John Edwards, at $55,000 to speak about poverty, looks cheap compared to Bill Clinton:
Six years out of power, Bill Clinton can still raise huge sums with a personal appearance. He made a staggering $450,000 for a single September speech in London, at a Fortune Forum event, as well as $200,000 for an April appearance in the Bahamas to speak to IBM, and another $200,000 for a New York speech to General Motors.
I don’t believe the FEC limits the work options of Congressional spouses. And if I remember from the Kerry and Teresa Heinz days, money that a spouse makes can’t just be transferred to a campaign account. Having said that, this seems like a fairly glaring loophole, in that it allows companies, foreign (!) or domestic to donate six-figure sums to the household income of a presidential candidate.
Could Russia’s Yukos book the spouse of its preferred soft-on-Putin candidate, and pay, say, a million for one speech?