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Hillary’s Day of Wrath
Today was a very bad day for Hillary Clinton. This time it wasn’t about logos or burritos, but rather uranium, foreign affairs, and serious corruption. The New York Times published an exposé on ties between the Clintons and a sketchy deal that left Vladimir Putin in control of a significant portion of America’s uranium; uranium it can now sell to Iran and other bad actors in the world.
You can read the 4,500-word Times article or watch the nine-minute-long summary produced by Fox News, but here’s a simplified tick-tock of the deal:
- In September 2005, Bill Clinton traveled to Kazakhstan and met his friend Frank Giustra (pronounced joo-strah), who wanted to buy uranium mines there.
- Clinton gave a press conference with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, in which he endorsed the leader’s human rights record and democratic progress, even though he had just received 91% of the vote in an allegedly rigged election. The event was a public relations coup for Nazarbayev.
- A couple of days later, Kazakhstan gave Giustra the uranium concessions he requested.
- Giustra then donated $31 million to the Clinton Foundation with a promise of $100 million more to follow.
The Westinghouse Deal
- Later, Kazakhstan wanted to purchase an equity stake in Westinghouse, an American company that serves the civilian nuclear industry. This would require approval by the Hillary Clinton-run State Department.
- Giustra set up a meeting between Kazakhstan energy representatives and Bill Clinton in his Chappaqua home. Giustra and Bill Clinton both denied this meeting ever took place until a New York Times reporter produced photographic evidence.
- The State Department approved the deal and KazAtomProm (Kazakhstan’s state-owned nuclear company) purchased 10% of the company.
Putin and Uranium One
- Giustra’s company was merged into Uranium One, which controls about half of U.S. uranium.
- The Russians wanted to purchase Uranium One, another deal which would require State Department approval.
- Uranium One’s major shareholders gave tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, which the foundation didn’t disclose.
- Hillary’s State Department approved the deal and Russia bought Uranium One. Putin can now sell this nuclear fuel to Iran.
This shocking uranium news wasn’t the only hit taken by Hillary’s 2016 campaign. Reuters discovered that the Clinton Foundation fraudulently filed form 990s to the IRS for several years. And they didn’t just miss a dollar here and there, but failed to report tens of millions:
Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors…
For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.
Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating.
As these scandals emerged, Bloomberg News discovered that Team Clinton was sending fresh talking points to their allies. Wait, did I say “fresh?” Sorry, “The Vast Right-wing Conspiracy” is back:
In a memo sent overnight to friends and allies, Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon dismisses Clinton Cash as a “smear project” from author Peter Schweizer, who has “longstanding conservative ties, from working for George W. Bush to writing for Breitbart.com.” The message, obtained by Bloomberg, follows a similar note from Fallon to supporters of the former secretary of state earlier in the week, as claims from the book began to emerge…
Focusing on Schweizer’s book, which is set to be published May 5, Fallon wrote: “As the truth comes to light, it’s bad news for both the author and the Republicans taking part in his coordinated attack on Hillary Clinton. Simply put: his accusations are proving to be completely devoid of evidence even by the author’s own admission.”
Like clockwork, former Governor Howard Dean appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today and dutifully parroted the approved spin. Unfortunately for Clinton, Inc., his transparent response was ridiculed by the host and a fellow guest.
Published in General
When Barack Obama was elected I comforted myself with the thought that it could have been worse. We could have had President Hillary.
Will this whole thing deter the Clinton fans? I doubt it. She still has ovaries, something that all the Republican candidates lack, and that means a lot to some people. And Clinton can make the case that all that money didn’t go to the Clinton’s personally, it all went into their charitable foundation. This just goes to show how much Republicans hate the poor, not only are they against government programs for the poor but they’re even against charity. Blah, blah, blah, right-wing conspiracy, blah, blah, blah, War On Women, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blanks.
One of the Clintons’ defenses is that they don’t personally profit from donations to their charitable foundation, so there’s no conflict of interest. That position, of course, assumes that charitable contributions, even eight figure ones, provide no value to the charitable organization’s head or founder, so long as she does not make any additional money from the contribution. I think they clearly do provide value, even if only in prestige and the power that comes with directing greater sums of charitable money to preferred groups. I’m fairly certain that a solicitation of bribery case could be made out if a government official conditioned the performance of her official duties upon the making of contributions to a charity she directed.
This issue aside, however, I have a factual question that I’ve not seen addressed. Are the Clintons compensated by their charitable foundation? If so, how so? Does their take go up as contributions increase?
According to Wikipedia Clinton’s charity
Between 2009 and 2012, the The Federalist reported that the Clinton Foundation raised more than $500 million dollars according to its IRS filings. 15% of that, or $75 million, was spent on charitable activities. More than $25 million was spent on travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits
She’s a pretentious glory hound.
As she and Bill are above everything this is for them another Teflon® moment.
That’s good info. Based on that $110 million figure, the Clintons must have made millions and millions from their charity. There goes their defense. I’d like to see some concrete numbers on this, however, so people can precisely explode this claim when it’s made.
If I got a job at the Clinton Foundation, do you suppose they would pay my travel expenses to go to Ricochet Meetups? I’d go to more of them if only someone else would foot the bill.
I like the point Ace made on this week;s AOSHQ podcast. If this were a plot twist on 24, no one would believe it.
“Russian billionaires bribe the Secretary of State in order to corner the world uranium market? This show has jumped the shark.”
What’s amusing and irritating is that NO-ONE on that show called out Howard’s Dean’s reply as an example of poisoning the well, a rhetorical fallacy. Instead, they implicitly conceded the validity of his approach by saying “Do you have any objections to the authors of this article.”
But of course, at this point, what difference does it make? The Republic lumbers on under the night.