Wall Street speaking fees put Clinton in an awkward spot

In her primary concession speech Tuesday night in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton vowed to supporters and a national television audience that “Wall Street can never be allowed to once again threaten Main Street, and I will fight to rein in Wall Street.”

Strong words from a candidate who, not long before she jumped into the presidential race, was happy to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from banking firms that had helped bring the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse a few years earlier.

Now, those speeches have come back to bite the former secretary of State as she faces a surprisingly tough challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, for the Democratic nomination. Curious minds want to know: What did she tell all those bankers for all that money?

Asked at the Democratic debate on Feb. 4 whether she’d release transcripts of the speeches, Clinton dodged, saying, “I will certainly look into it.”

A few days later, she suggested she was being singled out. “Let everybody who’s ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them,” Clinton told ABC’s This

Week. “We’ll all release them at the same time.”

That misses the point. Everybody else isn’t running for the nation’s highest office on a platform of staying strict with the big banks. When you’ve been paid more than $2 million to speak to financial firms, voters are understandably skeptical.

Aren’t there some sources of lecture-circuit money that a candidate ought to disdain? Millions of Americans lost their homes after banks churned out faulty mortgages and securities backed by home loans that borrowers could not possibly afford.

For its role in the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs, which paid Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in 2013, tentatively agreed last month to a $5.1 billion settlement. Two others on Clinton’s speaking roster — Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase — agreed to pay $16.6 billion and $13 billion, respectively.

Unless Goldman is filled with masochists who pay people to criticize them, it’s a pretty safe bet that Clinton’s comments were entertaining and sprinkled with some polite words for her generous hosts. In the current political climate, release of the transcripts could be damaging to her campaign and provide fodder for her opponent.

Then there’s this. Isn’t it unseemly for a candidate who is railing against income inequality to take $225,000 for an hour or so of work when it takes a typical American household four years to earn that much?

All told, between the time Clinton left her post as secretary of State in 2013 and when she declared her candidacy last year, she gave 92 speeches for fees totaling $21.7 million, some of which she donated to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Clinton might have avoided this predicament by deciding not to feed at the Wall Street trough after leaving public office. Now the best she can do is come clean with the transcripts and let the voters judge.