Former President Bill Clinton has a company with "no apparent employees or assets" that he used as "a 'pass-through' company designed to channel payments to the former president," according to the Associated Press.
The company, WJC, LLC, was first set up in Delaware in 2008 and then again in 2013 and in New York in 2009. The company has no financial assets, therefore it "did not appear among holdings in the Clintons' financial disclosure released last week or in previous Hillary Clinton disclosure reports between 2008 and 2013, when she resigned as secretary of state," the AP reported.
Because federal disclosure laws regarding spouses' earned income only required Hillary Clinton to identify the source of Bill Clinton's income and confirm that he made more than $1,000, the exact amounts of his earned consulting income are not available and the AP couldn't determine how much money was routed through WJC, LLC.
Such "shell" companies are often used to provide tax and legal protection to those involved with their own businesses.
Bill Clinton earned as much as $50 million giving speeches during his wife's four-year stint as secretary of state in the Obama administration, but he's also branched out into other business activities, such as consulting, but little is known about the nature of those ventures, according to the AP.
One such venture uncovered by the AP was a consulting gig Bill Clinton did for major Democratic Party donors while his wife was secretary of state.
In 2009, Bill Clinton's legal council sent a request to State Department ethics officials asking for permission to consult with three firms connected to big money democrats.
The AP said: "State Department officials approved Bill Clinton's consulting work for longtime friend Steve Bing's Shangri-La Industries and another with Wasserman Investments, GP, a firm run by entertainment executive and Democratic Party donor Casey Wasserman. The ethics officials turned down Bill Clinton's proposed work with a firm run by entertainment magnate and democratic donor Haim Saban because of Saban's active role in Mideast political affairs."
Since 2014, Hillary and Bill Clinton made more than $25 million by delivering over 100 speeches, The Washington Post reported last week.
Upon hearing about Bill Clinton's shell company, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus demanded that Hillary be more up-front with the voters she is trying to win.
"The revelation that the Clintons had a secret shell company that went unreported on Hillary Clinton's financial disclosures further demonstrates they are not giving voters the full picture of their wealth," said Priebus, according to Business Insider. "Clearly, there's a lot that they don't want voters to see. Hillary Clinton needs to come forward immediately and explain what this company did, and what her knowledge of it was prior to it being exposed by the media."
As The Washington Post noted, the Clintons' vast wealth along with revelations about complicated shell companies only make it more difficult for Hillary Clinton to sell herself as the voice of everyday Americans as she makes her bid for the presidency in 2016.
"No family with a former president and a future presidential nominee in it are 'regular'—in their life experiences, résumés or personal finances. No family with an income in the tens of millions of dollars and a setup like the one Bill Clinton has at WJC, LLC, are just like the rest of us. They just aren't," said the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza.
