Thursday, October 26, 2017

The Clintons and Uranium One -- The Real Russian Collusion?

The life story for the Clintons, who I have followed since 1992, includes a long series of illegal, unethical and questionable acts that often lead to them making a lot of money, and sometimes a slap on the wrist too!

The first unethical act I know of was the Arkansas Attorney General's wife, Hillary Clinton, "investing" $1,000 in commodities for the first time in the 1970's ... and walking away with $100,000 a little over a year later!

Hillary first claimed she read the Wall Street Journal and made the trades herself. 

Then she changed her story and claimed a businessman friend gave her advice. 

And finally we found out the truth: 
Her broker made discretionary trades and gave her most of the winners! 

We found that out only after other commodities brokerage customers sued, claiming their accounts were allocated too many losing trades. 

Hillary's broker was suspended for three years, and the firm received the then largest fine ever levied for commodity trading violations -- allocating too many winning discretionary trades to a favorite customer (who was expected to become, and did become, the First Lady of Arkansas). 

The commodity trading "profits" appeared to be a $100,000 bribe -- about four times Bill Clinton's annual salary at the time -- but nothing could be done to punish the clever Clintons.

The Clintons are shady characters who have ventured near the edge of prosecution for decades. 

I think they have done it again ... although Republicans control the Justice Department now, and they should investigate further!




The following case is being covered mainly by Sean Hannity on Fox News, but he makes repeated errors in his reports, all of which tend to make the Clintons look worse, revealing his bias! 

My goal is to report the facts -- I'll let others decide if the Clintons broke any laws, or were just their usual unethical selves.

As of today, I don't know.



Newly released FBI documents reveal the Obama administration was aware of illegal bribery, extortion and money laundering schemes by Russians trying to get a foothold in the US atomic energy business.

This was discovered at least 18 months before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had no objections to a deal approved by Obama, allowing a Russian company to control about 20% of America's uranium reserves.

In October 2010, the State Department and eight other government agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States made no objections to the the partial (51%) sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russian nuclear giant Rosatom.

Uranium One has no export license for their US uranium, so the uranium here supposedly can't leave the country ... unless an export license is granted. 

But, it has been reported that Uranium One has exported uranium to its home country of Canada without an export license, which would be illegal, if true.




Peter Schweizer's 2015 book Clinton Cash described the Uranium One deal, approved by the Obama Administration in 2010.

Nine shareholders of the Canadian company Uranium One just happened to make a total of $145 million in contributions to the Clinton Foundation, mainly in the two years before the deal.

Bill and Hillary Clinton appear to have assisted Canadian financier Frank Giustra, and his company Uranium One, in the acquisition of uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan and the United States.  



  

The State Department was one of nine US government entities, on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, charged with recommended for, or against, the deal.

It has been reported that there were no objections forwarded to President Obama from any Committee members. 

Hillary Clinton claimed she did not attend Committee meetings, but sent a subordinate.

That subordinate did not object to the deal, nor did he recuse himself because the Clinton Foundation had received so much money from Uranium One officers and investors in past years.

One member of the committee, Eric Holder (or his subordinate), apparently never informed other members about Russian nuclear industry officials committing crimes in this country, known by his FBI ... crimes that suspiciously did not lead to any arrest until 2014 !

The New Yorker magazine reported that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, with ties to the Kremlin, around the same time as the Uranium One deal ... while his wife was Secretary of State, and had the power to object to the 2010 Uranium One deal.  

However, even if Hillary's Sate Department did object, it is not likely that one objection out of nine Committee members would have caused Obama to reject the deal.



In 2009 the FBI had substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business in the US.

Federal agents used a confidential US witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings, and intercept emails.

A civil attorney working with that former undercover witness described great pressure the Justice Department used to keep the witness from disclosing what he knew to a federal court (he had signed a non-disclosure agreement).

As early as 2009, Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.

The FBI was aware of Russian wrongdoing going back to at least April 2009, well before the Uranium One deal was approved in October 2010.




Vadim Mikerin — the Russian man overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.

In 2011, the Obama administration also gave approval for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell commercial uranium to US nuclear power plants in a partnership with the United States Enrichment Corp. 

Before then, Tenex had been limited to selling US nuclear power plants reprocessed uranium recovered from dismantled Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1990s Megatons to Megawatts peace program.

The Mikerin probe began in 2009, under Robert Mueller, now special counsel in charge of the Trump-Russia collusion charges.

The Mikerin probe ended in late 2015, under former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by President Trump in 2017.




The Department of Justice (DOJ) finally arrested Mikerin in 2014, following at least five years investigating a massive international bribery and money-laundering scheme, and then seemed to sweep it under the rug for a year.  

The only public statement about Mikerin came a year later -- the DOJ put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, saying the various defendants had reached plea deals.

The many charges against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering from 2004 to 2014. 

But the actual plea agreement document ignored the years 2004 through 2010, and only cited a handful of transactions in 2011 and 2012 (which were years AFTER the Uranium One deal was approved in 2010).




FBI agents had documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has finally decided they're going to look into the deal that handed Putin 20% of America's uranium reserves.

Yesterday, on October 25, the Justice Department / FBI reversed the non-disclosure agreement with the undercover witness, so now he can talk privately with Congressional committees.

Thank you Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Yesterday, on October 25, the three national TV stations ABC, CBS and NBC spent exactly zero minutes covering this story!

Typical liberal bias.

Criminal investigations should not be politicized by being ignored by the mass media simply because they could hurt the favored Democrat party.



You have read on this blog for one year that the Trump-Russia collusion story was fake news.

I first said that because there has never been any evidence presented -- some would have leaked out if there was any to leak!

I also explained that Donald Trump does not collude with anyone!


Trump barely colluded with the Republican Party / Republicans who he was supposed to collude with ... and he almost lost an election against a weak candidate with no charisma, who was being investigated by the FBI during her campaign.