Chelsea Clinton worked at $12b hedge-fund, the type her mom rails against. How Democrats spread influence around.

Chelsea Clinton worked at $12b hedge-fund, the type her mom rails against

Chelsea Clinton once worked for the type of shadow-bank her mom, Hillary Clinton is now railing against on the presidential campaign trail.

Mrs. Clinton joined Avenue Capital Group, a $12 billion hedge fund whose founder has contributed to many Democratic Party campaigns in 2006. She has since left the firm, Erika Gudmundson, a spokesman for the Clinton’s confirmed.

The hedge fund was co-founded by Marc Lasry, who is well-known in Democratic circles, having contributed to the campaigns of Mrs. Clinton, Al Gore, Bill Bradley, John Kerry, and others. The younger Clinton is now on the campaign trail for her mother.

Mrs. Clinton has come under attack for her Wall Street ties by rival Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, by both collecting campaign contributions from the industry and its players, and by receiving $475,000 for private speeches she made to Goldman Sachs, of which she won’t disclose the transcripts.

Mrs. Clinton has made hedge-funds a target of her campaign, frequently sparing with Mr. Sanders on how they should be regulated. Mrs. Clinton’s team has been critical of Mr. Sanders’s Wall Street proposals, saying they don’t go far enough to address the world of “shadow banking,” otherwise known as hedge-funds, or any other institution which take in trillions of dollars in assets from customers and then lend much of it out.

Mrs. Clinton’s even suggested this industry could lead to the next financial crisis.

“There were a lot of bad actors” behind the 2008 financial crisis, Mrs. Clinton said at a Feb. 3 town hall meeting New Hampshire, “and if all you do is look over here, I’m telling you, they’re going to be over there in the shadow banking sector just cooking up all kinds of ways to once again put our economy at risk.”

Chelsea Clinton is no stranger to Wall Street. Her husband, Marc Mevinsky is co-founder of the hedge-fund Eaglevale Partners. In December, a conservative watchdog group called for an investigation into the former Secretary of State’s communications, claiming while Mrs. Clinton served in that position, she gave special government access to one of Mr. Mevinsky’s Wall Street friends.