Since ’01, Clintons collected $35M from financial businesses

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Hillary Rodham Clinton wants voters to know she is no friend of Wall Street. But Wall Street has frequently been a friend to her.

In the 18 months before announcing her second campaign for president, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination addressed private equity investors in California, delivered remarks to bankers in Hilton Head, S.C., and spoke to brokers at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla.

Her efforts capped a nearly 15-year period in which Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, made at least $35 million by giving 164 speeches to financial-services, real-estate and insurance companies after leaving the White House in 2001, according to an Associated Press analysis of public disclosure forms and records released by her campaign.

The long and lucrative relationship between the Clinton family and the nation’s finance industry has emerged as a key issue in her Democratic primary race. Her rivals, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, accuse her of being too cozy with Wall Street and the industry she once represented as a senator from New York.

Her backers at financial firms say they have little expectation her family’s personal profits will influence her policymaking, noting their own opposition to her plan to raise taxes on the hedge fund and private-equity profits known as carried interest.