The Clintons are raking it in
nytimes.com
Clintons Disclose Earnings, Debts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:46 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former President Clinton earned $9.5 million last year making speeches around the globe for as much as $400,000 apiece -- while his wife received $1.15 million as partial payment for her White House memoir.
The Clintons' earnings were detailed in financial disclosure forms filed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and made available Friday.
The former first couple still owe somewhere between $1.7 and $6.5 million in legal fees, stemming largely from past White House investigations, according to their paperwork.
That is the same general range as the previous year, but because the forms require only broad ranges, they do not necessarily reflect the bills the couple has paid in the last year.
``They have made significant payments,'' said Sen. Clinton's spokeswoman Karen Dunn, saying the former first couple's legal bills are less than the previous year.
Filings for 2001 showed the couple paid $1.3 million in legal fees; this year, they give no indication of how much was paid.
The records show the couple was also given an extra bill for old legal work by the Arkansas firm of Wright Lindsey & Jennings for work done back in 1998.
The billing mix-up, for somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000, went unnoticed until after the couple's legal defense fund paid out roughly $7 million in fees.
``They got the bill this year and paid it,'' said Dunn.
The Clintons have asked for taxpayer reimbursement of their legal bills stemming from the independent counsel investigation into the failed land deal known as Whitewater.
Clinton's lawyer, David Kendall, could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Clintons have between $1 million and $5 million in a joint account. They also report $1 million to $5 million held in a blind trust.
The senator's 2002 payment from publisher Simon & Schuster for $1.15 million follows a $2.85 million advance, meaning she has now received half the $8 million payment for ``Living History,'' which hit bookstores earlier this week.
Bill Clinton is working on his own book, due out next year. He traveled the globe to give 60 paid speeches last year, from Singapore to Stockholm to Dubai. The largest single moneymaking appearance was a $400,000 speech last November in Japan for the Mito City Political Research Group. Overall, his 2002 income from speeches is slightly higher than the year before.
His spokesman Jim Kennedy said the former president also gave numerous speeches in 2002 without compensation. |
