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The Uranium One Thing Is a Non-Story and Here Is Why
It always amazes me how false legends get created, and soon, without any facts, they are cemented in everyone’s minds, the details get lost, and they become widely believed, even without evidence.
So it is with the Uranium One story, which is making the rounds again, thanks to a Tweet last week from the President who said, “Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow!”
And so we have this false legend, already solidifying in people’s minds that Hillary Clinton sold off a large chunk of America’s uranium to Russia, probably in exchange for an enormous bribe to the Clinton Foundation. Because, when it comes to Hillary Clinton, people will believe almost anything. Look, I don’t like Hillary Clinton either, but the real stuff is bad enough, we don’t need to make up anything extra.
Now, there was a Russian bribery story involving uranium, but you have to go beyond the headlines to find the details. It involved a Russian named Vadim Mikerin. But the bribes weren’t paid by Russians to Americans, it was the other way around. Kickbacks were paid by an American trucking company to Russians get no-bid contracts to ship uranium. And the “scandal” is that the FBI allegedly kept this secret while the Uranium One deal was being approved.
So what is the Uranium One deal? It involves Willow Creek, a uranium mine in Wyoming. I keep seeing it reported (uncritically) that Willow Creek produces 20% of American uranium, but that’s not accurate. The amount varies from year to year, but in 2011-2016, Willow Creek put out less than 5% of us US domestic Uranium production capacity. And while I can’t pin it down, Willow Creek sits on something like 4% of US reserves.
However, the thing to understand is that the US doesn’t produce that much uranium. Only about 11% of the uranium delivered to American power plants is produced domestically. The rest, 89% comes from foreign sources. Who sells us uranium? A quarter of it comes from Canada, 24% from Kazakhstan, 20% from Australia, and the rest comes from a slew of other countries from Namibia to China. Oh, and we get 14% out of Russia.
Why do the Russians sell us uranium? Well, they used to sell us even more. We had a 20-year agreement that finished in 2013 known as the Megatons to Megawatts Program. The Russians sold us surplus uranium from retired nuclear weapons that had been blended down to low enrichment for use in our power plants. The truth is that they can sell us uranium because they have more of it than they’ll ever need. (I’ve heard it suggested, but couldn’t track it down, that transporting this uranium was what the Mikerin bribery deal was about.)
Okay, so the Willow Creek mine was bought by a Canadian company called Uranium One, which, like lots of other companies, ran into financial problems in 2009. At that time, Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear energy company, through a subsidiary, bought part of the company. They bought the rest in 2010.
A purchase like that requires approval from the US government, specifically something called the CFIUS as well as from the NRC, plus Canadian and Kazakh regulators. What is CFIUS? It’s the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. It is made up of representatives from 16 US agencies and departments, including the Commerce Department, DHS, DOD, and the State Department. They approved the Uranium One sale.
There’s no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved or even knew. The State Department has a seat on the CFIUS committee, but even if they bribed Hillary Clinton to get this deal though, and Clinton ordered her CFIUS representative to approve the deal, there’s 15 other agencies that make up the committee, plus the NRC, plus Canadian regulators.
Nor is there evidence that Uranium One bribed anyone. They wouldn’t need to. The sale of Uranium One was not controversial because even if this was some nefarious Russian plot to steal America’s uranium, they’d still need a license to export it. The closest thing that anyone has found was a small donation to the Clinton Foundation in 2007, but in terms of bribing Hillary Clinton to approve the deal, the timeline doesn’t work. (This is not to say that Hillary Clinton is clean, she’s obviously as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. But as I said above, the real stuff is bad enough, we don’t need to make up anything extra.)
To recap: This was a foreign purchase of an American uranium mine that produces a small amount of the uranium the US uses. None of the uranium has been exported. None of it can be exported. We don’t need it because we can buy it from elsewhere. The Russians don’t need it because they have a surplus. And even if anybody did, nobody would care because this is a tiny amount of uranium.
So no, Hillary Clinton didn’t steal America’s vital uranium and sell it to the Ruskies. And no, the “Fake Media” isn’t covering it up. This whole Uranium One business is a non-story. Which makes you wonder why Donald Trump is bringing it up.
Published in Politics
Hillary Clinton has said she delegated the approval decision to a deputy on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and did not apply any pressure. Bill Clinton has said the monies he received had no bearing on his wife’s policymaking decisions.
He swears! Honest Injun!
So much for that part of the non-story.
Not only that, but a part of the deflection about the significance of the story is that direct evidence of bribery involved American businesses, not the Clintons. This story involves how a non-Russian business having an export license facilitated the transfer of now Russian-owned uranium out of the country since the Russian company did not possess the required license. (And, since when does a company already engaged in illegal activity let a pesky license requirement stand in the way?)
This is why the story has new life — not specifically the Clintons so much as the whole of the Obama Administration being cavalier about nuclear proliferation. The Clintons got paid to be cavalier. Who else did?
There is an email string on WikiLeaks between John Podesta and the aforementioned State Dept. deputy who agreed to step up to make the CFIUS decision so Hillary could claim plausible deniability. It was discussed a few days ago by Tucker Carlson and Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer. FWIW.
Now that’s the kind of proof this story needs. I searched a little on Wikileaks but couldn’t find those emails. If you have a link to them, appreciated.
I’m not a WikiLeaks peruser. Here’s the segment on Tucker Carlson’s show:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJB-cKo057Q
If this is the email, it’s pretty thin:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2053
Fernandez, a former State Dept. employee under hillary, is offering to help the Clinton campaign 5 years after the Uranium One deal was approved.
What Schweizer says in that clip was that this email comes right before Fernandez told the press that he had been the State designee on CFUIS back when the deal was approved. Wasn’t that already a matter of record? Am I missing some sleight of hand?
As the representative of State, of course, he’s going to vote how the Dept. wants him to vote, so Hillary can’t disown this vote — but I don’t think this adds anything new. Now, if it can be shown that Russia bribed other seats on CFUIS to approve the deal, or that Fernandez leaned on the other seats at Clinton’s urging, or something….
@fredcole
I would love to hear your take on the Tucker Carlson post above.
Here’s an article that tries to make hay out of that Podesta/Fernandez email, but it conveniently ignores the 5 year gap between the deal and, later, the email:
http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/14/e-mails-connect-hillary-with-uranium-one-player-all-i-can-to-support-secretary-clinton/
This?
I’d have to see the email in order to comment. If someone wants to dig it out, I can take a look.
Okay so, I watched this clip. I read the email @Dorrk posted. (Thanks for that, by the way.) I have lower regard for the Clinton Cash guy now. I’d never seen him speak before.
I was asked for my thoughts, here they are:
I’m just going to leave this here. I’m sure it’s nothing and won’t amount to anything.
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/372861-uranium-one-informant-makes-clinton-allegations-in-testimony
How does this not fall within the purview of Mueller’s probe into Russia’s influence in the 2016 election?
The Uranium One “scandal” is a bust. Textgate is a bust. The “bombshell” of the Nunes memo is a bust. I mean, I get the point: “Look over here! Not at Trump!”
Quantity is not quantity. You can stack cow pies as high as you want, it’ll never turn them into a brick of gold.
Tell us what President Trump has done.
Russia was involved here in something that touches national security. The FBI paid this informant $50,000 in 2016 for something, supposedly of value. That same person who delivered something of value a little while back enters the picture now with some lingering questions about some of what went on during that process. Why is this person’s views on events that inform about Russia’s influence on American politics less interesting than say George Papadopoulos?
And then maybe we should look at him. The tools of a police state are arrayed all around us and there seems to be no interest. Other than TDS, what possible reason can there be for this lack of curiosity?
Being able to filter out [expletive] from stuff that matters.
Donald Trump is a master of this. Give ’em the old razzle dazzle. That’s why it’s 2016 and people are still talking about Hillary Clinton.
“People” (especially the 24/7 establishment media) aren’t talking about Hillary Clinton. They’re talking about Russia!
Are you suggesting Trump is somehow different from the Chicago Machine? My hope is that he is better.
Really? It’s kind of shocking to hear (even) you dismiss all the stuff pointing to the thoroughgoing corruption of the FBI, the DOJ, the Obama administration, the Clinton Crime Family — the Deep State — while providing nothing of substance concerning objective wrongdoing done by Trump or his administration. You disagree with attempts to close the borders, which is one explanation for your total opposition to Trump, but that’s a prudential judgment (about which you’re wrong as well), not objectively wrong.
This feels a lot like debating with the Left. There’s so much projection going on (speaking of broken filters), all I can think is “nanny nanny boo boo, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!”
I really like how you said this, target bullseye.
Mollie Hemingway offers a possible explanation for Fred’s confusion:
http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/08/how-the-media-buried-two-huge-fbi-stories-yesterday/#.WnxLabIG-WQ.twitter
Agreed.
“Thank you @fredcole” — Love, Barack
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and defended you on this Uranium Gate stuff, but the Nunes Memo points directly to corruption at the FBI involving illegal spying on Presidential Candidates, not to mention giving false court documents, lying, and public deception. Does that not seem serious to you??
It would be very serious to me … if that’s what the Nunes Memo said.