Jeb Bush already has plenty of problems with the GOP base, but this latest revelation, dug out of Hillary Clinton’s financial disclosure form, will up the poison dosage pretty close to the fatal level.  Lee Fang of The Intercept, the website headed by Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras (of Edward Snowden leak fame) and funded by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar, discovered:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton received nearly a quarter of a million dollars last year for a speaking engagement on behalf of Academic Partnerships, a for-profit education company in which Jeb Bush held an ownership stake and on whose board he served.

Clinton’s newly filed personal financial disclosure shows that she was paid $225,500 on March 24, 2014 by Academic Partnerships. At the invitation-only event in Dallas, Texas, Clinton reportedly said, “today a student doesn’t need to travel to Cambridge, Mass., or Cambridge, England, to get a world-class education.”

According to Fang, Jeb Bush’s involvement in the company predates Hillary’s cashing in by three years:

In 2011, Bush joined Academic Partnerships as an investor and as a paid advisor. He helped the company host multiple conferences and has appeared in online videos encouraging others to consider the Academic Partnership business model. Though he did not share the stage with Clinton, Bush spoke at the same conference.

Bush resigned from the board in preparation for his presidential run.

The company assists higher education institutions in placing their coursework online, a worthy goal that has the potential to cut the exorbitant costs of higher education.

But any association of Jeb Bush with Hillary Clinton is going to further alienate him from the base of GOP voters and activists, especially an association that involves funneling a large sum of money to her for a short speech.  It smells of influence-peddling, or maybe covering bases.  If Jeb Bush was on the board when Hillary was hired, he likely participated in approving this expenditure.

Hat tip: Clarice Feldman