WikiLeaks appears to reveal Clinton's Wall Street speeches

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DEMOCRATS
Clinton called for 'open trade and open borders' in private, paid speeches
Published October 08, 2016 . Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/08/clinton-called-for-open-trade-and-open-borders-in-private-paid-speeches.html

  "WASHINGTON –  Hillary Clinton told bankers behind closed doors that she
   favored "open trade and open borders" and said Wall Street executives
   were best-positioned to help reform the U.S. financial sector,
   according to transcripts of her private, paid speeches leaked Friday.
   
   The leaks were the result of another email hacking intended to
   influence the presidential election.
   
   Excerpts of the speeches given in the years before her 2016
   presidential campaign included some blunt and unguarded remarks to her
   private audiences, which collectively had paid her at least $26.1
   million in speaking fees. Clinton had refused to release transcripts of
   the speeches, despite repeated calls to do so by her primary opponent,
   Sen. Bernie Sanders.
   
   The excerpts were included in emails exchanged among her political
   staff, including Campaign Chairman John Podesta, whose email account
   was hacked. The WikiLeaks organization posted what it said were
   thousands of Podesta's emails. It wasn't immediately clear who had
   hacked Podesta's emails, though the breach appeared to cover years of
   messages, some sent as recently as last month.
   
   Among the emails was a compilation of excerpts from Clinton's paid
   speeches in 2013 and 2014. It appeared campaign staff had read all
   Clinton's speeches and identified passages that could be potentially
   problematic for the candidate if they were to become public.
   
   One excerpt put Clinton squarely in the free-trade camp, a position she
   has retreated on significantly during the 2016 election. In a talk to a
   Brazilian bank in 2013, she said her "dream" is "a hemispheric common
   market, with open trade and open borders" and asked her audience to
   think of what doubling American trade with Latin America "would mean
   for everybody in this room."
   
   
 
   Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has made opposition to trade
   deals a cornerstone of his campaign.
   
   Podesta posted a series of tweets Friday night, calling the disclosures
   a Russian hack and raising questions about whether some of the
   documents could have been altered.
   
   "I'm not happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to
   throw the election to Donald Trump," Podesta wrote. "Don't have time to
   figure out which docs are real and which are faked."
   
   Podesta's comments came just hours after U.S. officials publicly
   accused the Russian government of directing cyberattacks on political
   organizations and American citizens in an attempt to interfere with
   U.S. elections.
   
   The joint statement from the office of the Director of National
   Intelligence and the Homeland Security Department cited disclosures of
   "alleged hacked emails" on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks as
   being "consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed
   efforts."
   
   The statement didn't refer by name to the affected political
   institutions, but federal authorities are investigating cyberattacks on
   the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and the
   Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
   
   Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus said in a
   statement, "It's not hard to see why she fought so hard to keep her
   transcripts of speeches to Wall Street banks paying her millions of
   dollars secret."
   
   The emails released Friday included exchanges between Podesta and other
   Clinton insiders, including campaign manager Robby Mook. Most were
   routine, including drafts of Clinton speeches, suggested talking points
   for campaign surrogates and suggested tweets to be sent out from
   Clinton's account.
   
   The excerpts include quotes from an October 2013 speech at an event
   sponsored by Goldman Sachs, in which Clinton conceded that presidential
   candidates need the financial backing of Wall Street to mount a
   competitive national campaign.
   
   "Running for office in our country takes a lot of money, and candidates
   have to go out and raise it," Clinton said. "New York is probably the
   leading site for contributions for fundraising for candidates on both
   sides of the aisle, and it's also our economic center. And there are a
   lot of people here who should ask some tough questions before handing
   over campaign contributions to people who were really playing chicken
   with our whole economy."
   
   In the same speech, Clinton was also deferential to the New York
   finance industry, exhorting wealthy donors to use their political clout
   for patriotic rather than personal benefit. She also spoke of the need
   to include Wall Street perspectives in financial reform.
   
   "The people that know the industry better than anybody are the people
   who work in the industry," Clinton said.
   
   In an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council,
   Clinton said politicians must balance "both a public and a private
   position" while making deals. Clinton gave an example from the movie
   "Lincoln," and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th
   Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making.
   
   "It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up
   where we need to be," Clinton said. "But if everybody's watching, you
   know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then
   people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a
   public and a private position."
   
   Clinton's speeches often touched on technology and privacy. In an April
   2014 speech to JPMorgan, she denounced National Security Agency leaker
   Edward Snowden for going abroad, saying, "if he really cared about
   raising some of these issues and stayed right here in the United
   States, there's a lot of whistleblower protections."
   
   But she told her audience that her time in the public eye left her
   sympathetic to privacy concerns.
   
   "As somebody who has had my privacy scrutinized and violated for
   decades, I'm all for privacy, believe me," she said.
   
   Speaking on international affairs, Clinton's comments were largely in
   line with her positions as secretary of state, if sometimes more blunt.
   
   "The Saudis have exported more extreme ideology than any other place on
   Earth over the course of the last 30 years," she told the Jewish United
   Fund at a 2013 dinner.
   
   The speech transcripts were produced under an agreement Clinton
   routinely imposed on any organization that hired her to speak. The
   contracts, such as ones crafted by the Harry Walker Agency, required
   the organizations to hire, at their own expense, a stenographer who
   would provide the transcripts to Clinton and not keep copies for
   themselves.
   
   In some cases, the contracts themselves were obtained by news
   organizations under public records laws because Clinton was being paid
   to speak by public universities or colleges."