In four years while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Bill Clinton made $65.4 million. It was a team effort because he could not have done it without her.

Laureate International Universities paid Ol’ Bill $17.6 million over five years, starting in 2009 and ending when Hillary started her run for the White House. Laureate is the creation of Doug Becker, a college dropout who morphed the tutoring company Sylvan Learning Systems into a worldwide for-profit university.

There is no evidence that Laureate received special favors from the State Department in direct exchange for hiring Bill Clinton, but the Baltimore-based company had much to gain from an association with a globally connected ex-president and, indirectly, the United States’ chief diplomat.

Pardon me while I stifle a laugh. “There is no evidence” in Clinton parlance means “there’s only enough smoking guns to satisfy every field artillery puke at Fort Sill.”

I’m no prosecutor or investigator, but I can kill the Clintons’ alibi and motive with one simple question: Why do the Clintons need any more influence? There are two cocktail party lines that nobody in the world can top: “I walked on the moon” is one of them. The other is “I was President of the United States.” Bill Clinton needs another honorarium like J.J. Abrams needs another sci fi reboot.

[Laureate] has been intertwined over the years with the global financial elite. Once publicly traded, it was bought out for $3.8 billion in 2007 with investments from, among others, a private-equity firm founded by liberal philanthropist George Soros, as well as the investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

What’s a few billion between globalist, liberal friends?

Based on appearances on Laureate’s behalf by Clinton and public statements by the company, it seems that part of the strategy in hiring the former president was to bolster Laureate’s image by aligning it with the former president’s famous charitable efforts — thereby portraying the company as a force for good in the world.

Except Laureate is not charitable, it’s for-profit. The company buys struggling colleges and turns them into enrollment machines to boost revenues. Clinton is fronting for a cash machine, like Trump did with Trump University.

Karen Longo, a graduate of [Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona] who was on the board of directors at the time, recalled that Becker specifically referenced the Clinton tie when he pitched the board on the deal. She provided The Washington Post with brochures Laureate gave out at the time, featuring a letter from Clinton praising Laureate students for working to improve the world and declaring himself “proud to be a part of their efforts.” Clinton’s picture was included on multiple pages. “His face, his name was in all their brochures,” Longo recalled. “It was a very big sell for them.” She and other alumni were concerned that Laureate would lower the school’s admissions standards to expand its enrollment in an effort to make more money from the campus. “The more students they got, the more money they got from student-loan funds,” she said. “It would have been a dilution of the Thunderbird brand.”

Like all the Clintons’ business-government-influence-peddling deals since Whitewater, there’s “no direct evidence” of anything wrong. But the whole thing stinks like yesterday’s gunpowder.