Posted on 02/10/2008 10:10:16 AM PST by COUNTrecount
Hillary Clinton is coming under growing pressure to be more open about the sources of her family’s wealth after she revealed that she had been forced to loan her cash-strapped campaign $5 million.
Hillary Clinton's advisers 'in a state of panic' In pictures: Michelle Obama Trail Mix: Chelsea Clinton "pimped out" Critics are claiming that her husband Bill Clinton’s lucrative financial dealings since leaving the White House may expose her campaign to conflicts of interest, and are calling for her to publish the full details of her earnings and assets.
advertisementSen Clinton has made more than $9 million from her 2003 memoirs.
But the biggest earner in the family is the former president, who is finalising an estimated $20 million pay-out from a six-year stint as an investment fund advisor, and has raked in many millions more from consultancy deals, speeches and his writings.
The couple left the White House with $2 million in legal debts in 2001 but are now worth between $10 million and $50 million, according to her latest Senate financial disclosure filings, which allow candidates to list their assets in broad ranges.
Mrs Clinton can put half the funds held jointly with her husband towards her presidential bid under campaign finance laws.
By contrast, her rival Barack Obama emphasised last week that he released his annual tax returns, which break down earnings and assets in detail.
“I think the American people deserve to know where you get your income from,” he said pointedly.
The Clinton campaign said that she would make her tax returns public if she won the nomination and that the Senate disclosures provided sufficient information about her finances.
Over the last six years, Mr Clinton has struck lucrative consultancy and advisory contracts with a playboy billionaire and done business with a Gulf emir.
He also courted figures ranging from a Central Asian autocrat to Arab sheikhs, as he built his charitable foundation and financed his glitzy presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas.
In the process he has developed one of the world’s leading philanthropic organisations and made himself and his wife Hillary rich - just six years after they were so saddled in debts from investigations into the Whitewater land deal and Monica Lewinsky affair that they had to borrow money from Democratic fund-raising chief Terry McAuliffe to buy a home near New York.
The colourful cast of friends, donors and business partners accrued by Mr Clinton is now raising questions about potential conflicts of interest as the former First Lady aims to become the next Democratic president.
Mr Clinton has already started to disentangle himself from two high-profile deals.
Most notably, he is expected to receive about $20 million when he severs his ties with the Yucaipa investment funds headed by his friend Ron Burkle, a famously eligible bachelor who appears in the gossip columns as often as the business pages.
The Wall Street Journal reported that one of his partners in the global investment fund is an entity connected to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, also believed to be a major donor to the Clinton presidential library.
Mr Clinton’s ties to the sheikh have already put him at odds with political stances adopted by his wife.
Two years ago, she was outspoken in her denunciation of the Bush administration’s plan to sell control of six major US ports to Dubai Ports World, but it later emerged that her husband was advising the Arab emirate how to handle the furore.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Mr Clinton flew to Kazakhstan on the executive jet of Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier and multi-million dollar backer of the Clinton Foundation who was also seeking a contract with the Kazakh government.
Mr Clinton was there to see the work of his Foundation on an Aids project, but also praised President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has been widely criticised for human rights violations, for “opening up the social and political life of your country”.
Mr Giustra, who organised a lavish charity dinner for Mr Clinton’s 60th birthday, was subsequently awarded a lucrative uranium mining deal in Kazakhstan ahead of more experienced industry competitors.
Mr Clinton’s aides have denied that he influenced the deal or behaved improperly.
Mr Clinton has also resisted pressure to name donors to his presidential library.
But newspaper investigations have uncovered many foreign contributors, led by Saudi Arabia, and an overlap between library benefactors and Hillary Clinton campaign donors, The New York Times reported.
“The vast scale of these secret fund-raising operations presents enormous opportunities for abuse,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat, who has introduced legislation requiring the disclosure of donors to presidential libraries.
Dick Morris, the former Clinton strategist who is now a fierce critic of the couple, recently accused Mrs Clinton of facing “a massive conflict of interest” for her family’s financial ties to Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
“The Clintons should be required to divulge the extent of their involvement with foreign interests and exactly how much money their personal bank accounts and their Library/Foundation have received,” he said.
The Clinton's have been given a pass for thirty years. I have a hard time believing the media would take them down.
Hillary is tighter than a drum with her money. I’m sure that someone like McAuliffe or another Clinton cronie actually footed the loan, but the paperwork, if we ever get to see it, will actually show it came from a Hillary account.
The Clinton’s made their money the old fashioned way: They grifted it.
It’s too bad the alternative media was just in its infancy in 1992. We could have beaten up Bill Clinton pretty well before he had a chance to get elected president.
The library/foundation/massage parlor/money laundromat is the key. The damn place would put Max Bialystock to shame.
Unfortunately, I think the conservative disillusionment will have a very bad unintended consequence. I have been saying all along that McCain is the least electable Republican and Obama is the most electable Democrat. This contest for the general does NOT favour conservatism at all. Even if we are successful in beheading the Clinton demon, another head of liberalism will pop up to replace it. The way to beat this is not by taking it head on but by sidestepping it and nominating a real conservative. I’m very disappointed when both of the presidential candidates down there are significantly more liberal than our Prime Minister.
20 years pass with no real private sector job
2008: net worth of $100-$200 million
So right you are. Insiders knew him as a dangerous guy even as Gov. of AK, but there was no way to expedite the info to the masses past the MSM in time. Go FR!!
When Bill and Hillary were in Little Rock they didn’t own either a house or, other than maybe Bill’s El Camino shagging wagon, a car. Now they are both multi-millionaires. The simple answer is that they are world class grifters.
ALL political candidates should be required to disclose their wealth and where they are getting their monies. Period. I want to know if the Clintons gets millions from the middle east or China.
But Democrats are stupid.
You live in a comparatively liberal country (I guess that depends which province you are from). Do you have any advice, or words of wisdom about how to survive the coming liberal regime?
The Clintons are bought and paid for many times over.
Yep, it will eventually get better. I thought all hope was lost during the reigns of Chretien and Martin, I was proven wrong. Endure, and fight the good fight.
Expect to see articles just like this about McCain soon , but imagine the furor and damnation they (MSM) will raise, as opposed to this. As we all know, the cankle and BJ could literally be caught on tape discussing involvement in many Arkancides, rape, (insert crime here) etc....
and the sheep will do the usual see no evil.. hear no evil.. you get the idea.
WTF? Everyone knows that Hillary is the family expert on investments. Just another way for someone to throw money at the clintons.
Bill just wants his sandbox at the White House back. He never wanted to be the president, he just wanted to be a president for the attention and power it gave him.
Oh, they're worth at least twenty times as much as that, I'm sure. But most of it is in Swiss numbered accounts and offshore investment accounts of various kinds.
“Questions about...” and “The Clintons...” just seem to go hand and hand.
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