Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner for US president, revealed that she and her husband earned more than $140m over the past eight years, as her campaign released a vast treasure trove of documents aimed at rebutting suggestions she has not been fully transparent about her finances.
Both Mrs Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, carved out lucrative careers after he left the White House in 2001, mostly though book deals, paid speeches and a variety of other business ventures.
After serving as a senator and secretary of state under President Barack Obama, Mrs Clinton commanded a speaking fee as high as $400,000, the documents show.
Mr Clinton’s fee ranged as high as $750,000 per speech, and he also earned millions annually in recent years from his role at for-profit college system Laureate Education and education company GEMS.
The detailed breakdown of the couple’s wealth — they earned more than $28m in 2014 alone — is likely to be used by Mrs Clinton’s rivals in both her own party and among a crowded field of Republican challengers. Though it is also possible the presence of other wealthy candidates in the race, such as billionaire Donald Trump and former Florida governor Jeb Bush, whose own tax returns showed he made more than $7m in 2013, will neutralise that line of attack.
She has been criticised for saying last year that she and her husband were “dead broke” after his presidency, and her campaign was keen to stress that the couple has paid nearly $58m in state and federal taxes between 2007 and 2014.
“We’ve come a long way from my days going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund and earning $16,450 as a young law professor in Arkansas — and we owe it to the opportunities America provides,” she said.
Her campaign’s release on Friday of eight years of tax returns and the couple’s 2013 speaking fees came on the same day that the state department released thousands more pages of Mrs Clinton’s emails, amid an ongoing controversy over her use of a private server and email account during her tenure as secretary of state.
Mrs Clinton also released a statement from her personal physician declaring that “she is in excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States”. A 2012 health scare, when she was treated for a bloodclot between her brain and her skull following a concussion, has been resolved, the statement said.
While still the clear frontrunner for her party’s nomination, Mrs Clinton has struggled to build momentum behind her campaign amid the email controversy and a series of articles questioning the propriety of donations to the Clinton’s charitable foundation while she served as secretary of state.
Polls have consistently showed that voters question her trustworthiness, and that her favourability rating has dipped significantly nationally as well as in some states that will be key to her campaign.
Her team sought to get back on the front foot with Friday’s document dump, casting her as a champion of tax reform who will close down loopholes that are exploited by the wealthy.
Mrs Clinton said she and her husband paid a combined federal, state, and local effective tax rate of 45.8 per cent in 2014, and contributed just over 10 per cent of their income to charity. She has now released 38 years of tax returns in total, dating back to 1977.
“I want more Americans to have the chance to work hard and get ahead, just like we did. And reforming the tax code can help,” she said in a statement.
But the disclosure that Mrs Clinton and her husband were earning as much as $650,000 in speaking fees from companies such as Goldman Sachs as recently as 2013 may rattle sections of the Democratic base, particularly a progressive wing that has rallied behind the candidacy of self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders in recent months.
Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, was effectively typecast by Mr Obama as an out-of-touch private equity mogul, a characterisation the Clinton campaign is eager to avoid in what is shaping up as a tougher battle for the nomination than many expected.