http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/bills-fees-spiked-when-hillary-was-sec/article/2564699Bill doubled speaking fees from foreign groups while Hillary was secretary of state
BY: Sarah Westwood May 19, 2015 | 5:00 am
Former President Bill Clinton netted millions in speaking fees from appearances around the world while his wife served as secretary of state, but earned far less from abroad in the years since Hillary Clinton left the State Department.
Bill Clinton took in $2.2 million from just six international speeches in 2014, according to financial disclosure forms released Friday as required by Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy.
By contrast, the former president reportedly earned more than twice as much for appearances made across borders while Hillary Clinton was in office. He reportedly made $4.8 million from 13 speeches in foreign countries in 2010, his wife's first year as secretary of state.
In 2011, Bill Clinton reportedly drummed up at least $5.96 million in speaking fees for appearances he made outside the U.S.
He netted $5.2 million for 15 speeches he delivered in foreign countries during Hillary Clinton's final year as secretary of state.
The sharp contrast between how frequently foreign entities entreated Bill Clinton for speeches while Hillary Clinton ran the State Department and while she was out of office and on the lecture circuit herself highlights a common charge of Clinton critics: that foreign organizations may have written the former president checks in an effort to curry favor with the nation's chief diplomat.
Bill Clinton gave 215 speeches during his wife's tenure, earning $48 million, the Washington Examiner reported last year.
State Department ethics officials signed off on Bill Clinton's speeches in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirates, Panama, India, the Cayman Islands and more countries without objecting to a single one.
The agency was required to review each paid speaking engagement for potential conflicts of interest as part of a "memorandum of understanding" between the Clintons and the White House.
Although that agreement was also designed to prevent the Clinton Foundation from accepting most foreign donations, recent reports have suggested that the charity raked in more than a thousand contributions from international benefactors that were never disclosed to the State Department.
What's more, many of the same groups that contributed heavily to the Clinton Foundation also paid Bill and Hillary Clinton six-figure sums to appear at their events.
Bank of America and its philanthropic arm, which together donated between $600,000 and $1.25 million to the Clinton Foundation, paid $500,000 for Bill Clinton to speak at an event in London in March 2014, for example.
The speech was one of two appearances on foreign soil that netted Bill Clinton half a million dollars last year; the other, funded by law firm Kessler, Topaz, Meltzer & Check, took him to a swanky hotel in Amsterdam.
At the Netherlands event, Clinton encouraged a room full of international investors to pour money into "green energy" projects in the Caribbean islands.
The Clintons have deflected criticism of the high fees they command for appearances by claiming they donate much of their earnings to the Clinton Foundation.
Bill Clinton encouraged readers to donate 5 percent of their income to charity in his 2007 book Giving.
But "the pace of the Clintons' own charitable giving, which peaked last year at $3 million, has not always kept up with their income, and by at least one measure, has sometimes fallen short of the spirit of the 5 percent goal, which is to get money into the hands of charities that do good works," the Times wrote in 2008.
Hillary Clinton has insisted she directs the entirety of her speaking fees from appearances at universities to the Clinton Foundation.
An official with knowledge of the situation suggested Bill and Hillary Clinton donate from their personal wealth, which includes income from their speeches, to the philanthropy through a separate charity called the Clinton Family Foundation, which has given between $1 million and $5 million to the better-known and larger Clinton Foundation.
Tax forms for the Clinton Family Foundation show Bill and Hillary Clinton gave $1.4 million to the family charity in 2011, the year Bill Clinton reportedly made $13.4 million for speeches alone.
Theirs was the only contribution to the Clinton Family Foundation that year. However, the smaller charity passed along just $352,000 to the Clinton Foundation in 2011.
The rest went to a variety of sources that included a $25,000 donation to Sidwell Friends School, the elite Washington private school where Chelsea Clinton went during her father's time in the White House, a $30,000 gift to Bill Clinton's alma mater Georgetown University, and a $30,000 contribution to Hillary Clinton's alma mater Yale University.
Other high-society recipients of the Clinton Family Foundation's generosity that year included the Shakespeare Theatre Company, the School of American Ballet and the Westchester Land Trust.
In 2012, when Bill Clinton earned $17 million in speaking fees, the Clinton Family Foundation funneled just $220,000 into the Clinton Foundation.
Officials with the Clinton Foundation have said Bill Clinton delivers speeches that yield payments directly to the philanthropy, although they are not reported on financial documents because the former president does not profit personally, the Washington Post reported in 2007.
