los Angeles
lawyer familiar with her practices. “She’s led them to believe that.”
Hsia helped a temple nun prepare misleading responses in a sworn
statement to the Federal Elections Commission. She also may have phonied up an invitation to make it look
like the temple fund-raiser was originally supposed to be held at a Los
Angeles restaurant instead of a tax-exempt church.
Hsia barred reporters from viewing the King & I Productions’ video of
the temple luncheon and speeches by Gore and other guests. Within two
days of the fund-raiser, all copies of the video were shipped to Taiwan.
A full videotape of the April 29, 1996, event
remains hidden.

Attempts to reach Hsia for comment were unsuccessful.

But her lawyer, Nancy Luque (pronounced “luke”), insists Hsia is a model
citizen whose only crime is being a passionate “community activist.”
Luque also has said that her client ” never lied” or asked anyone else
to lie to the Federal Election Commission about the source of the
illegal temple donations.

Hsia still awaits sentencing on the five felony counts of
campaign-finance fraud, each calling for five years in prison. She
maintains her innocence and has asked for a new trial.

Hsia has described herself as a minor fund-raiser for Gore. In fact,
records show she raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for both his
Senate campaigns and 1996 reelection as vice president.

A three-day trip to Asia in January 1989 marked the start of an
“extremely close relationship” between Gore and Hsia, as well as the
temple, according to findings of a Senate investigation headed by Sen.
Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.

Hsia escorted Gore on the trip, which included a tour of a Buddhist
temple in southern Taiwan and a meeting with the same “political monk”
that runs the Los Angeles temple.

In September 1993, Hsia arranged to launder $5,000 of the temple’s money
through three monastic “straw donors” during a fund-raiser involving
Gore. She laundered more than $100,000 through the temple treasury in
the April 1996 fund-raiser Gore hosted.

Documents show that Gore wasn’t hustled by Hsia, as some have suggested.
In fact, their relationship was mutual.

A little-noticed set of letters collected by the Thompson committee
reveals that Gore, who rarely signed his own thank-you notes, kept up
remarkably personal correspondence with Hsia over the years.

“I continue to value your good counsel,” Gore wrote Hsia in an Aug. 28,
1989, letter thanking her for her work on the immigration bill.

“You are a wonderful friend,” Gore wrote Hsia in a Jan. 31, 1989, letter
thanking her for raising nearly $30,000 for his Senate campaign.

On Oct. 2, 1990, Gore wrote to Hsia and Howard Hom, then her partner:
“You two are great friends. See you soon. Al.”

In December of that year, he wrote “Thanks!” over his signature on a
letter to Hsia praising her for helping him restock his campaign war
chest after his failed 1988 presidential bid.

He got more personal in a note later that month: “Your friendship and
your personal commitment to my political endeavors mean a great deal to
me.”

Hsia didn’t just advise Gore on immigration policy. She also helped him
with environmental issues, even providing materials for Chapter 13 of
his

“Earth in the Balance” book.

“The materials you got for Al’s book on the environment were perfect,” effused then-Gore chief of staff Peter Knight in a March 6, 1991, letter to Hsia. “He would have been lost without your efforts, because the chapter on religion and the environment is integral to his work.”

The correspondence didn’t stop there.

In 1998, the same year Hsia was indicted, Gore sent her a Christmas card, which she proudly displayed on her desk in her San Marino, Calif., office, recalls a visitor to her office then.

In a recent deposition, however, Gore made it seem as if he and Hsia were virtual strangers between 1989 and 1996. He swore to prosecutors that after the Asian trip, he met with Hsia only “once or twice.”

Gore also implied that he practically bumped into Hsia at the April 29, 1996, temple fund-raiser, maintaining that he couldn’t recall talking to her, even though she escorted him around the temple and sat across the table from him during lunch. (Just the month before, Gore and Hsia had met in the White House.) He also testified that he can’t recall sitting with Hsia at a Feb. 20, 1996, fund-raising breakfast at the Hay-Adams Hotel near the White House.

“I read the 302s (FBI interviews with Gore) and got the impression he was trying to distance himself,” said a Los Angeles lawyer who battled Hsia in court and is familiar with her dealings with Gore in the late 1980s and early 1990s. “It didn’t seem logical to me that he didn’t have more conversations with her, or something that he could remember about it. It didn’t sound right to me.”

Hsia, for her part, has offered words of encouragement for her old friend, who has been dogged by the temple scandal since the start of his presidential campaign.

“He shouldn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed of relating to the temple,” Hsia told The New Yorker magazine in September, in her only interview since her conviction. “He should feel very proud of himself.”