Bill Clinton Tried To Give Paid Speeches To North Korea & Congo While Hillary Was Secretary Of State

ABC News has obtained State Department e-mails that shed light on Bill Clinton’s lucrative speaking engagements and show he and the Clinton Foundation tried to get approval for invitations related to two of the most repressive countries in the world — North Korea and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

While Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, Bill Clinton earned speaking fees around the globe totaling more than $48 million — speeches that had to be vetted by the State Department to ensure there were no conflicts of interest with his wife’s work as America’s top diplomat. These newly revealed emails show speech requests that the State Department refused to approve.

One email sent in June 2012 to Clinton State Department chief of staff Cheryl Mills from Amitabh Desai, a foreign policy director at the Clinton Foundation, passed on an invitation for a speaking engagement in Brazzaville, Congo.

The catch? The dictators of Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo would both be attending — and required photos with Bill Clinton. The speaking fee? A whopping $650,000. 

A second email thread in May 2012 shows another potentially thorny event — subject line: “North Korea invitation.”

“Is it safe to assume [the U.S. Government] would have concerns about WJC accepting the attached invitation related to North Korea?” Desai wrote in an e-mail to Mills and two other State Department officials –Jake Sullivan, then-director of Policy Planning Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff, and Michael Fuchs, then a special assistant to the Secretary of State who now serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Strategy and Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Mills two-word response? “Decline it.”

But the Clinton Foundation followed up three weeks later, saying the invite came via Hillary Clinton’s brother Tony Rodham.

“We would be grateful for any specific concerns that we could share,” Desai wrote. “Tony is seeing WJC in a couple hours.”

The Office of President Clinton confirmed to ABC News that the former president did not deliver either of the speeches.

“As a matter of course, all requests were run by the State Department. Ultimately, the President did not give these speeches,” Angel Urena, press secretary in the Office of President Clinton, told ABC News.

Bill Clinton delivered 215 speeches totaling over $48 million in the four years Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.