Hillary and Bill Clinton Made $6.7 Million From Speeches in 2015
Hillary Clinton released a personal financial disclosure form on Tuesday night.
— -- Hillary and Bill Clinton raked in a combined $6.725 million in paid speeches in 2015, a decrease from the year before, according to a personal financial disclosure form released late Tuesday night.
As a presidential candidate, Clinton has come under fire for paid speeches she gave, particularly to big banks and Wall Street, after leaving the State Department. Her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, and his supporters have called on her to release the transcripts of these speeches, which she has thus far refused to do.
According to the document her campaign released, last year, Clinton gave six paid speeches for a total income of $1.475 million. Her biggest pay day was speech to Ebay on March 3, 2015 for $315,000. Her lowest was to the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce for $150,000. She did not speak to any American banks last year and has not given any paid speeches since announcing her presidential campaign on April 12, 2015.
The document also shows that Bill Clinton gave 22 paid speeches last year for a total of $5.25 million. Of these speeches, 11 of them occurred after his wife became a presidential candidate. Prior to the announcement, the former president raked in $225,000 for a speech to UBS. Following the announcement, he made $250,000 speaking to the private equity firm, Apollo Global Management.
Since Hillary Clinton became a candidate, the couple has drastically scaled back their paid speeches. For example, in 2014, the Clintons made roughly $18 million from roughly 100 paid speeches — many of which were to banks.
In addition to the paid speeches, the form also shows that Hillary Clinton made more than $5 million in royalties from her most recent book, “Hard Choices.”
The financial disclosure document her campaign released on Tuesday is not Clinton's full tax return and does not show her tax rate or how much she made in taxes last year.
Last summer, however, Clinton's campaign posted her tax returns from the past 14 years on their website. According to these documents, in 2014, she and her husband paid an effective federal tax rate of 35.7 percent.
While that form has not been released for 2015, her campaign is using the personal financial disclosure form released Tuesday as an opportunity to continue attacking Donald Trump for saying he will not release his tax returns.
"Despite Donald Trump's boasting, submitting his Personal Financial Disclosure form is no breakthrough for transparency. It is a legal requirement for anyone running for president,” Clinton campaign spokesperson Christina Reynolds said in a statement. “The true test for Donald Trump is whether he will adhere to the precedent followed by every presidential candidate in the modern era and make his tax returns available, as Hillary Clinton has done.”
The statement links to Clinton’s website where she has released her tax returns. Upon clicking on it, a pop-up comes up that says, “Donald Trump should release his tax returns.”