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Late last week, the buzz out of the Clinton camp was about an apparent conflict of interest on the part of her now-former chief strategist Mark Penn (though it appears that he is still working for her campaign), who was trying to help the Columbian government push through a trade agreement that Hillary Clinton has publicly opposed.

However, it appears that conflicts of interest might hit a little closer to home for the Clinton campaign, this time in the person of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

You see, in the past, Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees on behalf of groups now attempting to get this trade agreement pushed through the U.S. Congress.

Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia’s business opportunities.

The group’s chief operating officer, Andres Franco, said in an interview that the group supports the congressional ratification of the free trade agreement and that, when Clinton was on his speaking tour, he expressed similar opinions.

“He was supportive of the trade agreement at the time that he came, but that was several years ago. In the present context, I don’t know what his position would be. It is not only about union trade rights. It is about what benefit or damage it can do to the US economy,” said Franco. “Events with the Clinton campaign [concerning Mark Penn] are not good at all for the trade agreement… Right now it became a campaign issues and that is sad, because it needs to go through.”

Now, why didn’t the campaign disclose this fact? Granted, Bill Clinton spoke on behalf of these groups years ago but, given his prominent role in the campaign, especially after the Mark Penn fiasco, shouldn’t this have been made public by them and Bill Clinton be asked to clarify where he currently stands on this trade agreement?

Again, we are getting into the area of credibility and this seems too big a deal to chalk up to just and oversight on the part of this campaign.

UPDATE: CNN is reporting that Bill Clinton remains a supporter of the Columbian free trade agreement, which makes him the second very high-profile member of the Hillary Clinton campaign that is undermining her opposition to this agreement. This is particularly bad considering how many of the working-class people in Pennsylvania are against such agreements, as they have cost the state thousands of jobs.

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