Hillary Clinton charged rival Bernie Sanders is using “innuendo insinuation charges” by peddling a misleading video of a top liberal suggesting Clinton has done the bidding of financial institutions giving her donations.
Clinton said her actions aimed to protect women and children, not banks.
While Sanders has run a campaign funded by small donations, Clinton has received fewer and larger donations, including millions of dollars from Wall Street. Critics including Sanders suggest Wall Street banks hope to purchase favorable treatment by Clinton.
“I have a public record. I have never, ever been influenced in a view or a vote by anyone who has given me any kind of money. So I’m just going to keep setting the record straight,” Clinton said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“[T]his is one of these, you know, innuendo insinuation charges that the Sanders campaign is engaging in,” she added.
The video in question shows Sen. Elizabeth Warren seemingly admonishing a Clinton for supporting a bankruptcy bill in 2001 as a senator because of contributions.
The entirety of Warren’s interview, Clinton told host George Stephanopoulos, shows Warren saying that she and Clinton worked together in 2000 to stop a bill they both believed to be “very harmful.” The video was recorded more than 10 years ago, in 2004, while Warren was a Harvard Law School professor.
Clinton said she supported the 2001 version of the bill because she was “deluged” by women’s groups and children’s advocacy groups who asked her to help change the bill, which they said endangered child support and women’s financial situations.
“I did go to work on behalf of all these women’s groups and children’s groups because they needed a champion. And I got that bill changed. And in return, it had nothing to do with any money whatsoever,” Clinton said.
Clinton added that the 2001 version of the bill never passed and when it resurfaced in 2005, women’s issues had been “taken care of.”
She said it left her open to opposing the 2005 bill, but she never actually voted on it because her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in the hospital for a heart operation. Clinton said she put out a statement opposing it.
Of her 2001 vote, Clinton said: “I faced a choice. I could have said to the women who have been my advocates for 30 years, I’m sorry; I’m now in the Senate. But you know, I can’t help you. Nobody else is helping them. They were desperate to get help.”
“I’m happy to set this record straight,” Clinton said, adding that while Sanders has claimed he wants to run a positive campaign, his team has been “artful” in casting doubts on her record.
