Clinton defends speaking fees, says she can't be bought

Hillary Clinton insisted on Wednesday that she hasn't been influenced by the hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees she received from major financial institutions, her latest effort to blunt attacks from Sen. Bernie Sanders that she can't be a progressive given the way she raises money from Wall Street. In a town hall hosted by CNN, Clinton said she collected money for years in part because she wasn't thinking about running for president, and that it's normal for high-level cabinet officials to give speeches and accept fees. When asked why she accepted $675,000 in fees from a Wall Street bank, she explained, "that's what they offered me," and said that money won't affect policy.

"Anybody who knows me who thinks they can influence me – name one thing they've influenced me on. Just name one thing," she said. "I mean, they're not giving me very much money now, I can tell you that much."

Clinton remains under attack from Sanders, who has spent the last several days questioning how she can call herself a progressive at all. Sanders used the town hall to argue that Clinton was out of step with progressive values, and Clinton seemed to help him prove his point by noting her close connections to Wall Street and her relatively more militaristic foreign policy views.

"I do not know any progressive who has a super PAC and takes $15 million from Wall Street," Sanders, who was the first candidate to speak, told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "That's just not progressive. As I mentioned earlier, the key foreign policy vote of modern American history was the war in Iraq. The progressive community was pretty united in saying, 'Don't listen to Bush. Don't go to war.' Secretary Clinton voted to go to war."