Goldman Sachs reportedly paid Bill Clinton $200,000 for a speech in 2011 just months before the investment bank started to lobby Hillary Clinton’s State Department, according to an International Business Times report.
According to the Times, the “discovery that Bill Clinton accepted a six-figure payday from Goldman Sachs just before the bank sought the ear of his wife’s department” will amplify even more the scrutiny “of the Clinton family’s often overlapping personal, philanthropic and official business interests.” That scrutiny, the Times notes, has reached a “fever pitch amid leaks” from Government Accountability Institute President and Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Peter Schweizer‘s forthcoming book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. Mainstream media outlets have independently confirmed at least eleven revelations from Schweizer’s book, which has rocked the political world and sent the Clinton campaign scrambling.
Though “Goldman’s objective in lobbying the State Department could not be immediately discerned,” records reviewed by the Times “show that the firm was specifically lobbying the department on ‘proposed legislation’ linked to a series of budget bills.” One of the bills reportedly “continued congressional authorization for the Export-Import Bank, a government-backed lender whose financing was critical for the prospects of a company in which Goldman owned a stake.” As the Times notes, the “original budget bill was introduced in July and did not include an extension of the Export-Import Bank, but the bank reauthorization was added in late September, during the same period Goldman was lobbying the State Department on the bill.”
In August of 2011, the Export-Import bank reportedly “authorized a $75 million loan enabling a Chinese firm to purchase aircraft from Beechcraft (known before emerging from bankruptcy in February 2013 as Hawker Beechcraft), a company that was part-owned by Goldman.”
After Goldman Sachs paid Clinton $200,000 to deliver a speech on April 11, 2011 to “approximately 250 high level clients and investors,” it paid the Duberstein Group $100,000 to lobby Hillary Clinton’s State Department on its behalf “between July and September 2011,” according to the report.
As the Times notes, “the State Department is intimately involved in Export-Import Bank decisions,” and Ex-Im bank documents reportedly say that the State Department “performs a ‘human rights review’ of countries where loans are made” and “examine(s) human rights and other foreign policy considerations in their assessment of the risks associated with transactions in specific countries.”
According to the report, “in October 2011, Clinton touted the work of her undersecretary, former Goldman Vice Chairman Robert Hormats, saying he was ‘coordinating with the Export-Import Bank, OPIC, and others to support our investors and exporters in emerging economies.'”
Goldman Sachs, which has reportedly paid Bill Clinton $1.35 million for eight speeches since he left the White House, reportedly stated that “any linkage between a speech for clients and the outcome of the Budget Control Act is preposterous.” Hillary Clinton also reportedly delivered two paid speeches “at Goldman Sachs events in the span of a week” after she left the Obama administration.
Bill Clinton, according to a Washington Post analysis, has reportedly made at least $104 million from speaking fees since leaving the White House. Schweizer’s book found that Bill Clinton’s speaking fees “dramatically increased” after Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State and many were given to groups that had “pending interests at the State Department.”
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