A disclosure filed Monday shows former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions earned $108,000 for giving speeches in the months after he left the Trump administration.
The largest fee, $24,000, was paid by Skybridge Capital, an investment firm owned by former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci.
The largest single source of payments came from Young America’s Foundation (YAF), a conservative group that often books conservative media stars like Ben Shapiro and Liz Wheeler.
YAF paid Sessions $76,000 for five appearances between February and November of 2019.
The presence of Sessions’ disclosure was first disseminated to the public by POLITICO’s Playbook PM newsletter.
Paid speeches are a hallmark of many political figures who are not currently in elected office. Figures like former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and Trump campaign official Donald Trump, Jr. have collected high fees, as have former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
One of Sessions’ speeches drew liberal protesters so disruptive that the administrators of Northwestern University were forced to issue citations.
Sessions’ opponent in the 2020 Republican primary runoff, former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville, has not yet filed his disclosure for income earned in the later months of 2019.
Tuberville’s most recent available disclosure shows he directed nearly all his speaking fees to charity, while reporting income from an RSA pension plan and sports channels like ESPN and the Backroads Sports Network. Tuberville’s lifetime earnings as a college football coach totaled in the millions.
Anthony Scaramucci, whose investment firm paid Sessions $24,000 for an appearance at the company’s SALT conference, served for 10 days as White House communications director.
Though Scaramucci became a Trump critic later in the year, he was still adamant in his support of the president when Sessions took money for the appearance in May 2019.
The SALT conference was founded in 2009 and regularly books important political figures on a bipartisan basis. Past speakers have included Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson as well as former Vice President Al Gore.
A seventh speech, for which Sessions was paid $8,000, was made to a consortium of municipally owned electric utility companies.
Yellowhammer News asked the Sessions campaign for comment on the news of the financial disclosure.
A spokesman for the campaign, John Rogers, emailed this statement:
Jeff Sessions is a nationally recognized conservative leader. That’s why he has been endorsed by everyone from the National Rifle Association to the Family Research Council in the race for U.S. Senate. After an incredibly successful tenure as Attorney General, where he led the fight to protect religious liberty and crack down on illegal immigration, as a private citizen Mr. Sessions was honored in 2019 to address conservative student groups at multiple college campuses, a national business conference, and an Alabama-based municipal association. The groups Senator Sessions addressed included a business conference organized by Anthony Scaramucci, President Trump’s former communications director; the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative political youth organization; and the Electric Cities of Alabama association. Senator Sessions especially enjoyed his multiple speeches to young conservatives on college campuses like Northwestern, where radical leftists too often attempt to dictate who speaks and what they can say.
Jeff Sessions is the proven fighter that Alabama and national conservatives trust, and we need him back in the Senate fighting for Alabama.
The Republican primary runoff election is July 14.
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Henry Thornton is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can contact him by email: [email protected] or on Twitter @HenryThornton95
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