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Cory Booker Made $1.7 Million in Five Years Off Speaking Gigs

Cory Booker
Cory Booker / Getty Images
April 24, 2019

Newly released tax returns for Sen. Cory Booker (D., N.J.) show he earned over $1.7 million through public speaking in just five years.

Booker's 2020 presidential campaign released ten years of his tax returns on Wednesday afternoon. Among the numbers that jump off the page are the large profits he made off public speaking.

In 2009, the first year Booker made his returns available for, the senator reported $341,380 in profit off public speaking. He went on to report $195,510 in 2010, $406,304 in 2011, $347,594 in 2012, and $411,345 in 2013, which was both his first year filing as a member of the U.S. Senate and his most profitable.

There are no reported profits of public speaking in Booker's five most recent returns. In total his available tax returns show $1,702,133 in income off public speaking.

Booker served as mayor of Newark, New Jersey from 2006 until his election, during which he was earning a six-figure salary from the city.

The now-available tax returns did not show where his lucrative speaking engagements were held, but some information on that can be gathered through his required Senate financial disclosures.

His earliest annual report, covering 2012, show a wide array of paid speeches universities such as New York University's Stern School of Business, which paid him $24,500, and financial companies such as Jane Street Capital, which paid him $17,500. He also delivered a speech to Equality Virginia, a political group, for $27,500.

Booker is languishing in early polling of the crowded 2020 Democratic field, placing seventh in the latest RealClearPolitics average at 3.5 percent average support.

Published under: Cory Booker