Goldman Sachs paid Bill Clinton $200k for a speech in spring 2011 and then began lobbying Hillary Clinton State Department, Hillary lauded investment bank 3 days later

From International Business Times April 27, 2015.

“Goldman Paid Bill Clinton $200,000 For Speech Before Bank Lobbied Hillary Clinton

Goldman Sachs paid former President Bill Clinton $200,000 to deliver a speech in the spring of 2011, several months before the investment banking giant began lobbying the State Department, then headed by Hillary Clinton, federal records reviewed by International Business Times show.

Goldman’s objective in lobbying the State Department could not be immediately discerned. The lobbying disclosure filings note only that Goldman sought to “monitor deficit reduction issues” — specifically, a bill known as the Budget Control Act — and the bank declined to answer questions about the precise nature of its interests.

Three days after Bill Clinton accepted Goldman’s money to make a speech in New York City, Hillary Clinton delivered her own address at the State Department in Washington: She lauded the investment bank’s participation in her department’s campaign to boost the numbers of American students who study in China.

According to an ethics agreement governing Hillary Clinton’s tenure as an Obama administration Cabinet official, all of her husband’s paid speeches while she was secretary of state required the prior approval of department officials. Bill Clinton’s 2011 speech to a conference full of Goldman clients gathered in New York gained the blessing of State Department officials, documents obtained by Judicial Watch say.

The discovery that Bill Clinton accepted a six-figure payday from Goldman Sachs just before the bank sought the ear of his wife’s department seems certain to intensify scrutiny of the Clinton family’s often overlapping personal, philanthropic and official business interests.

In the two weeks since she formally declared herself an aspirant for the presidency, gaining status as the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton has been dogged by allegations that foreign governments and well-connected investors have used generosity to her husband and their family’s philanthropic empire, the Clinton Foundation, as a means of seeking to influence policy at her State Department.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/goldman-paid-bill-clinton-200000-speech-bank-lobbied-hillary-clinton-1898154