DEMOCRATS HOLD ON TO QUESTIONABLE FUNDS

The Democratic Party hasn't returned $1.7 million in donations that congressional investigators on the House committee probing fund-raising abuses say are either illegal or clearly suspect, according to a recent report. The money went to the Democratic National Committee, Democratic state parties or other Democratic fund-raising committees.

Among questionable donations the committee cited was $50,000 in contribution checks written by a Philadelphia college student named Kuang Tao Zhou. The committee said its evidence shows that a day before the student made a $30,000 donation to the DNC, he received a check for $30,000 from a person in Los Angeles. That money was traced to a wire transfer from China.

The committee also said Zhou made more than $20,000 in donations to various Democratic entities around the time he received a wire transfer from an account in Taiwan.

All this and more besides lends credence to the charge that the attempted subversion of American election campaigns by illegal Asian money is the biggest scandal of the Clinton years. Tainted money on an unprecedented scale will be one of the Clinton legacies. That the Democrats haven't given back the money and cooperated with investigators is a scandal of major proportions.