The issue of speeches at big Wall Street firms continues to haunt Hillary Clinton.
The issue just got more awkward, as one person who saw a speech she gave for Goldman Sachs at a conference in Arizona in 2013 said it made the Presidential hopeful sound “more like a Goldman Sachs managing director” than someone running for the Democratic nomination, according to a report from Politico.
The Clinton campaign has dismissed the comments as “pure trolling.”
This news could not come at a worse time for the Clinton campaign. The main thrust of Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign against Clinton has been that the former Secretary of State—and the rest of the Democratic establishment—is too close to the finance industry. Her relationship with Goldman Sachs (GS), the bogeyman of the anti-Wall Street crowd, has been particularly controversial.
Clinton earned $675,000 for three speeches to Goldman Sachs. The sources told Politico that Clinton spent no time condemning Goldman or the financial industry for its role in the financial crisis of 2008.
In the last Democratic debate, Clinton said she’d look into releasing the transcripts of her speeches. That has yet to happen, despite reports from Buzzfeed that she owns the transcripts to at least some of her paid speeches (though not necessarily the ones for Goldman Sachs).