Uncovering the Russia ties of Hillary’s campaign chief
By Peter SchweizerJuly 5, 2017
Lawmakers failed to seize on an alarming development in the Russia collusion story last week, one that should spark serious and immediate congressional inquiry.
But it didn’t involve President Trump or his administration.
During a heated Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief John Podesta made a series of misleading statements when questioned about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Russian government while Clinton served as secretary of state.
On Jan. 18, 2011, a small green-energy company named Joule Unlimited announced Podesta’s appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joule’s board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council.
Bartiromo asked Podesta why he failed to disclose his role in Joule as required by law when he entered the White House in January 2014 to serve as counselor to President Barack Obama.
“Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” Podesta shot back.
But according to his own financial disclosure form, Podesta only listed two of the three entities that made up Joule Unlimited, failing to disclose his presence on the board of the Dutch-registered Stichting Joule Global Foundation.
When Bartiromo pressed Podesta on the whereabouts of his 75,000 shares of Joule stock, Podesta resorted to Clintonesque semantics: “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!”
Notice the rhetorical sleight of tongue there: Joule is based in Massachusetts, not Russia, making Podesta’s statement technically true. Podesta added: “And by the way, I divested before I went into the White House.”
Yet again, it’s not that simple. WikiLeaks documents reveal that when he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clinton’s campaign. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.
But nothing to see here, Podesta insisted.
“I was on the board of an American company that did business here and only here,” he said. “The Russian company had a small investment in that company. We can go round and around the tree.”
Was Joule’s business “here and only here” in America as Podesta claimed? Not according to Joule’s own CEO and president, Bill Sims. While thanking Putin’s Rusnano, Sims said the investment would help support “the development of our global presence” and “complements the company’s expansion plans in Europe, the Middle East, and Mexico.” Moreover, Stichting Joule is itself an overseas entity. Indeed, Rusnano’s investment in Joule was in part to develop a manufacturing facility in Russia.
And what about Podesta’s contention that Putin’s investment fund represented a “small investment” in Joule? In 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date.
That meant the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.
There’s also this inconvenient fact: In 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group — which is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta.
In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule. No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.
Are US officials investigating the matter? We don’t know. When Bartiromo asked Podesta whether his closed-door session in front of the House Intelligence Committee included questions about his Russian ties and Joule, Podesta punted: “I have already told you that I was asked not to talk about specific questions, and I said I would respect that.”
After the slippery answers Podesta delivered during his explosive Fox Business interview, US officials have more reasons than ever to demand answers about John Podesta, Joule Unlimited and Putin’s Rusnano investment fund. If they weren’t investigating Podesta before, they should be now.
http://nypost.com/2017/07/05/uncovering-the-russia-ties-of-hillarys-campaign-chief/
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Sen. D’Amato Drops Bomb: Hillary Allowed Russia to Take Ownership of US Uranium to Sell to Iran
Jim HoftJul 3rd, 2016
Former Senator Al D’Amato (R-NY) dropped a bomb on Sunday Morning Futures this AM. D’Amato told Maria Bartiromo that Hillary allowed Russia to take ownership of US uranium so they could sell it to Iran.
Hillary made it possible for the Russians to take control of one of our huge uranium producers and allow them to own the company, export the uranium and who do they sell the uranium to? Iran!
Now if people knew that and that the foundation as a result of that got $135 million. I think people would start saying, “What?”
It’s true.
In January 2013, Pravda celebrated the Russian atomic energy agency’s purchase of the company “Uranium One” in Canada.
That same company, Uranium One, owned uranium concessions in the United States. Because uranium is a strategically important commodity, the Russians would need approval from the Obama administration, including Hillary’s State Department, before the purchase took place.
Nine shareholders in Uranium One just happened to provide more than $145 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation in the run-up to State Department approval.
The Clintons took the cash from Uranium One officials before the deal was approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The Clintons hid the donations which is a clear violation of the Memorandum of Understanding Hillary Clinton signed with the Obama administration wherein she promised and agreed to publicly disclose all donations during her tenure as Secreatary of State. (Via Breitbart)
The New York Times reported on the crooked deal in 2015.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, 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. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.
And then there’s this...
Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) told Greta Van Susteren the deal Hillary approved gave Putin ownership of 20 percent of US uranium and Russia sells uranium to unfriendly countries, including Iran.
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Obama allowing Iran to purchase uranium from Russia
Daniel Horowitz | January 10, 2017Remember those side deals Obama forged with Iran that were not part of the text of the official treaty? Now we are finding out some of the details.
Yesterday, the Washington Free Beacon reported that Iranian officials confirmed they have received at least $10 billion in cash, commodities, and assets from Washington since 2013. And that is likely a conservative estimate.
But cash is not the only thing the Islamic Republic of Iran is receiving for gracing us with their willingness to sign onto our own capitulation.
The AP is reporting that Russia, with the support of President Obama, is shipping Iran 116 metric tons of natural uranium.
While Iranian officials have obviously declined to disclose the use of such uranium, AP notes that this is enough to enrich weapons-grade uranium for nuclear bombs:
“Despite present restrictions on its enrichment program, however, the amount of natural uranium is significant should Iran decide to keep it in storage, considering its potential uses once some limits on Tehran’s nuclear activities start to expire in less than a decade.
David Albright, whose Institute of Science and International Security often briefs U.S. lawmakers on Iran’s nuclear program, says the shipment could be enriched to enough weapons-grade uranium for more than 10 simple nuclear bombs, “depending on the efficiency of the enrichment process and the design of the nuclear weapon.” ...”
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Aug 2015
