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I will look into it - Hillary 2016
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t***@gmail.com
2016-02-08 07:49:25 UTC
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'I will look into it": So answered Hillary Clinton at last week's debate when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches for Goldman Sachs.




It was Clinton who required transcripts of her speeches
FEBRUARY 7, 2016 BY ANITA KUMAR
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article59010478.html


Former secretary routinely demanded a stenographer at paid speeches

Contracts indicate Clinton owns transcripts, controls their release

Democrat dogged by questions about transcripts days before voting



MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Clinton, who faces mounting pressure to release transcripts of her paid speeches, routinely demanded that a stenographer be present at her events so she could maintain a record of what she said.

At least four of Clinton's contracts include a clause stating a transcript would be produced for Clinton and that the former secretary of state would own them and control their release, according to contracts obtained by McClatchy.

"The sponsor will transcribe Speaker's remarks as they are being delivered, which should be solely for the Speaker's records," according to her contract with the University of Buffalo, which paid her $275,000.

Identical words appear in contracts between the Harry Walker Agency, which represents Clinton, and the University of Connecticut, which paid her $250,000; the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, which paid her $225,000, and the University of California at Los Angeles, which paid her $300,000.

Clinton has been dogged for days about whether she would release transcripts of her speeches, including those from Wall Street firms, that earned her millions of dollars before she launched her second presidential run.

As is her practice, Clinton's chosen to stay firm against releasing the transcripts.

In January, a reporter asked her after a town hall in Manchester if she would release the transcripts. She laughed and turned away.

In response to a question about whether she would release transcripts Thursday during the fifth and final debate before voting begins in New Hampshire, Clinton said, "I will look into it. I don't know the status, but I will certainly look into it."

"I don't think voters are interested in the transcripts of her speeches," top Clinton adviser Joel Benenson told reporters Friday.

And on Sunday, she said she would release the transcripts - if everyone who has ever given a paid speech also did. "Let everybody who's ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them," she said on ABC's This Week program. "We'll all release them at the same time. ... These rules need to apply to everybody."

Several Republicans have also been paid for speeches. None have released transcripts, but no one has asked either. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has said he would be willing to have the transcripts released.

Sanders said that it would be a good idea for her to release the transcripts, but that it was her decision.

"My understanding now is, her campaign says she's not going to release those transcripts," he said on CBS's Face the Nation. "That's her decision. But I think it would be a positive thing for the American people to know what was said behind closed doors to Wall Street. But, ultimately, that is her decision.

Andrew Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, said Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, often try to wait out a controversy in the hopes it goes away.

The contracts between the agency representing her and four public universities are subject to open records law, but contracts with private schools such as Colgate University, Hamilton College, Simmons College and the University of Miami as well as other private groups are not.

Sanders has criticized Clinton for benefiting from a super political action committee and for accepting donations and speaking fees from Wall Street at a time when the United States still is struggling to recover from a recession.

"There is a reason why these people are putting huge amounts of money into our political system," he said. "It is undermining American democracy."

Clinton has struggled throughout the campaign with voters who say she is not honest and trustworthy in part because her connections to big banks. More than 80 percent of those who think honesty is the quality that matters the most in a candidate backed Sanders in Iowa, according to entrance polls.

Several news organizations and government watchdog groups have asked for them as well

"We certainly believe Secretary Clinton should release the transcript of her paid speeches," Common Cause president Miles Rapoport. "Speeches like these are privileged access, purchased by giving her, and others, very large fees. As such they go to the heart of how money influences politics, and voters should have access to what is said and promised at gatherings like these."

Clinton made about $21.5 million on speeches after she stepped down as the nation's top diplomat in early 2013 and before she launched her presidential campaign in the spring of 2015.

IN 2013, HER FIRST YEAR OUT OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE, HILLARY CLINTON ACCEPTED $1,575,000 FROM WALL STREET BANKS THAT HAVE BEEN BLAMED FOR THEIR ROLES IN THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRISIS.

In answering a question last week about why accepted $675,000 for three speeches from Goldman Sachs, Clinton shrugged and said, "Well, I don't know. That's what they offered.".

Clinton said Friday on MSNBC that she doesn't regret giving the speeches because they offered her a way to communicate about what she was seeing around the world. Besides, she said, she urged Wall Street reforms before the Great Recession.

"This is an effort by the Sanders' campaign to basically say, anybody who's ever taken a donation, not just from Wall Street, if you take it to the natural conclusion, from anybody, is bought and paid for," she told Andrea Mitchell. "That is absolutely untrue."





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Andrea Mitchell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Mitchell#Personal_life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan
RichA
2016-02-08 07:59:39 UTC
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'I will look into it": So answered Hillary Clinton at last week's debate when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches for Goldman Sachs. he
The Clintons have successfully held-off inquiries before important events in the past. She'll do it again.
"This is an effort by the Sanders' campaign to basically say, anybody who's ever taken a donation, not just from Wall Street, if you take it to the natural conclusion, from anybody, is bought and paid for," she told Andrea Mitchell. "That is absolutely untrue."
As opposed to just "untrue."
t***@gmail.com
2016-02-08 08:18:32 UTC
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Post by RichA
'I will look into it": So answered Hillary Clinton at last week's debate when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches for Goldman Sachs. he
The Clintons have successfully held-off inquiries before important events in the past. She'll do it again.
"This is an effort by the Sanders' campaign to basically say, anybody who's ever taken a donation, not just from Wall Street, if you take it to the natural conclusion, from anybody, is bought and paid for," she told Andrea Mitchell. "That is absolutely untrue."
As opposed to just "untrue."
I find it very difficult to empathize with Hillary as she laments to Andrea Mitchell, the wife of the former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman.

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/12/21/bernie_sanders_on_challenging_wall_street
Ed Stasiak
2016-02-08 15:09:57 UTC
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Post by t***@gmail.com
'I will look into it": So answered Hillary Clinton at last week's debate
when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches
for Goldman Sachs.
Won't have to look very far...

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t***@gmail.com
2016-02-26 07:05:00 UTC
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Post by t***@gmail.com
'I will look into it": So answered Hillary Clinton at last week's debate when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches for Goldman Sachs.
It was Clinton who required transcripts of her speeches
FEBRUARY 7, 2016 BY ANITA KUMAR
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article59010478.html
Former secretary routinely demanded a stenographer at paid speeches
Contracts indicate Clinton owns transcripts, controls their release
Democrat dogged by questions about transcripts days before voting
MANCHESTER, N.H. - Hillary Clinton, who faces mounting pressure to release transcripts of her paid speeches, routinely demanded that a stenographer be present at her events so she could maintain a record of what she said.
Mrs. Clinton, Show Voters Those Transcripts
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD FEB. 25, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/mrs-clinton-show-voters-those-transcripts.html



"Everybody does it," is an excuse expected from a mischievous child, not a presidential candidate. But that is Hillary Clinton's latest defense for making closed-door, richly paid speeches to big banks, which many middle-class Americans still blame for their economic pain, and then refusing to release the transcripts.

A televised town hall on Tuesday was at least the fourth candidate forum in which Mrs. Clinton was asked about those speeches. Again, she gave a terrible answer, saying that she would release transcripts "if everybody does it, and that includes the Republicans."

In November, she implied that her paid talks for the Wall Street firms were part of helping them rebuild after the 9/11 attacks, which "was good for the economy and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists."

In a debate with Bernie Sanders on Feb. 4, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she would release transcripts, and she said she would "look into it." Later in February, asked in a CNN town hall forum why she accepted $675,000 for speeches to Goldman Sachs, she got annoyed, shrugged, and said, "That's what they offered," adding that "every secretary of state that I know has done that."

At another town hall, on Feb. 18, a man in the audience pleaded, "Please, just release those transcripts so that we know exactly where you stand." Mrs. Clinton had told him, "I am happy to release anything I have when everybody else does the same, because every other candidate in this race has given speeches to private groups."

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton further complained, "Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?"

The only different standard here is the one Mrs. Clinton set for herself, by personally earning $11 million in 2014 and the first quarter of 2015 for 51 speeches to banks and other groups and industries.

Voters have every right to know what Mrs. Clinton told these groups. In July, her spokesman Nick Merrill said that though most speeches were private, the Clinton operation "always opened speeches when asked to." Transcripts of speeches that have been leaked have been pretty innocuous. By refusing to release them all, especially the bank speeches, Mrs. Clinton fuels speculation about why she's stonewalling.

Her conditioning her releases on what the Republicans might or might not do is mystifying. Republicans make no bones about their commitment to Wall Street deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Mrs. Clinton is laboring to convince struggling Americans that she will rein in big banks, despite taking their money.

Besides, Mrs. Clinton is not running against a Republican in the Democratic primaries. She is running against Bernie Sanders, a decades-long critic of Wall Street excess who is hardly a hot ticket on the industry speaking circuit. The Sanders campaign, asked if Mr. Sanders also received fees for closed-door speeches, came up with two from two decades ago that were not transcribed: one to a hospital trade association, and one to a college, each for less than $1,000. Royalties from a book called "The Speech," Mr. Sanders's eight-hour Senate floor diatribe against President Obama's continuation of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, were donated to the nonprofit Addison County Parent/Child Center in Vermont.

The hazards of Mrs. Clinton, a presidential hopeful, earning more than $200,000 each for dozens of speeches to industry groups were clear from the start. Mrs. Clinton was making paid speeches when she hired consultants to vet her own background in preparation for a run. If they didn't flag this, they weren't doing their jobs.

Public interest in these speeches is legitimate, and it is the public -- not the candidate -- who decides how much disclosure is enough. By stonewalling on these transcripts Mrs. Clinton plays into the hands of those who say she's not trustworthy and makes her own rules. Most important, she is damaging her credibility among Democrats who are begging her to show them that she'd run an accountable and transparent White House.
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