Posted on 04/04/2019 2:26:09 PM PDT by NoLibZone
Cambridge firm scores big backing to produce mystery ethanol-maker.
Alternative fuel maker Joule Unlimited Inc. has raised $30 million in venture funding, the largest such deal this year for a clean technology company in New England, according to the National Venture Capital Association.
The company, which is based in Cambridge, declined to name the investors, but said the money will be used to help produce its fossil fuel substitutes in larger quantities. Formerly known as Joule Biotechnologies, the firm said it will also begin making what chief executive Bill Sims described as a “high quality’’ diesel fuel.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
The office of special counsel Robert Mueller just released a document which appears to show that longtime Democratic Party power broker Tony Podesta misled federal investigators when questioned about his obligations, and how he understood them, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The document is dated March 31, 2017 and was released late Saturday morning in line with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request initiated by the New York Times‘ Kenneth Vogel. Taking the form of a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) National Security Division and addressed to Podesta’s attorney Matthew T. Sanderson, the document reads, in relevant part:
In conclusion, we have determined that Podesta must register under FARA, because the firm’s activities on behalf of the [European Centre For a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU)] constitute “political activities” as defined under the Act and were conducted at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal…in furtherance of, and for the purpose of influencing, U.S. government officials and sections of the public within the United States, with reference to the political or public interests, policies or relations of a foreign government or foreign political party.
The document continues, noting, “the principal beneficiary of the political activities conducted within the United States was the Ukrainian government and/or the [pro-Russian] Party of Regions.” (Excerpt) Read more at lawandcrime.com ...
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gatewaypundit.com
By Jim Hoft February 24, 2019
Paul Manafort Indicted and in Solitary Confinement While Hillary and Creepy Podesta Brothers Run Free –
Manafort Worked for Podestas!
Robert Mueller filed under seal, an 800-page redacted sentencing memo on Paul Manafort in the Washington D.C case ahead of the midnight deadline and was ordered to release it by corrupt Obama judge Amy Berman Jackson.Mueller said in the sentencing memo that Paul Manafort “repeatedly and brazenly” violated the law for over a decade. Mueller also accused Manafort in engaging in witness tampering while on bail, perjuring himself and making false statements. Last Friday, Robert Mueller issued a sentencing memo in the Virginia case recommending Paul Manafort, who will turn 70 in April, serve between 19.5 to 24.5 years in prison. In other words, Paul Manafort should die in prison for the crime of associating with Donald Trump — the crimes Manafort is being charged with were dug up by the criminal and corrupt Andrew Weissmann as revenge.
The Virginia sentencing memo also recommends Manafort pay a fine of up to $24 million, restitution of more than $24 million and forfeiture in the amount of more than $4 million, reported CBS. The corrupt and criminal Obama-appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled last week that Paul Manafort intentionally lied to Mueller and the FBI and voided his plea deal. Paul Manafort faces an additional maximum of 10 years in prison in the D.C. case, however, Mueller did not offer a specific recommendation for how much time Manafort should serve in the memo released Saturday. Paul Manafort is scheduled to be sentenced March 8th in the Virginia case and March 13th in the Washington D.C. case.
The case in Washington D.C. involves Manafort’s illegal lobbying on behalf of Ukrainian interests — these are the same ‘crimes’ Tony Podesta committed (failing to file a FARA form) yet Tony Podesta was allowed to retroactively file a FARA form for his work in Ukraine then Mueller granted him immunity.
The Podesta’s are surprisingly not even mentioned in Mueller’s filing – Manafort worked with the Podesta brothers in the Ukraine. John Podesta was Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager. Manafort was President Trump’s Campaign Manager for a couple months. Manafort and the Podesta’s brought a number of individuals to the Ukraine in an effort to support their candidate. It’s unknown how much these visitors were paid by the Podesta’s and Manafort’s Ukrainian candidate or if they filed the correct forms with the US government for visiting there.
Hillary visited the Ukraine – as did Chelsea. Corrupt cop Mueller was a guest as well –
According to a new report by Bloomberg, New York prosecutors have put together a criminal case against Trump’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort that they could quickly file if Trump were to issue him a presidential pardon. Will they do the same for the Podesta brothers? We all know the answer to that. The US today is clearly a two-tiered system of justice. One set of laws for the Clintons, Obama and their corrupt accomplices and one for the rest of America.
JOULE——‘GREEN COMPANY’ FORCED TO CLOSE BECAUSE HILLARY LOST THE ELECTION
10/22/2017 |DAIILY CALLER INVESTIGATIVE GROUP / Richard Pollock | Reporter
Joule Unlimited, a secretive green energy company that appears to have placed a big bet hiring Democratic insider John Podesta to its board, appears to have been doomed when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election. When the 2016 presidential election ended, senior company executives admitted the prospects for their renewable energy “biofuels” company evaporated. “We had a lot of prospects last year,” former Joule CEO Brian Baynes told BioFuels Digest in a rare interview in July. “But those new investor prospects walked away, particularly post-election.” Dmitry Akhanov, the president and CEO of Rusnano USA Inc., a Kremlin-owned venture capital firm nicknamed “Putin’s child,” oversaw the Russian government’s investment in Joule and sat on its board along with two other Russians with ties to the Kremlin. Akhavov agreed that Clinton’s loss doomed the company. “We lined up investors who were willing to buy the bonds, but after the elections, with some statements from the new administration regarding potential uncertainty, the future support of biofuels was stopped,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “The company was not able to do the deal and it was one of the reasons why the company was closed.” Akhanov confirmed to TheDCNF his company invested and lost 1 billion rubles, worth $35 million when Joule closed its doors.
The two other board members with ties to Moscow were Ruben Vardanyan, who Putin appointed to a Russian economic modernization council, and Anatoly Chubais, a close personal friend of former President Bill Clinton and economic advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Chubais allegedly made millionsin the sell-off and “privatization” of Russia’s state-owned industries. The FBI was concerned about Russian government investments in American high-technology firms, as previously reported by TheDCNF. Lucia Ziobro, the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Boston field office, issued an “extraordinary warning” in 2014 about Russian investors to startups like Joule.
“The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies,” she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed.
Hillary’s loss of the 2016 presidential election meant Podesta would not serve in the White House and thus was not in a position to advance the company’s prospects.
The Obama administration became a big “hedge fund” trying to finance and promote renewable energy technologies at any cost, Thomas Pyle, president of the libertarian Institute for Energy Research, told TheDCNF.
“The whole entire eight years under Obama, the Department of Energy was basically a hedge fund — and a bad one — for renewable energy for wind, solar and biofuels,” he said.
Critics of former President Barack Obama’s renewable energy agenda believe it’s likely a President Hillary Clinton would have doubled down on Obama’s renewable energy initiatives.
“If Hillary Clinton had won, then we would have four to eight more years of the Obama trajectory, which means everything that calls itself ‘progressive energy policy’ would have just ramped up,” Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDCNF.
“So the market would have been even more tilted in favor of so-called ‘green energy companies. And President Trump has basically changed the direction,” he said. Since entering office, Trump reversed many of Obama’s regulatory mandates that hurt fossil fuels and assisted renewable energy in the marketplace. He also ended the U.S. participation in the Paris agreement on climate change, which was designed to cut carbon emissions. Trump signed a sweeping executive order in late March at the Environmental Protection Agency that rescinded six of Obama’s climate change executive orders.
“The order represents a clear difference between how Trump and former President Barack Obama view the role the United States plays in combating climate change,” CNN reported at the time.
John Podesta was one of Joule’s biggest political assets. He had served as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and co-founded Podesta Associates, a D.C. lobbying shop with his brother Tony. John Podesta also founded the Center for American Progress, a Washington liberal advocacy group. Podesta served on Joule’s board from December 2010 to December 2013. In January 2014, he joined the Obama White House, where he served as “counselor” to President Obama. After leaving the White House, he joined Hillary Clinton to help run her presidential campaign as its national chairman.
From the very beginning, Joule executives knew Podesta’s value. Bill Sims, one of Joule’s CEOs, was excited about landing Podesta and talked about “leveraging his insights” when he announced the board appointment. “We look forward to leveraging his insights as we progress toward international deployment,” he declared.As one of the biggest power players in Washington, Podesta could open doors for Joule. Obama’s first secretary of energy, Steven Chu, visited the company in November 2011, according to WikiLeaks.
Podesta told Chu’s chief of staff, Brandon Hurlbut, he was delighted with the upcoming Chu visit. “The gang is excited. I think he’ll be impressed,” he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2011, email released by WikiLeaks. “I felt fortunate to be able to engage with a leading expert like John to get feedback, as I did with many other experts,” Hurlbut told McClatchy News for a 2016 article titled, “WikiLeaks emails show how Clinton’s campaign chief once opened doors for energy firm.”
And even as he worked at the White House, Podesta apparently continued to provide advice to Joule.“As promised, I am providing to you a corporate slide presentation, a short summary of the company and videos of the Hobbs plant. Please let me know if I should change any of it, or feel free to edit as you see fit. I look forward to learning about next steps and to your guidance for the company about how best to forge partnerships globally,” Noubar Afeyan, the founder and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the main venture capital firm that underwrote Joule Unlimited, told Podesta in an Aug. 31, 2015, email.
On Oct. 12, 2015, Afeyan followed up, emailing Podesta, “Dear John, I wanted to get this back on your radar screen hoping you can make some intros in the far east as we had previously discussed. Please let me know how I can follow up. Regards, Noubar.”
Podesta did not respond to a request for comment.
The company’s rise as well as its demise have been shrouded in secrecy. It claimed to have a patent for genetically engineered microbes that could harness the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, diesel fuel or jet fuel. “Many people were very skeptical that they could pull off what they were trying to pull off,” Robert Rapier, who runs a website called R-Squared Energy, told The Boston Globe. “There are other companies out there that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and come up with the same results,” John Beneman, an expert on algae-based biofuels and CEO of MicroBio Engineering, told the Globe. “Either they are walking dead, or ghosts, or resting in peace.”
Jim Lane, a reporter for Biofuels Daily who favors renewable energy technologies, noted the company had a penchant for secrecy including when it closed its doors. “The news from Joule closes out an extraordinary period of silence for a company that we once described as The Sultans of Stealth for their secretive approach to development,” he wrote.
The firm went through four CEOs in less than two years, according to Biofuels Digest.Further adding to its mystery, the company raised 1 billion Rubles or $35 million from Rusano, the Kremlin-owned nanotechnology company that set up a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Two other Russians with Kremlin ties sat on Joule’s board along with Podesta.
Flagship Pioneering, the main venture capital firm that underwrote Joule Unlimited, did not respond to numerous information requests from TheDCNF.
Bttt.
5.56mm
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