WikiLeaks emails reveal Clinton speeches to Goldman Sachs
WikiLeaks’ newest batch of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta appears to include transcripts of three paid speeches Clinton made to Goldman Sachs.
The speeches have long been a stumbling block to Clinton’s presidential campaign and sparked frequent criticism from primary challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Her GOP rival Donald Trump has also seized on inside information revealed in the leaks, using email messages to paint Clinton as corrupt.
One email, titled “Goldman Sachs paid speeches” and sent on Jan. 23, 2016 from aide Tony Carrk to a handful of other staffers, includes three speech transcripts and notes on potentially problematic areas.
In one transcript, Clinton told Goldman Sachs that she went on a self-described “apology tour” as secretary of State to calm world leaders who felt insulted by State Department information leaks, according to emails published by WikiLeaks.
{mosads}In a 2013 conversation with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Clinton described the fallout from a WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables in 2010.
“So out come hundreds of thousands of documents. And I have to go on an apology tour. And I had a jacket made like a rock star tour. The Clinton Apology Tour. I had to go and apologize to anybody who was in any way characterized in any of the cables in any way that might be considered less than flattering. And it was painful,” Clinton said, according to the transcript.
With the release of a quarter of a million secret diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks compromised communications between U.S. diplomatic agents abroad and the State Department in Washington.
“Leaders who shall remain nameless, who were characterized as vain, egotistical, power hungry, corrupt. And we knew they were. This was not fiction. And I had to go and say, you know, our ambassadors, they get carried away, they want to all be literary people,” Clinton said.
In that speech, Clinton downplayed the importance of the WikiLeaks filtrations, comparing them to the danger of confidential information stolen by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
“So I think that WikiLeaks was a big bump in the road, but I think the Snowden material could be potentially much more threatening to us,” she said.
Clinton said that while the leaks had been “embarrassing,” Snowden’s information had the potential to reveal the process of how the United States collects national security data to foreign powers.
“So I do think that there has been a real loss of important information that shouldn’t belong to or be made available to people who spend a lot of their time trying to penetrate our government, our businesses. And even worse, you know, some who are engaged in terrorist activities,” said Clinton.
In the same email, Carrk also highlights several other passages that could be troublesome for Clinton. In one, she talks about working together with banks toward economic recovery and suggests the housing crisis and recession became overly politicized.
“And with political people, again, I would say the same thing, you know, there was a lot of complaining about Dodd-Frank, but there was also a need to do something because for political reasons, if you were an elected member of Congress and people in your constituency were losing jobs and shutting businesses and everybody in the press is saying it’s all the fault of Wall Street, you can’t sit idly by and do nothing, but what you do is really important,” she said.
“And I think the jury is still out on that because it was very difficult to sort of sort through it all.”
Clinton said she’s not interested in “turning the clock back or pointing figures,” but calls for more transparency and working together to put confidence back in small and medium-sized businesses and consumers.
Clinton goes on to say that there has to be a balance in how much we regulate banks and said some are too “scared of the other shoe dropping” to do what’s needed to spur economic growth.
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