Now we know how Bill and Hillary Clinton could afford to own their two homes worth millions and rent an $11 million summer mansion in the Hamptons. In addition to Hillary’s multi-million-dollar book advances and six-figure speaking fees, funded in large part by big businesses, Bill Clinton has made over $100 million from the speaking circuit, the Washington Post reported.
Over one week in May 2012, Clinton addressed corporate executives and investors in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Austria, and the Czech Republic — leaving him with a $1.4 million take.
According to the Post:
Bill Clinton has been paid $104.9 million for 542 speeches around the world between January 2001, when he left the White House, and January 2013, when Hillary stepped down as secretary of state, according to a Washington Post review of the family’s federal financial disclosures.
Although slightly more than half of his appearances were in the United States, the majority of his speaking income, $56.3 million, came from foreign speeches, many of them in China, Japan, Canada and the United Kingdom, the Post review found.
His main source of sponsorship? The financial industry — Wall Street banks and other financial services firms have paid him a total of $19.6 million for 102 speeches.
Clinton does some pro bono work, however. He frequents the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas. The Clintons also sometimes request that sponsors donate their fees to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s philanthropy initiative.
Clinton has delivered paid speeches to liquor distributors, coal-fired utility companies, and, like his wife, Goldman Sachs. Goldman paid him $1.35 million for eight speeches. TD Bank, his largest sponsor in the financial industry, paid him about $1.8 million.