Hillary’s Wall Street Money Taint Goes Viral

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: November 17, 2015

Bernie Sanders Challenges Hillary Clinton on Her Acceptance of Campaign Funds from Wall Street During the Second Democratic Debate

Everyone has been waiting for the next shoe to drop in the Clinton cash scandals but no one expected Hillary to be the one to drop the shoe. But after making the stunning assertions in last Saturday night’s Democratic debate that most of her donors are “small” and her Wall Street spigot of funding was turned on as a result of her helping New York to rebuild after 9/11 – Hillary, the perpetual Teflon candidate, has been pummeled from Twitter to cable to mainstream media.

Elizabeth Bruenig, writing for the New Republic, pointed out that “large donations make up 81 percent” of Hillary’s current campaign donations, refuting the candidate’s misstatement that “most” of her funding is from small donations. (The chart below from the Center for Responsive Politics provides the actual breakdown.) Bruenig writes further that confidence in Hillary’s assistance in the post 9/11 era “wouldn’t explain the $125 million she and her husband Bill have accepted in personal payment from major firms since 2001, mostly in return for speaking engagements. Nor would it explain why, more than a decade down the line, Hillary Clinton is still making $200,000 per speech at banks like Goldman Sachs.”

Philip Bump of the Washington Post detailed how Hillary’s massive cash flow from Wall Street began prior to 9/11, including her first run for Senator. Bump writes:

“Clinton’s 2000 campaign filing from the FEC reveals 44 donations from Citigroup, 54 from Goldman, 36 from Paine Webber, 43 from Deloitte, 21 from Credit Suisse and 18 from Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. There are a number of other financial firms that appear in the list; these are just the most frequent donors.

“The year 2000 was not the first time that the financial industry was introduced to the Clinton family, of course. It’s worth noting that generosity from Wall Street was extended to Clinton’s husband well before 2001. In 1992, for example, Bill Clinton’s campaign received $853,000 from the financial industry.”

As Wall Street On Parade has pointed out time and again, no Wall Street firm has had a cozier relationship with the Clintons than the serially charged Citigroup, which just this past May admitted to a criminal felony charge for rigging foreign exchange markets (along with four other mega banks). Citigroup was the largest beneficiary when Bill Clinton signed the legislation in 1999 that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, allowing Citigroup to house its merged commercial bank, insurance companies, investment bank, and stock brokerage firm under one roof: A dangerous and combustible concoction that would lead to its implosion in 2008 and the largest taxpayer bailout in U.S. history.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Citigroup was the largest donor to Hillary’s first run for the Senate. (The employees or PACs of the firm make the donations, not the corporation itself.) Goldman Sachs logged in at number 4; UBS at number 8; JPMorgan Chase at number 10.

As we reported in July of 2014, after Hillary had made another fact-challenged statement to ABC’s Diane Sawyer that she and Bill Clinton were “dead broke” when they left the White House, Citigroup provided a $1.995 million mortgage which allowed the Clintons to buy their Washington, D.C. residence prior to their leaving the White House and prior to 9/11. Citigroup has also paid Bill Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees and committed $5.5 million to the Clinton Global Initiative, a charity run by the Clinton family.

Janell Ross, writing at the Washington Post, said that Clinton’s invoking of 9/11 “was not just convoluted; it was very poorly timed — and some might say, utterly tacky.” Ross notes further:

“Wall Street is not a warm and fuzzy friend in need of comfort in the minds Americans still digging themselves out from the Great Recession and monstrous housing crisis. So, on this basis alone, that was certainly not the kind of answer that Democrats — particularly Sanders supporters — are likely to find even remotely acceptable. Clinton’s answer will likely make some people in Camp Sanders and some in her own want to know more about her donor mix.”