Caution: This is a long blog post with lots–probably too much–of historical/political detail. If you want a shortcut, just enjoy Nick Grube’s story in today’s Civil Beat (“Hawaii Lawmakers Honored Federal Lobbyist Despite Her Conviction In A Foreign Lobbying Scandal“).

Grube got on to the story while doing a routine check of court records in the criminal case in which Honolulu business woman and influence dealer, Nickie Lum Davis, pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Davis’ scheduled sentencing has been delayed while her attorneys attempt to withdraw her guilty plea in the criminal case.

Grube reports that just five months after her guilty plea in Honolulu’s federal court, she was recognized by the Hawaii State Senate with an honorary certificate signed by 21 of the 25 senators.

Her attorneys then submitted the Senate certificate to the court along with other letters of support, part of their effort to reduce her possible sentence.

After discovering the certificate in the court file, Grube set about calling those who signed it to account.

According to his story in Civil Beat:

At the time, the proclamation seemed noncontroversial.

It was signed by 21 of 25 senators, including Senate President Ron Kouchi, and detailed a list of Davis’ many accomplishments, from her work with a local nonprofit that provided services to victims of domestic violence to her leadership positions with pro-Israel groups that raised money for school and food programs in that country.

It even recounted a story about how Davis played a “pertinent role” in securing the release of an American hostage in China in 2017.

What the certificate didn’t say, however, was that Davis had pleaded guilty in August 2020 to federal charges and was awaiting sentencing in a complex criminal case. The U.S. Justice Department has accused her and others of secretly lobbying the Trump administration on behalf of Chinese and Malaysian interests.”

Several senators told Grube they had been unaware of the criminal case at the time they signed the certificate, which sponsored by Republican Senator Kurt Fevella.

It certainly hadn’t been a secret, and had been reported both locally and in national media. The U.S. Department of Justice even issued a August 31, 2020 news release about the case:

According to admissions made in connection with her plea, Lum Davis admitted that, between March 2017 and January 2018, she and others — including a prominent official of a national political party with ties to the administration — agreed to lobby the President of the United States, the Attorney General, and other high level officials in the administration and the Justice Department to drop civil forfeiture proceedings and a criminal investigation into the embezzlement of billions of dollars from 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), a strategic investment and development company wholly owned by the Government of Malaysia.

For their efforts, Lum Davis and others were paid millions of dollars by Foreign National A, an alleged architect of the 1MDB scheme. Lum Davis and others also agreed to lobby the Administration and Justice Department on behalf of Foreign National A and People’s Republic of China (PRC) Minister A, to arrange for the removal and return of PRC National A — a dissident of the PRC living in the United States. Lum Davis and others concealed from the officials whom they lobbied that they were working on behalf of Foreign National A and Foreign Minister A and were being paid millions of dollars by Foreign National A with the expectation of tens of millions more in success fees. The lobbying campaigns were ultimately unsuccessful.

In the court file, a copy of the Senate certificate was attached to a letter from Honolulu attorney Mel Masuda, who was working in Fevella’s office during the 2021 legislative session.

“In his letter, Masuda said he was close with Davis’ family and in particular her parents, who were major Democratic Party fundraisers in the 1990s and had been embroiled in their own high profile scandals involving making illegal campaign contributions to congressional candidates,” Grube reported.

Let me be a bit more specific. Davis’ parents, Eugene and Nora Lum, pleaded guilty in 1997 to violating federal campaign laws by using employees or stockholders of a company they controlled as “straw donors” to channel $50,000 in illegal or excessive campaign contributions to federal candidates.

Davis’ older sister, Trisha Lum, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of being an illegal conduit for campaign contributions using money provided by Nora Lum.

And there is evidence that Nickie, then a college student, also took part in the larger family scheme. This appears in the Presentence Investigation Report
in the Lum’s case, Criminal No. 97-0207-02.

In addition to the above-described contributions, most of which are listed in the Factual Basis for Plea, there are a number of additional contributions that were funded by Nora Lum. Nickie Lum, another of the Lums’ daughters, then a student at Princeton, made a $1,000 contribution to Kennedy on June 18, 1994. Her check was dated April 9, 1994, but before her check was actually submitted to the Kennedy campaign, on May 8, 1994, Nora Lum gave Nickie a $1,000 check. Trisha Lum also contributed $1,000 to the Kennedy campaign in June 1994, and it appears that Nora Lum provided her with at least a portion of the funds to do so. [emphasis added]

But even that doesn’t provide enough perspective.

For that, I recommend a long essay by Peter J. Boyer, “American Guanxi,” which appeared in the New Yorker Magazine on April 14, 1997.

“It’s a new kind of political operating, and it’s what propelled the strange odyssey of Nora and Eugene Lum, who somehow managed to make a lot of money for the Democrats-and for themselves,” according to the article’s header.

Here’s the magazine’s “summary” of Boyer’s story:

REPORTER AT LARGE about Nora and Eugene Lum, a Hawaiin couple who used their contacts to fund-raise for the D.N.C. “Guanxi” is a Mandarin word meaning “connections,” and in China, guanxi is the basis of daily commerce. Gene and Nora Lum, who are in their 50s, were early masters of American guanxi, and their homeland of Hawaii served a suitable training ground for their future questionable fundraising enterprises for the Democratic National Committee (D.N.C.). Both Gene and Nora used their political connections and expert fundraising techniques to influence different Hawaiin projects. Those without contacts, however, beware; for example, Charles Chidiac gave Nora Lum several $100,000 to facilitate some business projects, but she failed to come through for him. In 1991, the Lums met Ron Brown, then chairman of the D.N.C. and future Commerce Secretary, and moved to California to raise money and votes for Clinton-Gore in their 1992 presidential campaign. They became the founding directors of the Asian Pacific Advisory Council-Vote (APAC) in late 1992, and they used their connection to Ron Brown to peddle influence and gain access to the top-brass of the Democratic party. Nora became interested in trading German gold-backed bearer bonds, which were worthless unless Germany could be pressured into paying it’s debt. In late 1993, the Lums, with the help of one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers, purchased the Gage Corporation, an oil-and-gas business in Oklahoma, which had been involved in a legal battle with the state’s dominant public utility, Oklahoma Natural Gas. They named the new venture Dynamic Energy Resources (D.E.R.) and soon sold its gas contract for over $18 million. The Lums made Michael Brown, Ron Brown’s son, a member of D.E.R.’s board in 1994, and he briefly served as acting president, although he had little experience. In late 1994, the Lums had a falling out with their partner, Stuart Price, the former finance chairman of the Oklahoma Clinton-Gore campaign; Price filed a lawsuit, claiming that the Lums used D.E.R. to benefit themselves and their political friends. In early 1996, an independent counsel, suspicious of political connections, investigated D.E.R. When Ron Brown died, in April 1996, the investigation was shut down. The Lums are still active in Democratic politics.

And back when I was writing for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in the 1990s, I did a number of stories concerning the Lum’s exploits, and previously collected some of them to share. I hope the links still work.

 Democrats
Fundraising Scandal

The first published account of the links between former Hawaii
consultant Nora Lum and then-Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, and
allegations of campaign fundraising abuses involving a company they
controlled, appeared in the Star-Bulletin in September 1995, months
before the issues broke in the national media. Nora Lum and her
husband, Gene, later became the first to be convicted in the
fundraising investigation.

• Ex-islander “looted” Oklahoma firm, suit claims. Case involves
  links to Clinton administration. Sept
  1, 1995
• Ron Brown not involved, official says, but Commerce
  Secretary’s son is company director. Sept
  2, 1995
• Oklahoma company headed by ex-islanders linked to illegal
  $15,000 campaign gift.
  Oct 18, 1995
• Lums linked to golf course projects and contributions. Gene
  Lum cited Fifth Amendment when questioned last year about $10,000
  contribution to Gov. Waihee. Oct
  18, 1995
• Isle woman part of campaign probe. Former resident Nora Lum
  figures in a congressional investigation into ’92 finances.
  Congressional investigators have renewed a probe of former Hawaii
  resident Nora T. Lum, and a 1992 campaign project which she
  headed. Oct
  28, 1996
• Lum’s windfall, Dem donations under scrutiny. A “no money
  down” investment apparently yielded a windfall of $8 million or
  more in just a few months for an Oklahoma company controlled by
  Democratic contributor and fundraiser Nora Lum. Nov
  4, 1996

• Permit blocked for golf course project tied to couple
  convicted in campaign finance probe. Lum’s project owed $41,398 in
  unpaid property taxes. June
  30, 1998

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, Congratulations are in order!