A blue-ribbon commission had just excoriated Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks for fueling the financial crisis. Prosecutors were investigating whether Goldman had misled investors.

But in spring 2011, Lloyd Blankfein, leading one of the nation's most reviled companies, found himself onstage with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And Clinton had come to praise Goldman Sachs.

The State Department, Clinton announced that day in an auditorium in its Foggy Bottom headquarters, would throw its weight behind a Goldman philanthropic initiative aimed at encouraging female entrepreneurs around the world - a program Goldman viewed as central to rehabilitating its reputation.

Clinton's blessing underscored a long-running relationship between one of the country's most powerful financial firms and one of its most famous political families.

Lingering doubts

Over 20-plus years, Goldman provided the Clintons with some of their most influential advisers, millions of dollars in campaign contributions and speaking fees, and financial support for the family foundation's charitable programs.

And in the wake of the worst crash since the Great Depression, as the firm fended off investigations and criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, the Clintons drew Goldman only closer. Bill Clinton publicly defended the company and leased office space from Goldman for his foundation. Hillary Clinton, after leaving the State Department, earned $675,000 to deliver three speeches at Goldman events, where she reassured executives that they had an important role to play in the nation's recovery.

The four years between the end of the financial crisis and the start of Hillary Clinton's second White House bid revealed a family that viewed Wall Street's elite as friends and collaborators even as the public viewed them with suspicion and scorn.

Those relationships would become a focal point for attacks on Clinton's integrity and independence by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, nearly derailing her path to the nomination.

And even now, under a barrage of populist taunts from Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, Clinton faces lingering doubts about the sincerity of her proposals to rein in Wall Street behavior.

In June, 60 percent of registered voters expressed concern that her links to Wall Street could prevent her from holding the financial industry accountable, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found.

'Tough new rules'

Clinton rejects the idea that her loyalties are in doubt. Josh Schwerin, a spokesman, said in a statement Saturday that Clinton was "fighting for tough new rules and more accountability on Wall Street" and to build a more equitable economic system.

Goldman's links to the Clintons date to the 1990s, when Robert Rubin, the company's co-senior partner, left to join President Bill Clinton's economic policy team.

The Clintons' relationships with Wall Street deepened in the 2000s, when Bill Clinton set up his foundation in Harlem and Hillary Clinton was elected to the Senate from New York. That brought her in close touch with the big Wall Street firms, a source of jobs and tax revenue for New York - and a leading source of campaign funds for Clinton. During her years in Congress, employees of Goldman donated in excess of $234,000 to Clinton, more than those of any other company except Citigroup, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

When Clinton left the State Department in 2013, she followed her husband into paid speechmaking. If Hillary Clinton was concerned about the appearance of taking hefty fees from Wall Street while considering a second presidential bid, she did not show it: In her first year on the circuit, more than a third of her paid speeches were for financial companies.

Each of her three Goldman speeches were private, and Clinton has rebuffed requests to release transcripts of them. And at the time, she still embraced Goldman as a partner. In 2014, she appeared at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, an offshoot of the Clinton Foundation known as CGI, to highlight the 10,000 Women program.