Hillary Clinton has repeatedly dodged calls to release transcripts of her paid speeches to private groups, even as her top rival increases his attacks on her financial ties to the big banks that gave her six-figure sums for those speeches.
While Clinton said during the most recent Democratic debate that she would “look into” releasing the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs, documents obtained by McClatchy through public records request indicate that in at least some of her contracts, Clinton’s speech agency insisted the former secretary of state retain legal control over anything that was said in the event.
“The sponsor will transcribe speaker’s remarks as they are being delivered, which should be solely for the Speaker’s records,” said one contract for a $275,000 speech to a university.
The Harry Walker Agency, which represents Clinton for the purposes of her speaking engagements, has not returned a request for comment as to whether Clinton retained the rights to all of her speech transcripts.
But if the language in the contracts that have been made public applied to all her engagements, Clinton alone would be able to make the decision to release or withhold the content of her speeches.
Clinton dismissed the suggestion that she was going to release any of her speech transcripts during an appearance Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Let everybody who’s ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them,” she said of the transcripts. “We’ll all release them at the same time.”
Clinton argued she was being held to an unfair standard by facing pressure to make public the speeches she gave to special interest groups over the past two years.
“At some point, you know, these rules need to apply to everybody,” she said. “And there are a bunch of folks, including, you know, my opponent, who’s given, you know, speeches to groups and people on the other side who’ve given speeches to groups. Let — if this is now going to be a new standard so then it should apply to everybody and then I’ll be happy to look into it further.”
Clinton and her husband have netted more than $100 million from their speaking engagements to niche policy groups and major corporations since leaving the White House.
In 2013 alone, for example, the former first lady and president pocketed $1.5 million from speeches to JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Sen. Bernie Sanders — who leads Clinton by more than 12 points heading into the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average — said Sunday the public should get to see what Clinton said to Wall Street executives behind closed doors.
“Her point is that she’s given these speeches. But my understanding now is, her campaign says she’s not going to release those transcripts. That’s her decision,” Sanders said during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“But I think it would be a positive thing for the American people to know what was said behind closed doors to Wall Street,” Sanders added. “But, ultimately, that is her decision.”
The content of Clinton’s speeches may indeed pose problems for her political campaign if they were to be made public.
She told attendees at one Goldman Sachs-sponsored event that “the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish,” according to an article in Politico Magazine in 2013.
However, Clinton has attempted to combat Sanders’ populist rhetoric with her own tirade against Wall Street giants, frequently promising to hit the financial sector with a spate of new regulations designed to rein in their power.
While Clinton has frequently pointed to President Obama’s acceptance of contributions from the financial sector in defense of her own reliance on those donations, the same story noted Obama’s well of Wall Street support all but dried up after his first term in the White House.
