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U.S. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton earned more than US$5 million in royalties for her book “Hard Choices” released in 2014, while making more than US$1.5 million in fees for speeches she gave last year alone, according to financial documents released by the Clinton campaign late Tuesday.
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Releasing financial information about income earned since January 2015 is a legal requirement that all presidential candidates have to fulfill in order to continue their campaign. Candidates can ask for an extension for filing those documents, but are eventually required to do so.
Clinton also had to file the standard forms while serving as secretary of state, revealing that her husband Bill Clinton received more than US$2.7 million from speeches he gave after his wife officially kicked off her White House bid last April.
The forms include details about Clinton’s speeches scheduled in 2015 and how much she was paid for each one. It has been revealed that she gave a speech to a non-profit called American Camp Association, which is a U.S. government client, just weeks before she announced she was running for president last April.
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According to The New York Times, the former first lady was paid US$260,000 for that speech.Furthermore, a speech to eBay, also delivered the month before her April announcement, earned Mrs. Clinton $315,000, according to the disclosure, the newspaper added.
In addition, some of those speeches were given to major Wall Street banks including Goldman Sachs. Such companies have been accused of kicking off the 2008 financial crisis and further benefiting from it.
Those speeches have also become a contentious subject for Clinton as her opponent Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters have been calling on her to release the transcripts of those speeches.
He accuses her of being lenient on Wall Street, which Sanders has consistently slammed as greedy and having wanton influence on U.S. policy in Congress and the White House. However, it is not only Wall Street banks and firms that have interests in with the U.S. government.
An investigation by the Associated Press last month revealed that “most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors.
The news agency added that those companies’ “interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.”
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