Clintons Liquidate Controversial Stocks
Hoping to avoid any possible conflict of interest, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, the former president, liquidated a blind trust valued at $5 million to $25 million in April after learning that it included such investments as oil and drug companies and military contractors, her presidential campaign confirmed.
"As a presidential candidate, Senator Clinton was required to make her assets public. As a result, she had to dissolve her blind trust," Howard Wolfson, a senior Clinton adviser, said late Thursday. "Upon its dissolution, she and the president chose to go above and beyond what was required of them and liquidate their assets in order to avoid even the hint of a conflict of interest."
Those investments included several pharmaceutical companies, including Abbott Labs, Amgen, Genentech, Novartis, Pfizer and Wyeth, with assets in each company ranging from $100,001 to $250,000, The New York Times reported in Friday editions. Other assets included BP Amoco, Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp., Raytheon and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The Clintons sold the stock in April as they prepared to disclose their holdings under government ethics rules for presidential candidates, the Times said, adding that until getting ready to release the holdings in the blind trust, the Clintons did not know what stocks and other financial assets it contained.
They were to publicly disclose the assets on Friday, The Washington Post reported.
Other presidential candidates have been adjusting their financial portfolios during the 2008 campaign. Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards and Republicans Sam Brownback and Rudy Giuliani have taken steps to divest their personal finances of Sudan-related holdings out of concern for the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan.
Filings made public by the Federal Elections Commission Thursday showed that former President Clinton upped his speechmaking money from the previous year, garnering some $10.2 million in payments, compared with about $7.5 million the year before.
The Clintons had a much more pedestrian income when he ran for president in 1992. If Sen. Clinton's 2008 presidential bid is successful, they will enter the White House a very rich couple.
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.
The former president's earnings must be reported as the spouse of a senator. Disclosure rules do not require him to reveal everything. He received an advance from Random House for an unpublished manuscript, but is only required to say that it was greater than $1,000.
He also did not have to say how much he earns as a partner with Yucaipa Global Opportunities Fund, a Los Angeles-based investment firm.