My Take – Hillary Clinton is Sitting on a Corruption Time Bomb (NOT the email servers or Benghazi either) that will Eventually Explode. Bernie Sanders: Light the Fuse Sunday night; Don’t let Trump Light it in the General Election Campaign. I prefer President Sanders to President Trump
Bernie has scored lots of points pointing out that Hillary Clinton was paid $675,000 (to her personal bank account) to do three private talks to Goldman Sachs in 2013 after she left the State Department and was informally planning her presidential run which she announced in April 2015. Bernie has demanded that it must have been a doozy of a talk to be worth that much money to Goldman Sachs, so Hillary ought to share it with all of us.
Hillary laughs it off along with Bernie, and then offers lame excuse after lame excuse for why she will not disclose the transcripts to her paid Goldman Sachs talks. She first claimed she would not release the transcripts until Bernie released his. Well Bernie has done no paid Wall Street talks—he is prohibited from doing them as a member of the Senate—so there is nothing to release.
The Hillary claimed that she would not release the transcripts until the Republican released the transcripts to their paid Wall Street talks. The problem for Hillary is that there is no evidence that Cruz, Kasich or Rubio could do paid Wall Street talks from 2013-2015 because they, like Bernie, were in public office and pocketing money for doing private talks is prohibited by the same ethics laws that affect Bernie.
And there is no evidence after a rudimentary search that Trump got paid to do talks to Wall Street banks in this period, who might have balked at his $1.5 million fee. Plus what exactly would Trump tell a Wall Street Bank? And no one took Trump seriously as a presidential candidate in 2013-15—I mean no one—while everyone knew you were the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic nomination and a likely winner in the general election. Powerful corporation interests had a distinct interest in buttering your bread.
And since when is Hillary Clinton saying she is only going to meet an ethical bar established by Donald Trump anyway? That is preposterous and insulting. It makes it clear she is obviously hiding something that she believes voters will not approve of, and she is determined to keep them in the dark. It must be really really bad because of her resistance. All the more reason voters must see these transcripts.
For the details and background of her vast wealth from doing corporate talks in the two years before she formally announced her candidacy for president—what was in effect an unprecedented corporate shakedown/pay-to-play tour that made Hillary one of the richest people in the world—see [the work compiled by Jed McChesney](http://citizenuprising.com/5352-2/)
Bernie may be a gentleman and honor her wishes, or prod only gently, but Trump is no gentleman and never trods gently. He will pounce and pounce and pounce and Hillary has no defense. It may well be game over.
So Bernie needs to call her bluff and demand that she turn over the transcripts of her talks to Wall Street banks. This nonsense has got to end. He must be unrelenting.
But that is not all he needs to do. Hillary did not just do 3 talks to Goldman Sachs. She did 14 speeches to the largest Wall Street banks and hedge funds in the 18 months from April 2013 to October 2014. [Look at the list of banks and how much they paid.]( http://citizenuprising.com/financial/)
Here is something interesting: [One of the 14 talks was to GTCR hedge fund in June 2014.[(http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/February-2016/Hillary-Clinton-speech-GTCR/) You know what the “R” stands for in GTCR? Rauner, as in Bruce Rauner, elected Republican Governor of Illinois in November 2014. Rauner’s hedge fund paid Hillary $280,000 for her talk. Rauner may be the single most hated politician in Illinois for Democrats and independents. He wants to privatize higher education while Bernie wants to make it available to all. Rauner was not active with GTCR in June 2014, but he still had a connection to the firm. Wonder what Hillary said to them? People in Illinois sure deserve to know, don’t they?
And they vote on Tuesday, in perhaps the most important election day of the primary season.
Hillary Clinton is running as a progressive who will better tame and regulate Wall Street for the public than Bernie Sanders. She is their enemy she tells us, despite the massive contributions bankers and hedge fund executives make to her campaign and SuperPACs, because she says some Wall Street executives oppose her.
So let the people see the transcripts to the 14 speeches and judge for ourselves how sincere Hillary’s progressive stance toward the financial sector is. That is only fair. Especially since these 14 talks put $3,260,500 into Hillary’s personal bank account. In earlier times, before public relations and spin, these talks would have been called pay-offs or bribes. That is why it is illegal for a member of Congress, a public official, or an announced candidate for president to do them. Let us see the transcripts to see if there are grounds for concerns.
Press her Bernie. Mention all 14 talks. Mention GTCR. Mention her outrageous personal profit. She has no answer to this as we have seen, yet you joke about one talk or three talks.
It isn’t one talk or three talks to Goldman Sachs, it is 14 talks, to the biggest and baddest firms on Wall Street.
In fact, in truth, Hillary did 91 talks for at least $100,000 each during this period that put $21.6 million into her personal bank account. No active politician has ever done anything like that in American history. But we can get into that rogues gallery of monopolists, influence-buyers and polluters later in the campaign. Right now just nail her on the 14 talks to Wall Street and hedge funds.
Bernie, you need to channel Heisenberg like you did in the debate last Wednesday. Take it to her. No more Mr. Nice Guy.
It should not be Sanders’s responsibility to hold her feet to the fire. That’s the job of the press; a job that they have clearly refused to do. And what is there to say about the hundreds of thousands of people who have voted for a candidate who refuses to be accountable to the public? If this is her attitude when she is asking for the job, what could we expect of her if she were to be elected?
[…] My Take – Hillary Clinton is Sitting on a Corruption Time Bomb (NOT the email servers or Benghazi either) that will Eventually Explode. Bernie Sanders: Light the Fuse Sunday night; Don’t let Trump Light it in the General Election Campaign. I prefer President Sanders to President Trump Bernie has scored lots of points pointing out that Hillary Clinton was paid $675,000 (to her personal bank account) to do three private talks to Goldman Sachs in 2013 after she left the State Department and was informally planning her presidential run which she announced in April 2015. […]
Hillary Clinton has a history of suffering health scares, taking naps, and sitting on pillows.