HILLARY CALLS URANIUM SCANDAL ‘BALONEY’ AS HOUSE PROBES

‘It’s been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked’

Art Moore

WND.com

Hillary Clinton insists the Uranium One “pay-for-play” scandal amounts to stale “baloney,” but two House committees have opened an inquiry into the deal that gave a Kremlin-backed company control of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves under the then-secretary of state’s watch.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, announced Tuesday he is working with the House Oversight Committee to learn whether an FBI investigation was under way when the Obama administration signed off on the 2010 deal, the Washington Times reported.

“One of the things we are concerned about is whether or not there was an FBI investigation, was there a DOJ investigation and if so, why was Congress not informed of this matter,” Nunes said.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton told C-SPAN in an interview Monday that the Uranium One story is “the same baloney they’ve been peddling for years, and there’s been no credible evidence by anyone.”

​

“In fact, it’s been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked,” she said without addressing the specific allegations.

Like the reporting you see here? Sign up for free news alerts from WND.com, America’s independent news network.

“Clinton Cash” author Peter Schweizer was the first to report nine foreign investors in the Uranium One deal gave $145 million to the Clinton Foundation, and the New York Times confirmed in an April 2015 story Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. The Times found that the Clintons, however, did not publicly disclose the contributions, despite an agreement Hillary Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. In addition, Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee from a Russian bank tied to the Kremlin in 2010, when Hillary Clinton opposed sanctions on Moscow. She reversed her position the following year.

Last Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee acknowledged it was investigating new claims reported by The Hill regarding the 2010 deal, including Clinton “conflicts of interest.” The panel has demanded that several federal agencies disclose whether they knew the FBI had uncovered the corruption before the deal was completed.

The Hill found that before a government panel in which Hillary Clinton was a member approved the Uranium One sale, the FBI was sitting on evidence Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to expand Moscow’s nuclear business in the U.S.

FBI informant eager to talk

Rep. Ronald DeSantis, R-Fla., a member of the House Oversight Committee, said Tuesday that the FBI informant who was reported last week to have been blocked from testifying of Russian efforts to influence the Clintons and the Obama administration is trying to speak with his committee about the matter.

DeSantis said the panel is working with the Justice Department to try to release him from a nondisclosure agreement he said the FBI forced him to sign.

WND reported Monday the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller of allegations of Trump administration collusion with Russia in the 2016 election has expanded to the Democratic lobbying firm run by the brother of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign manager, according to sources who spoke to NBC News.

The Podesta Group, run by Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton campaign manager John Podesta, has a tie to Uranium One, having received $180,000 from the company to lobby Hillary Clinton’s State Department, according to Open Secrets. Meanwhile, the Daily Caller News Foundation reported Monday the secretive, Kremlin-linked, green-energy company for which John Podesta served as a board member, Joule Unlimited, apparently met its demise because of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election loss.

WND reported last year that Joule received $35 million from a Putin-connected Russian government fund at the same time Hillary Clinton spearheaded the transfer of U.S. advanced technology, some with military uses, as part of her “reset” strategy with Russia.

‘An Obama scandal’

Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew McCarthy wrote Tuesday for National Review that the Uranium One sale is an Obama-administration scandal as well as a Clinton scandal.

“The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their ‘public service,’” he writes. “The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests.”

The administration, he says, “green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom.”

“Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.”

McCarthy points out that the $500,000 “the Putin regime funneled to Bill Clinton” was five times the amount the Russians spent on Facebook ads “the media-Democrat complex ludicrously suggests swung the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.”

The Facebook-ad buy, which began in June 2015, before Donald Trump entered the race, was “more left-wing agitprop (ads pushing hysteria on racism, immigration, guns, etc.) than electioneering.”

The Clintons’ own long-time political strategist Mark Penn estimates that just $6,500 went to actual electioneering, McCarthy notes.

“By contrast, the staggering $500,000 payday from a Kremlin-tied Russian bank for a single speech was part of a multi-million-dollar influence-peddling scheme to enrich the former president and his wife, then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton.”

___

http://www.wnd.com/2017/10/hillary-calls-uranium-scandal-baloney-as-house-probes/