http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...administration
Should be fun to see this play out. I'll tune into MSNBC to find out all the details.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...administration
Should be fun to see this play out. I'll tune into MSNBC to find out all the details.
Natural Immunity Croc
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered 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 inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
.....
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.
The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.
.....
When this sale was used by Trump on the campaign trail last year, Hillary Clinton’s spokesman said she was not involved in the committee review and noted the State Department official who handled it said she “never intervened ... on any [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States] matter.”
.....
The Obama administration’s decision to approve Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One has been a source of political controversy since 2015.
That’s when conservative author Peter Schweitzer and The New York Times documented how Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and his charitable foundation collected millions in donations from parties interested in the deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
The Obama administration and the Clintons defended their actions at the time, insisting there was no evidence that any Russians or donors engaged in wrongdoing and there was no national security reason for any member of the committee to oppose the Uranium One deal.
But FBI, Energy Department and court documents reviewed by The Hill show the FBI in fact had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.
Then-Attorney General Eric Holder was among the Obama administration officials joining Hillary Clinton on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the time the Uranium One deal was approved. Multiple current and former government officials told The Hill they did not know whether the FBI or DOJ ever alerted committee members to the criminal activity they uncovered.
The entire article is worth reading over and over. This is corruption at it's finest.
For those who don't find it interesting, close your eyes and imagine it was Halliburton.
Continuing on, the amount of swampiness is just startling:
The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe,
.....
Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI.
So one of the guys that was in charge of this investigation (that didn't see the light of day until now, years later) is also a leader of the Trump investigation, and is himself under investigation for taking bribes for the McAuliffe investigation.
Last edited by Jaw; 10-17-2017 at 08:09 AM.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal.
I'm still thinking about this and having random things occur to me.
Who was head of the FBI during this time frame that the FBI was investigating and covering up Russian collusion? Robert Mueller.
Who is head of the investigation into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign now? Robert Mueller.
The irony is glorious.
Not a peep from the resident Liberals on this board about this I'm sure.Originally Posted by Jaw
Natural Immunity Croc
So to briefly summarize this article, Comey, Rosenstein, McCabe, and Mueller (everyone involved in leading the investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia) were all knowingly part of a coverup of the Clinton Foundation receiving millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks for the sale of 20% of our uranium to Russia. The FBI was actively investigating this and had informants and evidence while it was happening, but withheld that information from the House committee in charge of approving the sale.
Considering this information it opens up the WHOLE clinton cash video allegations into a different light. How anyone can think the Clintons were anything other than a criminal enterprise is beyond me. Thankfully she is not selling the country our as President.
Natural Immunity Croc
Whoa.
Some of that, or even all of that, (or, in fact, none of it) could be true, but the article gives no representation of that. Even its implications aren't really fleshed out. There was a criminal case made and a successful prosecution, and perhaps that should have been enough of a red flag to hold up the deal, but there's no exposition of the other allegations, just a single source who says that there was more...like there were sources in the NY FBI field office who said that Hillary Clinton was going to be indicted in October 2016?
"Knowingly" is an assumption, and "coverup" is a massive assumption.
Whether information was withheld from Congress is ambiguous, based on the article. One Congressman suggests it, and it's otherwise stated that it's unknown if Congress was apprised.
As for the payments to the Clinton Foundation, we need some specificity as to what payments and when, because a lot of the allegations in the Clinton Cash book relating to the Uranium One deal were spurious. On the other hand, and the NYT covered this pretty exhaustively in 2015, there were donations to the CGF from Uranium One's chairman which were structured in a way to avoid disclosure, and that, if only for its appearance of impropriety, is definitely fishy.
But I bring these things up because this follows a familiar pattern of anti-Clinton (and, frankly, anti-Obama) stories that bubble up in the conservative media--take a straight news story and elide it into a sensationalist claim, with little or no sourcing. Launder it through a thousand media outlets until people accept it as true even though it doesn't really conform to facts. I'm a little suspicious of John Solomon's byline on the story. He was one of the primary people flogging the various flavors of surveillance/unmasking "scandals" that were obvious pushback against the Trump/Russia narrative, and doing so while working for an outlet which is transparently pro-Trump. All of those have ended up fizzling, per Republicans in Congress. That's a bit of a red flag to me.
If you've followed coverage of the Clintons over the past quarter-century, it's impossible to escape the conclusion that 1)they've been power players on the make who have at the very least been cavalier about the appearance of impropriety and 2) most of the accusations about their outright criminality have been politically motivated smears. I've seen all the Anti-Clinton stuff going back to videotapes and chain emails, and most of it is smear and inference which dissipates under scrutiny. What's usually left is, admittedly, a distinct impression that they have used their power and influence to enrich themselves.
But if you're alleging a coverup here, you're going to have to bring more specifics. Is this confined to the DoJ, or were all 9 cabinet agencies (and the Canadian government) involved? I suppose that's possible, but it's gonna take a lot of convincing. You're saying that Rosenstein, McCabe, Comey, and Mueller were all involved. That sounds awfully coincidental and convenient, but, ok...accept that it's going to take a little more to get me to buy. If this gets expanded with some better reporting and more factual underpinning, I'll be all ears.
Last edited by Julio3000; 10-17-2017 at 02:09 PM.
57Brave (10-17-2017)
"real"
lol
"For there is always light, if only we are brave enough to see it. If only we are brave enough to be it." Amanda Gorman
"When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross"
Nice points Julio. To be fair, I said that was a summary of the article, not a concise overview of exactly what happened, but yeah it was a bit over the top.
To further your point about the Solomon byline, Sara Carter tweeted this last night, and implied it was related to some countdown hype Hannity has been building:
The apparent knowledge of this before hand by Carter and Hannity does not increase my confidence.
So, now, based on a Mercer/Bannon-backed book and a thinly-sourced article that's long on implication and short on facts, we have a "real" scandal. Not like the one that's encompassed an FBI counterintelligence investigation, House and Senate Intel committee investigations, and a Special Counsel investigation.
Guys, come on. Even if the worst Clinton fever dreams were to be true, one doesn't invalidate the other.
You propped this up all day !!!
Besides the fact this story was shown to not have legs over a year ago
The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to make sure he doesn’t get a gun.
Right, and Sara Carter and John Solomon have been working together and regularly appearing on Hannity, hyping the bogus unmasking and surveillance stuff. They're working for a Sinclair outlet, which is transparently in the tank for Trump, and working with Hannity, who's all in for Trump in a particularly dishonest way.
That is not to say that the--already reported in the bad ol' NYT--stories about the CGF are not icky. But this, on its face, has the whiff of desperation and the feel of another stab at changing the subject.
The whole point of discussion is the exchange of knowledge and ideas. Only a fool enters such an exchange unwilling to have their opinions change. I quoted the story and summarized the story, I bought into the story. Then Julio made valid points. I looked further into the author and the origin of the story. That process changed my opinion somewhat.
I could close my mind to it, post a link of someone agreeing with my initial reaction, and stay on my side of the line in the sand. Or I could do what I did here and say yeah, nice point, and think further about it. Personally I think there is far too much of one already in the world, and not nearly enough of the other. In spite of my best efforts I'm an ass sometimes, and I'll never agree ideologically with a lot of people. But I do try to read and consider what is said earnestly. There wouldn't be much point to being her otherwise.
As for the year ago part, that's the whole point of discussing new information.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-s...uclear-bribery
Just how much corruption occurred during Obamas tenure?
Sara Carter posted the first in a multi-part series of articles on this today. I'm curious to see if she has anything that Solomon didn't.
https://www.circa.com/story/2017/10/...al-with-moscow
One new bit of information in this article is that Victoria Toensing is the attorney for the "informant." This causes me to look further askance at the allegations. She's an old school anti-Clinton activist whose stock-in-trade is going on Fox and distorting the truth or outright lying about the various flavors of alleged Clinton dirt. Incidentally, she's married to Joseph DiGenova, who's notable for the same thing.
His name came up here this spring when thethe was breathlessly posting his unsourced allegations about illegal surveillance and unmasking. I said at the time that it didn't pass the smell test, and sure enough, it didn't hold up.
These are people who've been cashing paychecks for two decades doing the same song-and-dance. This indicates to me that some caution is in order.
The article thethe posted says that Grassley is going to hold hearings, so I imagine we'll have some light shed on this soon enough.
Why was it OK that muellers team donated money to democrats though? Why are they now not biased?
It's a matter of public record that this particular echelon of the profession donates more to Democrats than Republicans, by a significant margin...as does the profession as a whole.
A lot of the attorneys that the Trump administration folks have retained are also significant D donors. Hell, Trump's lead attorney has donated to some very prominent left-leaning D's.
What this means to me is that, while it doesn't guarantee a lack of bias, it at least indicates that they have been able to do their jobs without bias and adhere to the ethical standards of their profession in the course of reaching that level of professional success. Is it always going to work that way? Probably not. Does it, generally? Yes.
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