As has been well documented, Hillary and Bill Clinton have become wealthy by giving speeches to deep pocket corporate interests over the years, especially to the Wall Street behemoths.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported on how Hillary’s paid speech-making has given Bernie Sanders an effective line of attack on the campaign trail, highlighting her close ties to an industry she claims she will regulate with a heavy hand. All of this in a year when voters are expressing anger at our lopsided economy:

Hillary Clinton’s Paid Speeches to Wall Street Animate Her Opponents ... For a fee of $275,000, she had agreed to appear before the clients of GoldenTree Asset Management, the capstone of a lucrative speechmaking sprint through Wall Street that earned her more than $2 million in less than seven months.

The Clintons have, indeed, made themselves very, very wealthy on the high-end rubber chicken circuit:

Together, Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have earned in excess of $125 million in speech income since leaving the White House in 2001, one-fifth of it in the last two years. … Goldman Sachs alone paid Mrs. Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in three different states, a fact Mr. Sanders has highlighted repeatedly.

How effective have Sanders observations on Clinton’s speaking fees been on the campaign trail?

In Iowa on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders went even further, seeming to mock her sizable speaking fees as borderline bribes from a powerful industry. “You got to be really, really, really good to get $250,000 for a speech,” he said. The attacks have become one of Mr. Sanders’s biggest applause lines in Iowa, where the median household earns about $52,229 a year.

Even Clinton allies admit the big numbers she has collected present a problem:

But the new attacks strike at what even some allies believe may be one of Mrs. Clinton’s biggest vulnerabilities: not her positions on financial regulation, but her personal relationships with Wall Street executives, along with the millions of dollars Mrs. Clinton, her husband, and their family foundation have accepted in speaking fees or charitable contributions from banks, hedge funds and asset managers. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama has never earned speaking fees from Wall Street. “The reason that Bernie is focusing on the speaking fees is that Hillary can’t use the Obama defense,” said Ed Rendell, a former Pennsylvania governor, who has supported Mrs. Clinton.

She “can’t use the Obama defense?” Guess again, Ed. That is exactly what she’s doing!

Clinton defends Goldman Sachs speaking fees … The former first lady also said President Obama accepted contributions from financial firms during his 2008 White House bid. “That did not stop him from doing what he was supposed to do,” she said. “He pushed through the Dodd-Frank bill. He signed it into law. He has defended it from constant Republican and special interest assault.”

Obama did not personally profit from the donations made to his campaign. Let me repeat the line from the Times story:

Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama has never earned speaking fees from Wall Street.

Clinton surrogate Senator Jeanne Shaheen also tried to brush off avoid a question about Clinton’s Goldman windfall on MSNBC today.

[Note to Hillary surrogates: When all else fails, cry “Socialism!”]

MSNBC HOST: The New York Times is reporting yesterday that Goldman Sachs has paid Hillary Clinton $675,000 for three speeches in recent years. She was paid millions more by other Wall Street firms. Along with her husband, they've been paid more than $125 million for paid speeches since 2001. That is, of course, not the kind of money that most Americans can relate to. Were the speeches a mistake, senator? SEN. JEANNE SHAHEEN, D-NH: Listen, voters are angry, and I don't blame them, because they've been watching a Washington that has been divisive, that hasn't worked together. And I believe we need a candidate who's not going to further divide this country but who's going to unite it. HOST: But that's not my question, senator. SHAHEEN: That's one of the reasons I'm supporting Hillary. Well, your first question was, are voters angry, and I would say yes. HOST: No, I never asked that question. I think that's well established. The question was, are the speeches, were the speeches a mistake? Did it make sense to accept close to -- SHAHEEN: Look, it doesn't matter whether you support that or not. The fact is, that's in the past, just as Bernie's socialism, he claims, is in the past.

Hilarious. What’s even weirder about this exchange is Shaheen’s statement that Sanders’ socialism is “in the past.”

So, to answer my diary title...

How to explain away collecting $675,000 for giving three speeches to Goldman Sachs

You can’t. You simply cannot explain it away. The candidate can’t explain it away and her surrogates certainly can’t explain it away. Clinton is caught in a huge conflict of interest of her own making.

As Ed Rendell notes in the Times piece:

In retrospect, Mr. Rendell conceded, Mrs. Clinton would have been better off giving fewer such speeches. “Although they needed money, I think that Bill was raking in enough that Hillary didn’t have to do it,” Mr. Rendell said. “To people who earn $200,000 in seven years, it looks ridiculous.”

Yes it does, Ed. It really does.

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P.S. This diary is “of a piece” with my diary from several days ago detailing Clinton’s scheduled big-ticket investment firm fundraiser in Philly just days before the Iowa caucus:

Exhibit A: Hillary's big-ticket Philly fundraiser just days before the Iowa caucus