RUSSIA SCANDAL? INSIDE THE
OBAMA-CLINTON URANIUM DEAL, Hillary OK'd sale
as cash flowed to foundation, Bill's pockets, by Art Moore, 3/28/17
Tens of millions of dollars from
uranium investors flowed into the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton received
a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian bank tied to the Kremlin before
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped decide whether to approve the
sale to the Russian government of a company that held one-fifth of
America’s uranium capacity.
That’s the “deal” that Donald Trump
referenced in a tweet Tuesday morning in which he essentially said that if
Congress really wants to find evidence of U.S. politicians colluding with the
Russians, it should investigate the $145 million in donations the Clintons’
received from uranium investors before Russia’s energy agency Rostatom
secured the purchase of Uranium One.
Trump tweeted: “Why isn’t the House
Intelligence Committee looking into the Bill & Hillary deal that allowed
big Uranium to go to Russia, Russian speech.” He followed up with: “… money to
Bill, the Hillary Russian “reset,” praise of Russia by Hillary, or Podesta
Russian Company. Trump Russia story is a hoax. #MAGA!”
Meanwhile, Congress is examining
allegations that the president and his aides colluded with Russia to defeat
Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.
The 2010 deal for a majority stake
of Canadian-based Uranium One – which required approval from Clinton’s State
Department and eight other federal agencies – and its plausible connection
to major donations to the Clinton Foundation was exposed by author Peter
Schweizer in his book “Clinton
Cash and confirmed in
a 3,000 word, front-page story by the New York Times.
Former Uranium One chairman Ian
Telfer was among several individuals connected to the deal who made donations
to the Clinton Foundation. Telfer made four foreign donations totaling $2.35
million, the Times reported.
The donations flowed as the Russians
gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009
to 2013. Snopes and other “fact checkers” who insist there was no quid pro quo
have argued that most of the donations were made in 2008, before Hillary
Clinton became secretary of state. But she was running for president at that
time.
The origin of the deal traced back
to 2005, when mining financier Frank Giustra traveled with Bill Clinton to work
out an agreement with the government of Kazakhstan for mining rights.
Giustra has donated $31.3 million to
the Clinton Foundation.
In June 2010, shortly after the
Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One,
Bill Clinton personally received a speaking fee of $500,000 from a Kremlin-tied
Russian investment bank connected to the uranium deal.
The Times pointed out that the Canadian
tax records show the contributions to the Clinton Foundation were not publicly
disclosed, which violated an agreement Clinton signed with the Obama
administration when she became secretary of state to disclose all foreign
donations.
Meanwhile, the
Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group reported last week Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman, John
Podesta, may have opened himself up to a Russian “influence campaign” designed
to temper his views of the Kremlin. Podesta possibly violated federal law when
he failed to fully disclose his membership on the executive board of an energy
company that accepted millions from a Vladimir Putin-connected Russian
government fund.
Russia ‘conquers the world’
After Rostatom finally secured 100
percent of Uranium One in 2013, the Russian-government news website Pravda
declared: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”
The acquisition of uranium-mining
stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West made Rosatom one of
the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Putin closer to his goal of
controlling much of the global uranium supply chain, the New York Times said.
In an interview after the U.S.
government approved the deal, Putin sat down for a staged interview with
Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko.
“Few could have imagined in the past
that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves,” Kiriyenko told Putin. The
agreement came as the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clinton’s State
Department, famously was seeking to “reset” strained relations with Russia.
Because uranium is considered a
strategic asset that has implications for national security, the agreement had
to be approved by a panel of representatives from a number of United States
government agencies, including the State Department.
The Times noted that both Rosatom
and the U.S. government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding
control of the company’s assets to the Russians, but the promises were
repeatedly broken.
The Times commented that while it
can’t be proved that the donations had a direct impact on the approval of the
uranium deal, “the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented
by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on
foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer
American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with
the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.”
When the Times prepared its story
during the 2016 election campaign, it obtained a statement from Clinton
spokesman Brian Fallon, who insisted no one “has ever produced a shred of
evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as
secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton
Foundation.”
Fallon argued that the Canadian
government and other U.S. agencies also had to sign off on the deal. “To suggest
the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in
the U.S. government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless,”
he said.
The appearance of undue influence,
however, prompted the Clinton Foundation to announce changes, including
limiting donations from foreign governments and barring Russia from giving to
all but its health care initiatives.
But the Times noted the foundation
continued to “accept contributions from foreign sources whose interests, like
Uranium One’s, may overlap with those of foreign governments, some of which may
be at odds with the United States.”
The Times got insight into the
significance of the deal from Michael McFaul, who served under Clinton as
the U.S. ambassador to Russia. “Should we be concerned? Absolutely,” he said. “Do
we want Putin to have a monopoly on this? Of course we don’t. We don’t want to
be dependent on Putin for anything in this climate.”
Bill Clinton at his side
Russia’s acquisition of American
uranium deposits began in 2005 in Kazakhstan, where Canadian mining financier
Giustra orchestrated his first big uranium deal. Bill Clinton, strategically,
was at his side, the Times noted. “Clinton Cash” author Schweitzer explained
the importance of Clinton’s role, in an interview with Breitbart News Daily in
March 2016.
Giustra had wanted a large uranium
concession in Kazakhstan but had never been able to get it from the country’s
repressive dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev.
“Bill Clinton shows up, declares at
a press conference that Nazarbayev is a wonderful leader, should actually lead
an international human rights organization,” Schweizer said. “And lo and
behold, a couple of days later, Nazarbayev gives Frank Giustra this uranium
concession.
“A few weeks after that, Bill
Clinton’s Clinton Foundation gets more than $30 million from Frank Giustra.”
The Times noted Bill Clinton
undercut “American foreign policy and criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human
rights record by, among others, his wife, then a senator.”
Giustra’s fledgling company, UrAsia
Energy Ltd., signed a preliminary deal with Kazakhstan giving the
company stakes in three uranium mines controlled by the state-run uranium
agency Kazatomprom.
UrAsia merged in 2007 with Uranium
One, a South African company with assets in Africa and Australia,
which soon began purchasing companies with assets in the United States.
By June 2009, Uranium One’s stock
had dropped 40 percent, but Russia, lacking domestic uranium reserves, was
eyeing a stake in the company.
That’s when Uranium One pressed the
U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan, which was under Hillary Clinton’s authority, to
talk with Kazakh officials about clearing the way for a deal.
American cables show the U.S.
Embassy energy officer met with Kazakh officials, and three days later, a
wholly owned subsidiary of Rosatom completed a deal for 17 percent of Uranium
One.
Within a year, Russia sought a 51
percent controlling stake.
The only obstacle to the deal was
that the U.S. government, namely the Committee on Foreign Investment in the
United States, had to sign off on it.
The Times pointed out that when a
company controlled by the Chinese government sought a 51 percent stake in a
tiny Nevada gold mining operation in 2009, it set off a secretive review
process in Washington. Officials were worried about the mine’s proximity
to a military installation and the possibility that minerals at the
site, including uranium, to come under Chinese control.
The U.S. officials killed the deal. Schweizer
pointed out that when the Uranium One deal was under way, “a spontaneous
outbreak of philanthropy among eight shareholders in Uranium One” took place. “These
Canadian mining magnates decide now would be a great time to donate tens of
millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation,” he said.
The national security issue at stake
in the Uranium One deal was not primarily about nuclear weapons proliferation
but about American dependence on foreign uranium sources.
While the U.S. gets one-fifth of its
electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only about 20 percent of
the uranium it needs, according to Marin Katusa, author of “The Colder War: How
the Global Energy Trade Slipped From America’s Grasp.”
“The Russians are easily winning the
uranium war, and nobody’s talking about it,” Katusa told the Times. “It’s not
just a domestic issue but a foreign policy issue, too.”
Giving the Russians control
Four members of the House of
Representatives signed a letter expressing concern about the Uranium One
deal. Two more began pushing legislation to kill it, including Sen. John
Barrasso, R-Wy., who wrote to President Obama, saying it “would give the Russian
government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production
capacity.”
The Times observed: “Still, the
ultimate authority to approve or reject the Russian acquisition rested with the
cabinet officials on the foreign investment committee, including Mrs. Clinton —
whose husband was collecting millions in donations from people associated with
Uranium One.”
A person with knowledge of the
Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising operation, who requested anonymity to speak
candidly about it, told the Times that for many people, the hope is that
money will in fact buy influence: “Why do you think they are doing it — because
they love them?”
Two months later, the Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United States began its review. Did the committee
weigh the U.S. desire to improve bilateral relations with Russia against the
potential risks of allowing the Russian government control over the biggest
uranium producer in the United States?
That information has never been
disclosed, but the deal was approved in October after, the Times said, citing
two people involved, “a relatively smooth process.”
http://www.wnd.com/2017/03/russia-scandal-inside-the-obama-clinton-uranium-deal/
