Hillary Clinton was pummeled last year on her book tour when she told Diane Sawyer of ABC News that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, were “dead broke” by the time they left the White House in January 2001.
"You have no reason to remember, but we came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt," Clinton told Sawyer. "We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea's education. It was not easy. Bill has worked really hard. And it's been amazing to me. He's worked very hard.”
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While it’s no secret that Clinton and her husband subsequently cashed in with massive income from speeches, books and other appearances for both personal gain and financing their highly touted global foundation, The Washington Post just unveiled a jaw-dropping tally of Clinton Inc. showing that over four decades Bill and Hillary Clinton have generated $3 billion in total contributions to their global charitable, education and health care work, presidential and Senate campaigns and personal fees and royalties.
According to an extraordinary data base assembled by Post reporters Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Anu Narayanswamy, $2 billion of the total went to the Clinton Foundation, which does charitable and humanitarian work across the globe, and $1 billion covered all of the couple’s political campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, his legal defense fund and political career in Arkansas as well as Hillary’s senate races, failed 2008 presidential campaign and her current bid for the White House.
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The Post’s ambitious project identified contributions from about 336,000 individuals, corporations, unions and foreign governments in support of the Clintons’ philanthropic and political activities. The massive list includes contributions from big names like Steven Spielberg and George Soros, as well as hundreds of supporters most people never heard of. The Clintons’ biggest individual political donors are Univision Chairman Haim Saban and his wife, Cheryl, who have made 39 contributions totaling $2.4 million to support the Clintons’ races since 1992, according to a Washington Post summary of the project.
You can dig into the Clintons’ donor network and other elements of the Post’s financial investigation here.
