The New York Times last month posted this article, describing how a Russian corporation, Roscom, acquired a dominant position in the world's uranium market when it received special approval from the US Government, including the State Department, to acquired a Canadian company with "uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West." Although it didn't get much attention in the media at the time (other than denunciation by other media outlets favorable to Clinton's candidacy), it exposes the web of corruption between Bill Clinton, The Clinton Foundation and then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who was uniquely situated to help or hinder Russia's ability to obtain control over a strategically important resource vital to our national security.

The headline on the website Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when its precursor served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.” [...] But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one. At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One. [T]he sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton. As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013 ... a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. [emphasis added] Other people with ties to the company made donations as well. And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

It gets worse. The Russians made several promises to the US Government to address our government's reasonable security concerns over allowing our former Cold War enemy to obtain these rights. However, since the deal was approved, those agreements have been "repeatedly broken" in the words of the NYT authors. It also should be noted that within a year after the deal was approved, an emboldened Putin invaded Crimea and contributed Russian forces and arms to rebels in Eastern Ukraine in what has become a civil war to break away from the rest of Ukraine and form an independent nation aligned with Russia.

While the Times' report will not go so far as to say that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State intentionally greased the skids for this massive transaction that gave Russia control over much of the world's uranium, the evidence certainly suggests that such an implication is warranted. Millions of donations to the Clinton Foundation during the nearly four year period that Roscom gradually obtained these rights in three separate transactions, donations that, in violation of Secretary Clinton's agreement with President Obama, were never disclosed to the Obama administration. A separate $500,000 payment to Bill Clinton for a speech in Moscow (what else?) "shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One" paid to him by a Russian investment bank with "links to the Kremlin."

To assume that these transactions that benefited the Clinton Foundation and the Clintons personally occurred in a vacuum insults our intelligence. And this is just one of a number of "special ethical challenges" (the Time's euphemism for the millions of dollars of foreign cash that flowed into the coffers of the Clinton Foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State) that resulted in donors to the Clinton Foundation, or to Bill Clinton, who received approval of various business deals from the State Department while Hillary was in charge.

The increases in approvals of arms deals by Clinton foundation donors to sell advanced weaponry to despotic countries such as Saudi Arabia, the leading sponsor of extremist Islamic terrorist organizations in the world.

In 2009 email, she personally told her aide, Cheryl Mills to expedite a visa for an executive for the Blackstone Group, a large multinational hedge fund, investment banking, private equity investor and provider of financial services. In that same email, she also told Mills to help Honeywell Corporation cut through regulations that were delaying exports of a "dual use" engine (i.e., one that could be used for peaceful and military purposes). Honeywell is "an American multinational conglomerate company that produces a variety of commercial and consumer products, engineering services and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments". It goes without saying that both the Blackstone Group and Honeywell were major contributors to the Clinton Foundation.

In 2012, Clinton, who ran against large pharmaceutical companies during her 2008 campaign, met with the CEO of Merck, a major pharmaceutical company, who contributed to the Clinton Foundation. within four months of that meeting, the State Department announced a multi-million dollar public private global health partnership with Merck.

From promoting fracking in foreign countries on behalf of Clinton Foundation donors such as Chevron, to promoting the business of an online, for a for profit higher education company, Laureate Universities International, overseas, a deal which resulted in $16 million paid to Bill Clinton as the company's Honarary Chairman, Hillary used her position as Secretary of State to help companies that donated to the Clinton Foundation or directly put money into her husband's bank account.

But of all the deals that the State Department approved for Clinton donors, this one involving Russia (perhaps matched only by the arms sales to the terrorist sponsoring Saudis), shows a an astounding indifference and disregard for the best interests of our country and its national security. Yes, other agencies also needed to sign off on the deal, not just the State Department. However, Clinton, was one of the most powerful members of Obama's cabinet was a well known hawk on defense. She has received the endorsements of several prominent neoconservatives.

One would have expected her to take a tough line on this prorposed transaction, and also to have a large degree of influence over the heads of the other agencies whose approval was required, especially those that did not have cabinet level status. One would have expected that, all other things being equal, she would have been extremely cautious in granting a Russian company rights to one-fifth of America's uranium production. Yet, there is no indication she used her influence to stop this nuclear train from leaving the station. What is clear is that her family, through Bill's $500,000 speech, benefited personally. Was there any stated or unstated quid pro quo whereby she signed off on the deal in exchange for these monetary benefits. We can't know for certain, but it fits a pattern of her time in office, whereby those who gave money to the Clintons or their foundation, received favorable outcomes in their dealings with the State Department.

And again, we see evidence of duplicity by Hillary, in the breach of her agreement with the White House to disclose of such potential conflicts of interest. Again, it makes many people, myself among them highly suspicious of the separate server through which all of Secretary Clinton's email was run, a server outside the control of the Stare Department. We know she violated the requirement to tuirn over her emails to State upon leaving office until late 2014, and then only after Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit demanding they be produced as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. And of course, not all emails were turned over, since Clinton admitted she deleted over 30,000 emails she deemed private and personal, including emails such as the ones in which she communicated with Sidney Blumenthal, a paid Clinton Foundation staffer, and long time Clinton associate, regarding the crisis in Libya.

How many other emails were withheld or destroyed that may have related to official State department business? How many were related to discussions regarding the Clinton Foundation and its Donors? Unless the FBI has recovered all those lost emails we may never know. But one thing is clear. The Obama legacy of having a mostly scandal free administration, after 8 years of immense corruption and graft under George W. Bush, has been forever tarnished by the actions of the person he made his Secretary of State, and upon whom he relied to live up to her agreement to prevent even the appearance ethical conflicts resulting from donations to the Clinton Foundation while she acted as our Nation's highest Diplomat.