Discrepancies Found In Financial Reports Of Elizabeth Dole Income

Elizabeth Hanford Dole kept more of her $875,000 in speaking fees over the past four years than her husband disclosed in his financial disclosure reports, documents suggest.

A review of the Doles’ joint tax returns and Dole’s Senate financial disclosure forms shows that she gave 46 percent of her speech earnings to charity, put $243,830 in a retirement account and kept $147,663 in cash.

But Dole’s financial disclosure reports, state that all of Elizabeth Dole’s speaking fees were contributed to a Red Cross charity account except for “taxes, a contribution to a retirement fund and speech-writing expenses.” The apparent discrepency was first reported in The Los Angeles Times.

Records show the couple contributed $405,513 of the fees to the Red Cross charity account for troubled youths during 1991 through 1994.

However, the records also show that only in 1993 did Mrs. Dole donate all of her speaking fees to the charity - minus taxes, expenses and a contribution to her private retirement fund. The Los Angeles Times first reported the apparent discrepency.

In 1994, the most recent year for which financial records are available, the Doles kept $47,421 in cash from Mrs. Dole’s $184,775 in speaking fees that year and placed $63,505 into Mrs. Dole’s retirement account.

At a campaign appearance in Iowa on Thursday, Dole campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield offered an explanation for the larger amounts of cash Mrs. Dole kept.

“It was just money she withheld to pay the taxes on the money she made on the speaking engagements,” Warfield said.

Such a move could explain the differences between the amounts on the the tax forms and Dole’s financial disclosure statements - if the taxes were paid after the disclosure statements were filed with the Senate.

Warfield referred further questions on Mrs. Dole’s fees to the campaign’s Washington office, but officials there did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Elizabeth Dole, a former Cabinet secretary, is on unpaid leave as president of the American Red Cross to help her husband’s campaign.

Many of Elizabeth Dole’s speeches were before groups that have legislative interests before Congress, but Warfield said that fact had no effect whatsoever on the Senate majority leader.

“No one gains Bob Dole’s favor by hiring his wife,” Warfield said. “In the senator’s words, he hasn’t the foggiest idea who she speaks to.”

Elizabeth Dole’s career in Washington makes her a sought-after guest speaker. Before joining the Red Cross in 1991, she was an appointee of five presidents, serving as a member of the Federal Trade Commission in the 1970s and as secretary of Labor and secretary of Transportation in the 1980s. Elizabeth Dole, a lawyer, has won praise for her leadership of the Red Cross.