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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
It sure looks as if Hillary ran the State Department simply as an arm of the Clinton Foundation for the purpose of scooping up millions to line her greasy pockets.
Wait, so Howard Dean is teaching journalism???!!
The whole thing reads like a Hollywood writers’ room full of writers before they’ve had their morning coffee, just goofing around throwing out the worst imaginable clichés just to get warmed up and give each other a hard time (no offense Rob!)…
The sums sloshing around are just staggering…10 million here…a hundred million there…the way these money grubbers knuckle under to cliché just drives me mad…amid all those millions could they not at least point to one Clintomkin Village say, in Haiti, where they have fixed the plumbing and installed a school with dedicated teachers and provided public health staffed with doctors and nurses? How about one village in Africa where they have dug a new well or a small town where doctors have come to operate on cataracts of the elderly?
The venality so far revealed (with more and worse to come) just knocks me sideways….I was not a great fan of the Clintons…even so, I didn’t dislike them to the point of wishing this kind of fate upon them (a fate they have called down upon themselves)…I’m not gloating…I think I feel sad.
So, the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy™ now counts the New York Times, Bloomberg News, and Reuters as cats paws?
Are we good or what?
Ought to have been true much sooner, but IMHO she doesn’t survive this politically. Who will jump in? The bench is very, very thin.
The details are damaging, but they are detailed and don’t make a quick and easy soundbite. So, the folks who twice elected Obama will accept, “blah, blah, blah, Republican smear campaign” as a valid excuse.
Please, please let it be Liz Warren or Bernie Sanders.
I have met Howard Dean a couple of times at medical meetings and have been impressed with his intellect and general savvy. When I see him on TV spouting Democratic/Clinton talking points I wonder what sort of blackmail material do they have on him.
Westinghouse is actually owned by Toshiba a Japanese company. It is headquartered in suburban Pittsburgh.
I was just enjoying my popcorn, but Jon’s details are the most succint I have seen.
If she had done all this for money, out simple greed and lust for power, and, say, bilked a bunch of Arkansas real estate investors, and was caught red-handed in all of the above detail, this would indeed be a juicy story for Right and Left to bat around – might finally bring them down, might not.
But look at what they did. Half our uranium to Putin?! Westinghouse technology to our enemies??!! And we are discussing her political future?? The Clintons need to be ARRESTED fer chrissakes!
During Bill’s term we were doing this same “how’s it affect his reelection chances” stuff when he was allowing Loral to give classified aerospace technology to the Chinese (that “plane crash”?) and all his shady dealings with Johnny Chung and the unbelievable business with John Haung. (Going from memory here, details might be fuzzy.)
There’s corruption, then there’s treason.
We are going to have a nuclear war. I’m so sorry we let this happen.
I fear that the obvious moral, ethical, and basic human shortcomings exposed at nearly every turn over the last forty years of her life and the lack of any real consequences from her reliably ignorant supporters says you are wrong.
This.
Republicans have left unanswered the slander and scapegoating too long without fighting back. People know Hillary is corrupt, but at least she’s not a Republican! And she has the “right” genitals for the job, so there ya’ go! The next President Clinton.
Hillary Clinton has a glass jaw.
I don’t know, philo. A day or two ago I would have agreed with you. Now, I’m not so sure. The New York Times has picked this up, giving the rest of the MSM a green light to follow suit. It’s possible that the Times wants a different standard-bearer for the Democrats come 2016. Let’s see if they start touting anyone.
This will be all over the news for another day or two, maybe a week, and then nothing. In the end the LIVs will be convinced that it is nothing more than a Republican smear campaign with Hillary the victim.
I wish it were not so.
Several months back on the flagship Ricochet podcast (too lazy to look up exactly which one), they were having a conversation about Hillary that was basically 30 minutes of “‘remember this scandal’, ‘oh, I forgot about that one, and remember this scandal’, ‘oh I yeah, now I remember it, and remember…'”.
The scandals are the only thing Hillary is known for, and while she is protected from immediate consequences (usually, by just having a new scandal push out the old one) the end result is a lot of skeletons and a bad reputation.
There is a reason Obama jumped in front of her, and a reason why the Biden camp thinks it has a chance. The left knows how bad she looks and how weak she is as a candidate, and the odds are against her winning the presidency.
Agreed. Every left-leaner apart from Clintonistas seems to be clamoring for someone to jump in who they can glom on to. I think Warren’s getting the most chatter. Hope she gets in. Hillary will go away quickly if she does.
Or…the NYT, knowing full well she is prepared to weather the storm (at this relatively early hour) and has sufficiently intimidated all potential challengers from the race, is going through the motions (albeit, apparently rather stronger than expected) all to immunize her now from further questions on the subject later. She won’t address the issue now and won’t be asked to later…it will simply be brushed off as “old news” brought up yet again by the “vast right wing…”…yes, you know the drill.)
I know, it all sounds conspiratorial…but I’ve been through it enough to even think about getting my hopes up. I appreciate the optimism from you and others, but I suspect, once again, we’ll all be sitting here two or three or six news cycles from now, after a few cherry-picked polls show no sustained negatives among likely primary voters and the media feeding frenzy has moved to the next topic, unable to explain why even complete corruption cannot sway the progressive herd from their mission.
By the way thanks for this summary, Jon. In my earlier post I was just stunned by the facts that you ordered and recounted so well…
It occurs to me that if the New York Times is targeting Hillary, it’s because they know there’s more scandal material waiting in the wings, and that she’s unelectable.
If they know she is not a viable candidate, then their duty as liberals is to bring her down fast and open the path for some new candidates who have at least a slim chance to win and some time to build a campaign and message, rather than watch her implode during the Presidential election.
This may be a turning point for both Hillary’s campaign (going down) and for the New York Times (going up).
Awesome photo btw. Good Lord.
The NYT Picks of the comments section of that article is pretty interesting. Out of 44 comments, only 2 or 3 defend Hillary. Most are begging for another candidate with Warren typically being named.
I’m not sure if the disdain for Hillary will remain, but it sure seems to be there now in much of the NYT Democratic readership
This might actually mean something, PsychLynne.
They are just sweeping out the dirt early so it will not hurt her as badly later. By the time we get to the election this will all be old news that nobody cares about.
My liberal friends are calling for Bernie Sanders…
If it were a right wing conspiracy, this would have been saved for an October surprise.
Something tells me that TransCanada was not a donor to the Clinton Foundation, but I could be wrong.
Even assuming no laws were broken, at what point does the appearance of impropriety by a candidate, and the problematic existence and international machinations of the candidate’s foundation, become disqualifying? I would argue that point has been crossed.
The Clintons have scr***d employees (literally), associates, Whitewater land buyers, contributors, enemies – and now, they have helped to do the same to the country, by enabling Putin to gain control over U.S. uranium. These people are a cancer.
Their admirers remind me of the O.J. Simpson jury. No amount of evidence of wrongdoing seems to be sufficient to change their minds about the objects of their admiration.
And they took it all in Ones. You know, for Bill’s trips to the strip clubs.