Transcripts of presidential candidate's Wall Street talks released in new Wikileaks dump

chika ebuzor

October 16, 2016 1:11 PM

Clinton came under fire for months for not releasing full details of her paid speeches to big business audiences.

Hillary Clinton, visiting a campaign field office in San Francisco, briefly addressed the ugliness of the White House race

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's full remarks to several Wall Street audiences appeared to become public on Saturday when the controversial transparency group Wikileaks dumped its latest batch of hacked emails.

The documents showed comments by Clinton during question-and-answer sessions with Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein and Tim O'Neill, the bank's head of investment management, at three separate events in 2013 in Arizona, New York and South Carolina.

Some excerpts of Clinton's speeches had already been released. For more than a week, Wikileaks has published in stages what it says are hacked emails from the account of John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman.

Clinton's campaign has declined to verify the emails. Goldman Sachs did not immediately provide any comment on Saturday.

Clinton came under fire for months for not releasing full details of her paid speeches to big business audiences, as opponents accused her of a cozy relationship with bankers and other members of the U.S. financial system.

The excerpts that have surfaced so far angered voters who backed Clinton's former Democratic opponent, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who endorsed her after losing the party's primary.

Few of these voters are expected to vote for Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is dealing with his own larger scandal after the release last week of a 2005 video in which he bragged about making unwanted sexual advances toward women.

But Democratic strategists worry that disappointment with Clinton could hurt turnout in the Nov. 8 election among liberals and younger voters, posing a potential problem for the former secretary of state.

In the email released on Saturday containing the transcripts, Clinton campaign staff highlighted sections that could pose problems, including saying "political reasons" factored into passing the 2010 Dodd-Frank law on Wall Street reforms and, while talking about regulation, saying the people who work in the industry know it best.

chika ebuzor