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The Uranium One deal

The Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, took control of the Canadian company Uranium One, which had uranium-mining stakes that stretched from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world's largest uranium producers, per NYT, and brought Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of becoming one of the world's major atomic energy players.

Where things get complicated

The Clintons' involvement

A 2015 story by the New York Times' Jo Becker and Mike McIntire revealed that leaders of the Canadian mining industry that built, financed, and eventually made the sale of what would become Uranium One to Russia have been major donors to the Clinton Foundation.

And since uranium is considered a "strategic asset with implications for national security," the deal needed approval from several U.S. government agencies. Becker and McIntire note that the State Department, then run by Hillary Clinton, was among the agencies that signed off on the sale.

Canadian records show that as Moscow gradually took over Uranium One from 2009-2013, Uranium One's chairman, among others with ties to the company, used his family foundation to make a series of donations to the Clinton Foundation, totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite Hillary Clinton being under a White House agreement to publicly identify all donors.

In June 2010, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Moscow, the same month the Rosatom deal went through. The money came from a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin.

https://www.axios.com/russia-uranium-2498148483.html

So, the U.S. Secretary of State had to sign off on a deal that would make a lot of money for the Clinton Foundation. The Secretary of State at the time was Hillary Clinton (no relation to George Clinton, of Parliament Funkadelic). Hillary Clinton was connected to the Clinton Foundation, was she not?

Some people are downright upset over Ms Clinton's behavior.

Judge Jeanine: Time to shut it down and lock her up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nttf0S1yDBw

And some people just wanna funk:

George Clinton - Atomic Dog
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szkmivRWegU

From an excruciatingly long article, but this is the core of it:

...As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton exercised crucial decision-making power on the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to approve the Russian government energy agency Rusatom’s purchase of majority control of Uranium One. Members of Congress were rightfully alarmed. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) was particularly concerned, since the proposed deal involved a large uranium mine in his state. He wrote to President Obama, noting the deal “would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity” through Rusatom and its subsidiary, ARMZ. “Equally alarming,” Barrasso said, “this sale gives ARMZ a significant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan.”

But President Obama and Secretary Clinton ignored those concerns. And the Obama administration, via the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), apparently lied to Senator Barrasso when it assured him that ore from the Uranium One mine in Wyoming wouldn’t be exported. But it is indeed exporting uranium. Senator Barrasso was also assured that Uranium One would remain a public company, guaranteeing some measure of transparency. But it has since been taken private, with Putin’s company ARMZ now owning 100 percent of the stock.

Hillary Clinton’s State Department was signing off on the Russian takeover of Uranium One while the Clinton Foundation was taking in tens of millions of dollars from Uranium One exec Frank Giustra, and while Bill Clinton and Frank Giustra were zooming about the globe on Giustra’s private jet consummating mega-mining deals....

https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/c ... p-drain-it

From another article. This one shows how frantic the Clintonistas are. Hillary Clinton was supposed to be president right now, in a position to protect her functionaries from prosecution:

Mainstream Media Now Claiming That It Is A CRIME To Investigate Hillary Clinton’s Ties To Russia

During an appearance on MSNBC’s “AM Joy” legal analyst Paul Butler laughably claimed that it “absolutely is” obstruction of justice for the government to investigate Hillary Clinton because….. Russia.

“Would these attempts to distract from the investigation, even attempting to unseal or remove the gag order from an FBI informant in order to further what is essentially a side investigation that they’re pursuing, is that in itself an element of obstruction?” Host Joy Reid stunningly asked, making clear that she believes selling off 20% of the countries uranium supply to Russia is a “side issue”.

“It absolutely is. The statute says if you try to impede a federal investigation, then you are guilty of a federal felony....

http://www.shtfplan.com/conspiracy-fact ... a_10282017

Unless there's a huge distraction, the Clintons are going to prison. Or to a country without extradition to the U.S. I hope they take the Obamas and the Bushes with them.

KindaSkolarly wrote:The Uranium One deal

A 2015 story by the New York Times' Jo Becker and Mike McIntire revealed that leaders of the Canadian mining industry that built, financed, and eventually made the sale of what would become Uranium One to Russia have been major donors to the Clinton Foundation.

And since uranium is considered a "strategic asset with implications for national security," the deal needed approval from several U.S. government agencies. Becker and McIntire note that the State Department, then run by Hillary Clinton, was among the agencies that signed off on the sale.

I have sat on the interagency task force that signs off on acquisitions of U.S. companies by outside entities. I assume this is the same one that signed off on the Uranium One deal, but even if it isn't (since the company was Canadian), the dynamics are probably the same.

The typical case is that a concern about an investment is raised by someone on the defense side. This can be because key technologies may be subject to transfer abroad, or for any other reason. State, Commerce, and Treasury are usually in favor of permitting the sale (or it would not get as far as a hearing) and both sides dig into the matter to present their case. If the defense side cannot convince the economics side, then the sale will probably go ahead.

The idea that Clinton, as Secretary of State, could have convinced the defense people to give U1 a pass is laughable. If there were actual security concerns, it would not have been a unanimous vote. The information has already been presented (e.g. in the New York Times) as to why this was not a security concern. For example, the uranium ore still owned by U1 is low grade, making it economically unattractive.

KindaSkolarly wrote:Canadian records show that as Moscow gradually took over Uranium One from 2009-2013, Uranium One's chairman, among others with ties to the company, used his family foundation to make a series of donations to the Clinton Foundation, totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite Hillary Clinton being under a White House agreement to publicly identify all donors.

I would want to hear about the timing of the donations, since her term in office ended in 2013, but the general issue of donations to a "Foundation" is a serious one. Even if the Russian acquisition of U1 was not the purpose, two and a half million of donations certainly buys access and maybe some influence.

Although it must also be said that a lot of people believed in what Bill Clinton was doing with the Foundation, to find ways to leverage private and market power to do the work of social improvement, especially in health care abroad. Even a 2 million dollar donation could have been motivated primarily by philanthropic or public relations motivations. The problem is it was too difficult to set up firewalls to prevent conflict of interest. And if Bill C. really did violate the agreement he set up about disclosure, when Hillary became Secretary of State, then we have reason for suspicion. My suspicion is that if they were avoiding knowledge of the connection to Uranium One, it was more to manage appearances than because any influence was actually exerted.

I must also say it is a bit humorous to read all the attempts to make out some equivalent collusion by the Clintons when we know that 45 employed as his campaign manager a man up to his elbows in money-laundering and unregistered lobbying for the Russian sympathizer party in Ukraine. And then there's Mike Flynn, who worked for Turkey without disclosing his lobbyist role, and lied about his meeting with Kislyak even within the Administration.

Reading more about this, I learned that the group signing off on U1 was indeed CFIUS, on some panels of which I sat. It is possible that there were security concerns about the Kazakh uranium acquired in the deal, but that the defense representatives could not object on those grounds, since Kazakh uranium is probably not covered by CFIUS (it would have been easy for Uranium One to sell that separately, possibly through an intermediary deal).

I also learned that the real concern about Giustra's contributions was Hillary Clinton's reversal on the free trade agreement with Colombia, which she initially opposed due to labor rights concerns.

Well, you certainly have the credentials to give this situation an in depth analyzation, so who am I to argue?

But it might help put things in perspective if we compare what's going on with the investigation into Trump's "collusion" with Russia, and what's going on with Clinton's "collusion" with Russia.

What's been turned up on the Trump front? A faked dossier (paid for by Hillary Clinton), maybe a meeting or two at some point with someone about something.

What's been turned up on the Clinton front? See above. Capital crimes, if proven true. She deserves her day in court, but what's already on record could be considered an "orgy of evidence."

Clinton-era holdovers like Robert Mueller can only protect Hillary Clinton for so long. Mueller gave Trump his best shot by charging Paul Manafort with sundry crimes, but still, that doesn't make the Clinton record look any better. It appears that the Trump persecution is and always has been a smokescreen for the Uranium One scandal.

Or that's how I see it.

KindaSkolarly wrote:Well, you certainly have the credentials to give this situation an in depth analyzation, so who am I to argue?

Oh, I assure you I don't. My CFIUS experience was in the 90s, and my only other credentials are in economics. I am reading the same on-line stuff you are reading.

KindaSkolarly wrote:But it might help put things in perspective if we compare what's going on with the investigation into Trump's "collusion" with Russia, and what's going on with Clinton's "collusion" with Russia.

Painful as it is to admit it, I actually think the Republicans are right about "collusion", in the sense that what we have seen so far from the Trump campaign is not really much worse than Clinton paying for the opposition research that turned up the Trump dossier. Either way, we are talking about material from Russian sources, and we really don't know that the Trump dossier is not from the Kremlin. So Hillary may have cooperated with foreign influence as much as Donald did.

KindaSkolarly wrote:What's been turned up on the Trump front? A faked dossier (paid for by Hillary Clinton), maybe a meeting or two at some point with someone about something.

I don't think it's fake. Put the pieces together and it looks very much like Trump was looking for a little extra leverage to do real estate deals (which was all he knew anything about, up to 2016), liked Manafort's experiences with Russian clients (it looks as though Kushner and other Trump minions were involved in similar deals), and went for the bait. That is bad enough, but we already knew Trump completely lacks ethics (just as we had reason to suspect Hillary's ethics as well) so the real question politically is whether Russia got anything (besides internal chaos in the US) for its trouble.

It is heavily ironic that a party voted for someone promising to put America first who was aiming mainly to burnish his brand and make more contacts for further deals. Goes well with expecting someone who marries immigrants (probably an illegal immigrant) to solve immigration problems, and expecting someone who doesn't like hiring Americans to bring jobs back to the U.S.

KindaSkolarly wrote:What's been turned up on the Clinton front? See above. Capital crimes, if proven true.

Umm, no, barely crimes at all. Did she fire the director of the FBI to cover up her "crimes"? No? Well, I know someone who did.

KindaSkolarly wrote:Clinton-era holdovers like Robert Mueller can only protect Hillary Clinton for so long.

More heavy irony. Mueller is a Republican, headed the FBI under a Republican, and has no sympathy or even appreciation for Hillary Clinton.

KindaSkolarly wrote:It appears that the Trump persecution is and always has been a smokescreen for the Uranium One scandal.

That's so dumb it's not even funny. Sure it wasn't a smokescreen for the Benghazi "crimes"? No, no, no, it was a coverup for Monicagate!

As part of the Committee on Foreign Investment in U.S. (CFIUS), the following nine departments vetted and unanimously approved the uranium deal.
Department of the Treasury (chair)
Department of Justice
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Commerce
Department of Defense
Department of State
Department of Energy
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Office of Science & Technology Policy

The following offices also observe and, as appropriate, participate in CFIUS’s activities:
Office of Management & Budget
Council of Economic Advisors
National Security Council
National Economic Council
Homeland Security Council

The Director of National Intelligence and the Secretary of Labor are non-voting, ex-officio members of CFIUS with roles as defined by statute and regulation.
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-cente ... mbers.aspx

In addition to that very broad review and approval process of the uranium deal, here's a right wing fact check showing there is no there there...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/fact-chec ... le/2010304

Harry Marks wrote:That's so dumb it's not even funny. Sure it wasn't a smokescreen for the Benghazi "crimes"? No, no, no, it was a coverup for Monicagate!

This is why I didn't want to discuss politics here. Came here to discuss things literary, found a lot of leftist Trump-bashing, added my two cents. And I get called names by an honest-to-god filosopher. A truly imposing whit.

I don't like Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, any of them. They're politicians. They want to dominate you. They'll tell you it's for your own good, but it's not. It's just sick narcissism and a rapist mentality.



Most of you seem to put some stock in whether a politician has a D or an R next to the name (Democrat or Republican, for the non-U.S. readers). I shook off that polarizing tactic some years ago. The Clintons were elevated by the Bushes because the Clintons helped the Bushes with drug running in the Iran-Contra years. So, is that a D or an R situation? A half-dozen Republican senators are necoconservatives. Neocons are Trotskyite communists. So how is that a conservative Republican thing? Digest your Ds and Rs and sort through whatever passes for wisdom in the crappy outcome, but it's not a world of Ds and Rs.

Of all the presidents I've seen in my life I admire Trump the most. He had to win the primary on his own, with most of the Republican apparatus working against him. That apparatus continued to work against him, combining forces with the Dems, in the run-up to the general election, but he STILL won. That victory was the most monumental feat I've ever witnessed in politics. And now the Dems and Reps are threatened by him, so they'll work together to destroy him. No matter what the effect on the country might be.

But on the bright side, what Brexit and Trump began is rippling through Austria, the Czech Republic, Spain and other places now, and that's good. Globalism is a teetering juggernaut. With luck all of the communist structures will fall in the next few years. Then after we've dispatched the worst of the scum who preyed on us (Uranium criminals), we can get back to living our own lives instead of the lives that governments want to impose on us.

Blah blah blah. I have another political thread to look at, then I'll let Harry and the other political filosophers here wax eloquent about the good ol days of (D) Barry Soetoro.

KindaSkolarly wrote: I don't like Trump, the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, any of them. They're politicians. They want to dominate you. They'll tell you it's for your own good, but it's not. It's just sick narcissism and a rapist mentality.

Well, we got what you wished for:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10 ... e-advisers

Give me an honest con, any day, right? Better than these mealy mouthed phonies.

KindaSkolarly wrote: Neocons are Trotskyite communists.

Of all the presidents I've seen in my life I admire Trump the most.

Always interesting to hear from the Limbaugh wing.

KindaSkolarly wrote:That victory was the most monumental feat I've ever witnessed in politics.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Kind of the "Genghis Khan of American politics".

KindaSkolarly wrote: Globalism is a teetering juggernaut.

Globalism is the world's only hope.

Can a juggernaut teeter? If it's teetering, it's not a juggernaut and vice versa. Fascinating questions.