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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.
So when our country collapses, they can safely get away.
Can’t stand the Hildabeast... BUT she and Bubba are married so they more than likely file a joint tax return... Thus, it’s a what’s his is mine, hers is mine situation.
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Excellent potlatch!
The Clintons are nothing but grifters.
Thanks devolve. Seems appropriate that she should have to use some of her misbegotten wealth to keep her campaign ‘going’ now, lol.
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Let’s start after the November elections by requiring 75% of all the cash and property a politician or any in their family increases their assets by after they are elected to be taken by the US Treasury
All these politicians will have cash hidden in their campaign funds after November - and it will be used in future election &/or given to other politicians &/or their party &/or stuffed in offshore “investments” at a tax rate of 14% or less
Less than half of what the common US citizen-peon pays in taxes
Also, they wouldn’t want to pay taxes, would they?
Pipe dreams - about the increase in their own personal assets.
It never has seemed right that they are allowed to keep control of campaign funds AFTER the campaign is over.
She lies like a rug.
Wheres Sandy Berger?.. WHy is he NOT in Levenworth?.. He seems to walking the streets.. Where is Homeland security?.. OR do we have any?.. What was Sandy Burgular after in the Great National Archives Robbery?.. WHo is protecting him from procecution?.. We can deal with what the Clintons are stealing later..
——Everyone knows that Hillary is the family expert on investments. Just another way for someone to throw money at the clintons.——
I’ll bet that if all the investment dealings were properly investigated, it would be a lot more complicated than that. And possibly a lot more illegal too.
You can bet your last dollar, that certain security agencies, are familiar with off shore accounts
No one cared when the Clintons sold 50 yrs. of nuclear secrets to the Chinese in the ‘90’s. They aren’t going to worry about where a measley $ 5 mil came from now. /s
Yes, they do.
Clintons Sound like Ali Khamenei, currently the Supreme Ruler of Islamic Iran.
At the time of the Khomeini revolution, some 29 years ago, he lived off the charity of the Imam Reza Foundation in Mashhad, which supplied him with some food at his tiny one room dwelling in the poorest part of town.
He eked out some cash by haunting every funeral in the local cemeteries, walking by the dead being carried to their graves, chanting and begging for alms.
Not long ago, fearing that UN and USA economic sanctions on Iranian accounts might block his accounts, too, he moved nearly TWO BILLION Dollars to banks in Moslem countries like Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore.
TWO BILLION by a religious beggar without the contacts and means to make money other than by theft? In a relatively sort time since he became HEAD OF STATE?
Of a State that has half a million street children starving, freezing and at the mercy not only of the elements but of criminals - including the likes of Khamenei at lower levels in the Islamic regime?
AND an estimated 100,000 abandoned and rejected women?
NOT nationwide but just in the capital city of Tehran!
Good grief! Whether it’s Billery or Khamenei, it’s a Crime Family type operation - with both of them replete with mysterious deaths and executions.
Would we want Khamenei as our American President? Then why would we consider putting a close copy there in the form of Billery?
1988: two penniless Arkansas grifters
20 years pass with no real private sector job
2008: net worth of $100-$200 million
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Gutless media should have micro-investigated it long ago....not waited til they had a new “darling”.
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Why? ... Because I want my dotage to be interesting ............. FRegards
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