Clinton Calls Uranium One Allegations a ‘Distraction,’ ‘Debunked,’ and a Signal of ‘Dictatorship’. Or is It?

By Al Perrotta Published on November 16, 2017

Hillary Clinton has declared allegations of wrong-doing in the Uranium One deal “debunked.” They’re just a “distraction” from the Trump-Russia investigation. The charges send a “signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship.” The former Secretary of State made the remarks in a new interview with Mother Jones. 

Her pushback comes as Reuters identified the FBI’s undercover witness to Russia’s efforts to bribe, blackmail and scheme their way to U.S. uranium. William D. Campbell was a lobbyist for Rosatom, the Russian company allowed to buy Uranium One. His evidence reportedly includes recordings of the Russians explaining they were throwing money toward the Clinton Foundation β€” a reported $145 million β€” to influence Hillary. Campbell will soon testify before Congress.

Debunking Hillary’s Debunking

Hillary told Mother Jones the Uranium One allegations have been repeatedly debunked. You’ll see Politifact cited plenty as one of the debunkers. Only they did no such thing. The best the left-leaning Politifact could come up with was “Clinton Role Still Unclear.” 

Let’s make Hillary’s problem a little clearer. Let’s look at the feeble House of Cards erected to defend her.

Hillary Wasn’t Involved

First, there’s the line that “Hillary wasn’t involved in the decision.” The decision to allow the sale of Uranium One to the Putin-controlled Rosotom had to be approved by CFIUS. That’s the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Clinton, as secretary of state, was a member of CFIUS and had to sign off on the deal. But, said Hillary in 2015, “I was not personally involved because that wasn’t something the secretary of state did.” (If Hillary could pass a football as well as she passes the buck she’d have a job in the NFL quicker than Kaepernick.)

The grunt work, we are told, was done by assistant secretary of state Jose Fernandez. He insisted in 2015 that Hillary “never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.” 

Unfortunately, for Fernandez, WikiLeaks gave up the goods. Fernandez was in regular contact with Clinton campaign manager and consigliere John Podesta. In one email he declared “I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton.” Podesta put him on the board of his Center for American Progress. As The Daily Caller reported, Fernandez got the gig just before he “personally attested” that Clinton had not influenced his decision. 

Still, you are supposed to believe that Madam Russia Reset had no opinion or input into a major decision involving Vladimir Putin.  

Further, The Podesta Group, founded by Podesta and brother Tom, was paid $200,000 to lobby for the Uranium One deal. You’re Mr. Hernandez. You want to make Hillary happy. The lobbying firm founded by her top honcho and one of her top bundlers β€” a firm that is as much a part of Clinton’s political machine as pantsuits β€” knocks on your door. “We think you should approve the Uranium One sale,” they say. Really. Does Hillary have to actually be in the room?

Surely, we can check through all of Hillary’s State Department emails and discern her involvement or lack thereof with Uranium One. Oh, wait. We can’t. She deleted 33,000 of them. 

Just One of Nine

Second, there’s the claim that “She was just one of nine department heads on CIFIUS.” Do her supporters really want to argue that Hillary Clinton, who as senator fought against such vital mineral sales, who was the Secretary of State, wouldn’t have ruled the room had she said no?

And anyway: If bookies bribe only one player on a baseball field, does that make the player any less guilty? 

And what of those other eight? Did they know how much money was flowing into the Clinton Foundation from interested parties? About the FBI investigation into Putin’s bribery, kickback, blackmail scheme? Did they know the FBI had an informant smack dab in the middle of the Uranium One deal? One had to know: then-Attorney General Eric Holder. Did he share with CFIUS the Russian efforts to grab our uranium by hook-or-crook? 

Only Four Million

Here’s a third: “But the $145 million was really only $4 million, if you look at the timing.” Politifact says most of the $145 million came from Bill Clinton BFF Frank Giustra. He says he sold his Uranium One stake 18 months before Hillary became secretary of state. If that’s true, “the donation amount to the Clinton Foundation from confirmed Uranium One investors drops from more than $145 million to $4 million.” 

According to the New York Times, an investor named Ian Telfer dropped between $1.3 million and $5.6 million on the Foundation. So even the $4 million figure is suspect. The total could be almost $10 million instead.

Which reminds me: Next time Hillary talks about Uranium One being a Trump administration-generated distraction, keep in mind it was the New York Times that helped break the story in April 2015. That was two months before Trump even announced he was running.

Remember, this notion that it was only $4 million is being used by Clinton supporters as a defense. This is astounding. “The prosecution is lying! My client didn’t stab the victim 145 times! He only stabbed her 4!” Hillary Clinton, supporters admit, got $4 million from investors with a direct interest in the Uranium One deal going through. 

No Big Deal

Finally, Hillary’s inventive (maybe desperate?) supporters just say, “It’s just not a big deal, don’t worry about it.” Former Clinton adviser Richard Goodstein said this Tuesday night on Tucker Carlson. Uranium isn’t even all that valuable or crucial anymore, he said. When Carlson countered that Vladimir Putin sure thought the sale was a big deal, that he had spent millions to help make it happen, Goodstein’s spin was classic. Putin was a bad businessman. 

Let’s put aside the fact that uranium is the stuff used to make nuclear bombs. And the fact that Russia found a way to skirt around the lack of a shipping license, making the claim the uranium never left the U.S. a flat out lie. Let’s just accept Goodstein’s premise that the U.S. mines are meaningless in the big scheme things. 

After all, says Goodstein, “Kazakhstan is the biggest source of uranium on the planet.” He went onto say that Russia is able to exert power over its neighbor and deals heavily with them in that regard. So to Kazakhstan we go. 

Kazakhstan Means Cash for the Clintons

When Russia bought Uranium One, it didn’t just get 20% of the U.S. uranium supply. It got control of Uranium One’s uranium assets in Kazakhstan. And thus, as we can infer from Goodstein’s own remarks, more power over Kazakhstan.

How did Uranium One get the Kazakhstan assets in the first place?

Remember Bill Clinton BFF Frank Giustra? Even though he had little experience in the mining business, he flew over to Kazakhstan with Bill Clinton. Clinton said nice things publicly about Kazakhstan’s dictator. A couple days later, Kazakhstan granted Giustra and his Ur-Asia mining company the extremely lucrative uranium mining rights. Soon after Giustra donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation, with a pledge to donate $100 million more. 

Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer  says the Clinton sweet talk came with hard ball. He told Fox News Wednesday night how the Kazakh minister of Kazatomprom, the Kazah atomic agency, claims the Clintons blackmailed him. Schweizer summarized what Moukhtar Dzhakishev stated in a video deposition

They granted that concession to Frank Giustra because Hillary Clinton, then a senator, blackmailed and threatened Kazakh officials, saying she would not cooperate with them getting U.S. money; that she would not meet with any Kazakh officials until the concession was granted.

The Washington Post actually reported on Dzhakishev’s claims in 2010:

Dzhakishev said a senior Kazakh official told him to look into the deal after then-Sen. Hillary Clinton canceled a meeting with him. Dzhakishev said he was told that “investors who currently work in Kazakhstan and have ties to Clinton have problems and meetings will be resumed only after Kazakhstan resolves the problems.”

“I called them, and they came. I met them in Astana and then Clinton’s aide, Tim Phillips, began to scream that this deal involves Democrats and is financed by them, and that we were hampering the deal,” Dzhakishev said.

Alert the Post. They are part of Hillary’s new vast right-wing conspiracy.

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