What Do These Big Law Firms Expect in Return for Paying Hillary $225,000+ per Speech?

If this is pay-to-play lobbying, what exactly are they paying for?

By Rachel Alexander Published on June 3, 2016

As if huge Wall Street payments for Hillary Clinton’s speeches wasn’t enough — she got $675,000 for three speeches to Goldman Sachs alone — big law firms are also paying her big bucks for speeches. Politico compiled a list of Clinton’s speeches in her most recent financial disclosure, which covers parts of the years 2014-2015, in a story titled “Clintons made $25 million in speeches since 2014.” Since Bill and Hillary Clinton operate as a team, the big firms paying him for speeches are also being scrutinized.

The American Lawyer reports several big law firms paid the Clintons $1.75 million. The news of the law firm speech payments is so new that no one has discovered any quid pro quo yet between Clinton and those who pay her huge amounts for speaking. But going by her previous record — see below — the law firms she spoke to will regret the amount they paid her.

The Hillary-Paying Firms

One law firm stands out more than others. Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, a securities law firm that represents investors, has paid the Clintons a total of $675,000 in fees for speeches since 2009. For one recent speech, they paid her $225,000, which is apparently the minimum she requires per speech.

The firm proudly lists on its website a long list of wealthy shareholder clients they have represented in suing corporations for millions of dollars. The Firm’s institutional clients range from state and municipal retirement funds to Taft-Hartley Multi-Employer Funds, and private domestic financial institutions to international megafunds,” the site says. Note the last type of client is primarily foreign financial interests; there are 18 listed on the law firm’s website, such as Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and China Development Industrial Bank.

The firm lists its most prominent cases, and the top one is In re Enron Corp. Sec. Litig., in which it represented The University of California Board of Regents in a lawsuit suing banks. Notably, the Regents are responsible for setting tuition for the university system and obtaining fund state and federal funding, and implementing academic policies that often go against conservative principles.

Hogan Lovelis US LLP, the 11th largest law firm in the world, paid Hillary Clinton $225,000 for a speech. It is a multinational law firm that specializes in government regulatory, litigation and arbitration, corporate, finance, and intellectual property. Clients include Goldman Sachs, the Republic of Ecuador, Apple, Inc., Dell, Nissan North America, Toyota and various government agencies. It is also one of the five largest lobbying firms in the U.S. 

The law firm Kessler Topaz Metzler & Check in Amsterdam, another securities firm, paid Bill Clinton half a million dollars for a speech in 2014. Its clients include Deutsche Bank AG, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and Target. 

In the Clintons’ last financial disclosure, they listed most of their income as coming from royalties and paid speeches. Between the two of them, they brought in $25 million from speeches.

The Clinton Quid Pro Quo

The vast majority of organizations that hired Hillary Clinton to give speeches had recently lobbied the government. What will these firms and their clients expect in return from Clinton if elected president? Lawrence M. Noble, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based election watchdog group, observed, “The problem is whether all these interests who paid her to appear before them will expect to have special access when they have an issue before the government.”

Even many liberal reporters and politicians think they will have that access. The Clintons have a long history of returning favors to friends who help them out financially. 

The AP reports that “almost all the 82 corporations, trade associations and other groups that paid for or sponsored Clinton’s speeches have actively sought to sway the government — lobbying, bidding for contracts, commenting on federal policy and in some cases contacting State Department officials or Clinton herself during her tenure as secretary of state.” Of the 60 groups that paid for Clinton to speak while she was secretary of state, 30 received government contracts. U.S. News & World Report ran an article recently exposing details about her thinly veiled quid pro quo arrangements with some of these firms.

The liberal Huffington Post laid out a case explaining why Clinton is so cozy with Wall Street and how the speaking fees she’s gotten from Wall Street have affected her political positions, such as her voting record as a U.S. Senator from New York.

Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has been considered for years to be a potential rival of Clinton’s for the presidency, speculated about one incident where Clinton may have changed her position due to political donations. In the late 1990s, when Warren was a college law professor writing about bankruptcy law, Clinton allegedly told her she would oppose a bankruptcy reform bill that Warren thought would disproportionately hurt single mothers. Once elected U.S. Senator, Clinton supported the bill. Warren told TV news host Bill Moyers she believed Clinton changed her position due to powerful political contributions after becoming a Senator.

As Senator Clinton the pressures are very different … the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the past few years was not the oil industry, not pharmaceuticals, it was consumer credit products. [Clinton] had taken money from the groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.

Clinton’s Gucci Firms

Considering Hillary Clinton is always condemning “the rich,” it would seem to be hypocrisy as well as an obvious conflict of interest to take hefty speaking fees from big, Gucci law firms that represent the rich as well as from big Wall Street firms that serve the rich. Democrats like Clinton frequently claim that Republicans are the “party of the rich,” but the reality is, many Democrats are bankrolled by wealthy interests. The wealthiest members of Congress include more Democrats than Republicans. According to The Washington Free Beacon, seven of the 10 richest members of Congress are Democrats — and this imbalance has been that way for years.

This disclosure of speaking fees doesn’t even include speeches the Clintons made on behalf of The Clinton Foundation, which they insist do not need to be disclosed, despite Politico reporting that the U.S. Office of Government Ethics instructs that honoraria directed to a charity should be reported. One of those unreported speeches includes a 2010 talk by Bill Clinton in Bangkok, paid for by the Thai energy ministry and PTT, the government-owned oil-and-gas company there.

Hillary Clinton has not released her tax returns, despite the fact that most major presidential candidates release them publicly. Nor has she released the text of her speeches, although there has been a loud clamoring for her to do so.

Many politicians do not accept speaking fees if they know they are going to be returning to office, to avoid the appearance of impropriety and the unethical pressures later. Not Hillary. She knows that 71 percent of Democrats say they would still vote for her even if she is indicted for Servergate. If she is elected president, it sounds like it’s a great time to be a lawyer in a large, powerful firm or a Wall Street banker.

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