Uranium One, A Tale of Corruption Deep in the Swamp -- and the Beauty of a Widow's Witness to Truth

THE REAL NEWS TODAY IS THAT THE RUSSIA FAKE NEWS MAY SNARE SENATOR McCAIN. Fusion GPS and the ex-British spy with a penchant for writing fiction instead of factual intel reports are key players. • • • WHO LEAKED THE STEEL FAKE NEWS REPORT TO THE MEDIA? That's the question that is hitting close to John McCain. Daily Caller wrote last Thursday : "The number of people who could have provided BuzzFeed News with a copy of the infamous Trump dossier is vanishingly small. Only a few people had access to the full document, which consists of 17 memos dated between June 20, 2016 and December 13. One person who was provided a copy of the salacious document, written by former British spy Christopher Steele, is Arizona Senator John McCain. But McCain, who has already acknowledged providing an early version of the dossier to former FBI Director James Comey, denied this week that he also gave a version to BuzzFeed, which published it on January 10." • McCain told the Daily Caller : “I gave it to no one except for the director of the FBI. I don’t know why you’re digging this up now.” McCain was asked whether he was BuzzFeed’s source after the Republican’s office declined to answer direct questions on the matter. Only a few people are known to have had possession of the full 35-page document before BuzzFeed obtained its copy. In addition to McCain and Steele, opposition research firm Fusion GPS had the dossier, as did David J. Kramer, a former State Department official and an associate of McCain’s. Earlier last week, BuzzFeed reporter Ken Bensinger disclosed in federal court -- in response to a lawsuit related to the Steele dossier -- that he obtained a copy of the report in December. Bensinger said that his source allowed him to take photographs of the dossier." • The identity of BuzzFeed’s source is significant for two reasons, according to Daily Caller : "It is a central question in a lawsuit filed against the media outlet by Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive named in the dossier. Gubarev is identified by name in Steele’s December 13, 2016, memo. In it, Steele alleges that Gubarev was recruited under duress by the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency, and that he used his companies to infiltrate the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee. Gubarev’s attorneys have said they want to find out if BuzzFeed’s source provided any warnings or qualifications about the allegations made in the dossier. If so, the lawyers are likely to argue that BuzzFeed was negligent and careless in publishing the document. BuzzFeed, which has apologized to Gubarev, has defended its decision to publish the dossier, noting that its article unveiling the Steele memos explicitly stated that the memos had not been corroborated." The Daily Caller also noted that then-FBI Director James Comey had briefed President Trump on its allegations during a meeting on January 6 -- so, in addition to its importance to the Gubarev lawsuit, the identity of BuzzFeed’s source is of widespread interest "because of the possibility that a government official disseminated the uncorroborated document to the media, possibly as a hit job on Trump." It was widely believed until recently that Fusion GPS itself gave the dossier to BuzzFeed. But, Daily Caller reports that Fusion GPS -- an opposition research firm founded by former Wall Street Journal reporters that has close relationships with DC Swamp journalists -- prior to the election arranged for Steele to brief several reporters on his findings." YET, in a surprise twist, Fusion recently denied in a court proceeding that it gave BuzzFeed the final version of the document. Evan Fray-Witzer, a Gubarev lawyer, said in a federal court deposition in a case in Florida in which BuzzFeed is being sued : “Buzzfeed went to [Fusion GPS] and tried to get the dossier from them and they refused to give it to Buzzfeed.” Steele has also denied that he was BuzzFeed’s source, saying that he did not give the dossier to any news outlets, in court filings in London, where he is being sued by Gubarev. • McCain and Kramer, a former official at the McCain Institute -- McCain Institute for International Leadership is a Washington DC-based think tank in cooperation with Arizona State University that uses Senator McCain's name but that the Senator says he has nothing to do with -- were first told about the dossier in November, during a conversation with Sir Andrew Wood, a former British spy and associate of Steele’s. McCain then sent Kramer to meet with Steele in London on November 28. Steele, who operates Orbis Business Intelligence in London, has revealed in the London lawsuit that he allowed Kramer to view the dossier but did not provide him a copy. He said that an “arrangement” was later made for Fusion to provide a copy of the dossier to McCain through Kramer. McCain then provided a copy of the document to Comey during a December 9, 2016, meeting. Four days after McCain met with Comey, Steele produced the final memo of the dossier, the one that was provided to BuzzFeed and which included the allegations against Gubarev. While Steele sent the final memo to Fusion with instructions to pass a hard-copy to Kramer and McCain, it is unclear how the dossier was disseminated after that. Fusion has not said whether it gave the final version of the dossier to anyone outside the company. The denials by Steele, Fusion and McCain that they were BuzzFeed’s sources leaves just a few posibilities, including Kramer, who has not commented about whether he gave the dossier to any news outlets. He has not talked on the record to any reporters since being identified in the controversy. • Did John McCain leak the Steele dossier to the media??? We cannot say -- yet. • • • WHAT AND WHO ARE FEEDING THE RUSSIA FAKE NEWS? American Thinker's Clarice Feldman wrote a long article published Sunday that sheds light on these questions. Feldman says the major developing stories this week have been "so scantily and poorly covered in the mainstream press that you may want an easy primer. To fully understand it you have to look at alternative media, because...Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller and a cast of characters, including a press determined to cover for them, have hidden what occurred. It’s taken some time, to be sure, but the evidence of their wrongdoing is becoming harder and harder to hide. Stalling and misdirection are their last redoubt." Here are her answers. • • • THE WHO. Robert Mueller, former head of the FBI and now special counsel purportedly investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election. --- Andrew McCabe, appointed by then-President Obama, was the Assistant FBI Director in charge of investigating charges by the FBI’s own underground informant that the Russians engaged in bribery to obtain uranium supplies in the US; McCabe's wife received nearly half a million dollars from Hillary Clinton buddy Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe for her 2015 Virginia state senate campaign, which McCabe did not disclosed to the Department or seek clearance for from its ethics office; McCabe is now the Deputy Director of the FBI and is himself under investigation by the DOJ inspector general concerning the contribution to his wife. --- The unnamed FBI undercover informant, represented by criminal attorney Victoria Toensing, witnessed the scheming, kickbacks and corruption in the Russian effort to obtain 20% of US uranium supplies held by Canadian-based Uranium One; he reported to his FBI bosses McCabe and Mueller prior to the October 2010 approval of the sale to Uranium One; he says Lynch has threatened him with criminal prosecution if he reveals what he knows to Congress, but Senator Grassley has asked present Attorney General Jeff Sessions to waive the nondisclosure agreement that seems in any event to be perhaps unconstitutional, according to Toensing : “It’s a constitutional issue. The executive branch can’t forbid someone from giving information to the legislative branch. That’s a separation of powers issue.” said Toensing. Grassley wants a waiver of the NDA so the informant can tell the Senate Judiciary Committee what he knows. Toensing points out the MSM's alleged cover-up role : “Jake Tapper had (former Attorney General) Eric Holder on the other day after this story broke and didn’t even ask him if he had been briefed on the corruption investigation. He didn’t even ask him. He calls himself a journalist?” --- CFIUS (The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US) is the interagency organization which is supposed to review such transactions to be sure they dn't jeopardize national security nad to block them f it determines such sales will harm national security. --- The US Intelligence Community, through the Director of National Intelligence (under Obama the DNI was James Clapper) serves as ex officio member of the CFIUS and is required to provide an intelligence assessment to CFIUS for review; the Secretary of Labor [now DNC Chairman Tom Perez] was also added as an ex officio member; in total, CFIUS is comprised of nine agencies, two ex officio representatives and other members as appointed by the President representing major departments and agencies within the US federal executive branch, and in addition to Treasury, the Departments of Energy, Commerce, State, Homeland Security, Justice, Trade, Science and Technology Policy and Defense are represented; author Jim Rickards says DNI James Clapper disbanded the CFIUS advisory for the intel community just before the Uranium One deal was approved. Convenient?? --- The Chairman of Uranium One is on the Clinton Foundation Board and is a close friend of the Clintons; as the deal was being considered by approval by CFIUS, nine members of Uranium One contributed more than $145 million to the Clinton Foundation family piggy bank; yellow cake from these uranium mines “has gone to some unknown destination” since the sale was approved. --- Hillary Clinton, former first lady and failed candidate for President, was Secretary of State when the Uranium Sale was approved by the CFIUS; the FBI undercover informant claims millions of dollars in Russian nuclear funds went to “an entity” assisting the Clinton Foundation. --- Bill Clinton, former President, husband of Hillary Clinton and recipient of a $500,000 dollar speaking fee for a speech in Russia from Renaissance Capital (a Russian finance corporation) prior to the approval of the sale to Uranium One. --- Rod Rosenstein, former US Attorney for the District of Maryland, presently Deputy Attorney General for the DOJ overseeing the Mueller investigation into claims that the Russians colluded with the Trump campaign (2005-2017). --- Andrew Weisman, presently a member of Mueller’s team, and former prosecutor of the Russian briber Vadim Mikerin and the American Trucking executive whom Vadim worked with and through; the American Trucking executive pleaded guilty June 2015, but the court record shows he has not yet been sentenced; Weisman pursued those convictions under Rosenstein’s supervision. --- Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining billionaire with a long Clinton relationship sought and obtained uranium in Kazakhstan (UrAsia Energy); Uranium One bought his company. --- Rosatom, a Russian government corporation that bought into Uranium One after receiving the needed US approval to obtain it, because it held 20% of U.S. uranium supplies. --- Ian Teifer, Chair of Uranium One (since 2007 when it merged with Ur Asia) and other individuals contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation from 2009-2013, and the donations were apparently not disclosed publicly as Hillary had pledged to do. • • • THE WHAT. This is how Clarice Feldman outlines the WHAT. Hillary and the Uranium One deal were explained by Daniel Greenfield : "The same year that Hillary brought over her ‘Reset Button,’ the FBI was investigating a top Rosatom figure in America for racketeering, extortion, bribery and money laundering. The investigation was supervised by the controversial current FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe [see above for his financial ties to the Clintons]. The investigation dragged out for five years, that is, just enough time for the Rosatom deal to be approved. When the legal procedures were started in 2014, the Russians had already gotten all they wanted -- 20% of America's uranium. Holder’s DOJ, like Hillary’s State, signed off on the Rosatom-Uranium One deal despite the ongoing investigation. Holder and his associates at the DOJ kept the investigation secret. The trails leading to the Clintons were blocked. The FBI’s confidential witness in the case was an American businessman who was making payments to a Rosatom figure. He knew firsthand about the Russian efforts to influence Bill and Hillary, and through them, the Obama administration, but, Obama’s DOJ threatened him with criminal charges if he revealed what he knew, including his knowledge of comments by FBI agents about political pressure from the DOJ during the Uranium One-Rosatom approval process. Meanwhile, during the approval process, Bill Clinton was getting paid $500,000 by a Russian bank with Russian government ties, even as his Secretary of State wife had the power to block a deal by Rosatom. While Clinton and Obama cronies are scurrying around to tie Trump to Russia, their own bosses were giving a Russian state corporation whose branches included the [Russian] nuclear weapons complex access to our nuclear materials." Greenfiled said : "Not only did Obama and his people at the DOJ and FBI turn a blind eye to Russian nuclear malfeasance in America, but they covered up evidence tying that malfeasance to the Clintons, and then threatened an informant to protect that cover-up." • TheHill also provided an explanation : "At the same time the Russians were paying Clinton half a million dollars to speak and donating to the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton sought permission in May 2010 to meet with Arkady Dvorovich, one of the highest-ranking members of the Russian government sitting on Rosatom’s Board, and then when approval dragged on, he met directly with Vladimir Putin..." Feldman says : "A close associate of Bill Clinton who was directly involved in the Moscow trip and spoke on condition of anonymity, described to TheHill the circumstances surrounding how Bill Clinton landed a $500,000 speaking gig in Russia and then came up with the list of Russians he wanted to meet. The friend said Hillary Clinton had just returned in late March 2010 from an official trip to Moscow where she met with both Putin and Medvedev. The President’s speaker’s bureau had just received an offer from Renaissance Capital to pay the former President $500,000 for a single speech in Russia. Documents show Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer on April 5, 2010, sent a conflict of interest review to the State Department asking for permission to give the speech in late June, and it was approved two days later. The Clinton friend said the former President’s office then began assembling a list of requests to meet with Russian business and government executives whom he could meet on the trip. One of the goals of the trip was to try to help a Clinton family relative 'grow investments in their business with Russian oligarchs and other businesses,' the friend told The Hill. 'It was one of the untold stories of the Russia trip. People have focused on Uranium One and the speaking fees, but opening up a business spigot for the family business was one only us insiders knew about,' the friend said." • But, says Feldman, that is not the end of the story : "Without revealing anything about the Rosatom-Uranium One background of bribery and corruption, Rosenstein-McCabe supervised the investigation and two people, including Russian Vadim Mikerin, were prosecuted. Although the FBI and DOJ knew of the corruption involved in getting the Uranium One deal approved...no charges were brought until 2014, and neither the public, the intelligence community, nor the Congress were informed of the cases until after a plea was entered with little fanfare by the defendants....The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals. By that time, the criminal cases against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering for a scheme that officials admitted stretched from 2004 to 2014. And though agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing they [had] collected since at least 2009, federal prosecutors only cited in the plea agreement a handful of transactions that occurred in 2011 and 2012, well after the CFIUS’s approval. The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s Foundation, sources confirmed to TheHill. The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered." • The WHAT continues. Feldman reports that while the FBI found that Russian intelligence had targeted Hillary Clinton before and during her time as Secretary of State, Clinton’s spokespersons denied that this was so. Clinton opposed the Magnitsky sanctions against Russians involved in the murder of Sergei Magnitsky in a Russian prison that would have penalized officials tied to Putin. After her husband received his $500,000 fee, Clinton moved with unusual speed to whisk the ring of 10 Russian spies out of the US and back to Moscow. She had the lopsided swap take place over a long summer weekend, before the FBI was finished with the spies, and before the spies could stand trial. While the FBI was separately investigating Russians involved with buying Uranium One, she approved the sale of American uranium to Russia’s nuclear weapons agency. Principals in the sale then plowed $145 million into her family foundation and projects. • THE WHY. We still have no information available publicly to answer several key questions -- because the Swamp continues to focus on an innocent Trump while the guilty-as-sin Clintons and FBI go scot free. The questions??? -- Feldman lists them : "What did the FBI know about Russia’s spy service targeting Hillary Clinton and her inner circle? Why did Clinton deny through spokespersons that she had been a Russian target? Why did Hillary work so feverishly to get the spies out of the US and back to Russia? Why has the FBI leadership not been more vocal in touting one of its greatest counterintelligence successes ever? And why did nobody in the FBI leadership raise this issue during the 2016 Russian election meddling controversy?" • The person who surely knew most about the details of this scandal is Robert Mueller, then FBI Director and now special counsel pursuing the FAKE assertion that Russia colluded with Trump. The overwhelming evidence suggests that not Trump but Hillary and Bill colluded with the Russians, giving them one-fifth of US uranium reserves in exchange for cash for themselves and their Foundation. When she lost the election, says Feldman : "Hillary projected her conduct onto everyone else, including Trump. It is beyond doubt -- because it has been admitted by James Comey, the head of the FBI -- that he began his investigation into her charges based on the GPS-Fusion “Dossier” which even its author Christopher Steele asserts was “raw intelligence,” not verified and not verifiable. Last week, Steele refused a congressional demand that he testify as to who paid him and who were his sources. Fusion is known as a ruthless firm that excels in smear jobs, but few have noticed the operation it’s conducting against the lawmakers investigating it. The false accusations against Mr. Nunes -- that he’s acting unethically and extralegally, that he’s sabotaging the Russia probe -- are classic. This is a firm that in 2012 was paid to dig through the divorce records of a Mitt Romney donor. It’s a firm that human-rights activist Thor Halvorssen testified was hired to spread malicious rumors about him....that financier Bill Browder testified worked to delegitimize his efforts to get justice for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer beaten to death in a Russian prison. It’s the firm behind the infamous “dossier” accusing Donald Trump of not just unbecoming behavior but also colluding with Russia. Republicans are investigating whether the Fusion dossier was influenced by Russians, and whether American law enforcement relied on that disinformation for its own probe. But Fusion’s secret weapon in its latest operation is the Democrat Party, whose most powerful members have made protecting Fusion’s secrets their highest priority." • • • CONCLUSIONS TO BE DRAWN. As Instapundit Glenn Reynolds notes : “The obvious inference is that Fusion’s secrets are their [the Democrat Party's] secrets, and they’re devastating.” Underscoring Reynolds’ point, Fusion GPS is even trying to seek judicial blocking of congressional access to its bank records. Feldman mentioned in earlier articles that "the Washington Post and New York Times had anonymously sourced stories alleging that the FBI tried to pay one of the dossier’s authors but ultimately did not. Well, CNN has anonymous sources that say the FBI did give him money for his work. 'FBI reimbursed some expenses of dossier author,' CNN reported in March. To quote Jake Sherman : "The FBI is in the US government." So, writes Feldman : "Let’s go back to that [CNN] tweet. We have reports at CNN of the FBI paying expenses for the dossier, and trying to pay him even more, according to the Post and Times. We have Fusion GPS already claiming that Democrat supporters of Clinton paid for it. And we have New York Times and various other reports that Russians paid Fusion GPS for allegedly unrelated work, though no evidence that those funds were not used on the dossier. So who paid for it? Russia? The FBI? The Democrats? Or all? Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to know? If only we had some means of finding out the answers to these questions!" • While the Progressive Swamps counts on the credulity of their readers, there is No Evidence for claiming any of the Russian propaganda efforts influenced the election in Trump’s favor. • • • WHY IS SESSIONS PROTECTING THE FBI AND DEMOCRAT SWAMP? Daniel John Sobieski wrote an article on American Thinker last Saturday asking exactly that question -- "Why is Jeff Sessions hiding the Uranium One informant?" Sobieski wrote : "Perhaps as startling as the revelation that the FBI was investigating the Hillary Cllinton/Russia/Uranium One collusion and that key figures like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe knew about it and said nothing, is the refusal by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to remove the non-disclosure agreement gag order on the FBI informant who arguably could put Bill and Hillary Clinton and a few others in federal prison." Sobieski wrote that Jeff Sessions recused himself from all things Russian because of election campaign conflicts, and perhaps it was really "because he thought it would insulate him from having to divulge what he knew about Uranium One and the people who at the very least knew about the deal, some who approved the deal, including past and present members of the FBI, the DOJ, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team? Is Jeff Sessions part of the Uranium One cover-up? [I do not think he is.] If not, then he needs to explain why he is thus far refusing Senator Chuck Grassley’s request to lift the gag order imposed by the Obama administration as part of the Uranium One cover-up." Senator Grassley is calling for the Justice Department to lift the apparent “gag order” on the FBI informant. Grassley said : "Witnesses who want to talk to Congress should not be gagged and threatened with prosecution for talking. If that has happened, senior DOJ leadership needs to fix it and release the witness from the gag order.” Victoria Toensing, the lawyer for the former FBI informant, told Fox News that her client was “threatened by the Loretta Lynch Justice Department” when he pursued a civil action in which he reportedly sought to disclose some information about the case." In a letter sent last Wednesday to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Grassley said such a Non-Disclosure Agreement would “appear to improperly prevent the individual from making critical, good faith disclosures to Congress of potential wrongdoing.” So, asks Sobieski, why not just lift the gag order, vacate the NDA, which Sessions has the power to do, and let the informant come forward with information on how and why the Clintons conspired to put 20% of our uranium assets under Russian control while lining the pockets of the Clintons and their pay-for-play foundation? As Toensing notes, Sessions could do it, and thereby bring to light the details of this criminal enterprise. • Sobieski says : "Perhaps the reluctance of Jeff Sessions stems from the web of deceit and complicity that ensnares many in the FBI and the Justice Department. As Fox News analyst Gregg Jarrett notes on the Uranium One scandal : It seems it was all covered up for years by the same three people who are now involved in the investigation of President Donald Trump over so-called Russian 'collusion.' ” • • • DEAR READERS, while we're on the topic of the Russians, there are some questions American Thinker's Jack Hellner would like to ask Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch : "Why did you threaten the FBI informant on the uranium deal with jail if he told Congress and the public what he knew? Should Eric Holder, Hillary and the Obama administration have approved the uranium deal to Russia knowing that they were under Federal investigation for corruption and kickbacks? Mueller was involved in the investigation, so do you think he should be investigating the supposed Russian collusion today? [Should] Bill Clinton have been allowed to accept $500,000 from Russia for a speech and meet with Putin while Hillary was Secretary of State? Doesn't over $100 Million in donations to the Clinton Foundation after the uranium deal was completed have all the appearances of kickbacks? What else could they be?...If the Obama Administration, CIA, FBI and others were actually worried about Russian collusion in the election, wouldn't they have also spied on Hillary and her team because of their many Russian connections? Why did Obama change the rules right at the end of his term to make it easier to unmask people? Weren't there any inadvertent conversations between Democrats and Russian officials picked up if the targets of the recordings actually Russian officials and not Trump people? Isn't it a great threat to democracy when a President and his supposedly independent Justice Department clearly targets their political opponents, before and after the election? Was there ever any actual evidence of collusion on the election? Do you truly think it is even plausible that your meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac was a coincidence? Have you had any other examples where you met someone on the tarmac, especially when their spouse was supposedly under investigation? Why did Comey decide before the interview with Hillary to exonerate her? Did you or the President give him that message, especially when you said to refer to it as a 'matter' instead of an investigation? Hillary wasn't interviewed under oath nor were there notes. How often does that happen in an actual investigation? Why should the public believe the Justice Department is independent and gives equal justice for all when they see Hillary skate despite obvious continuing violations of clear law and she obviously had the intent to violate the law although that is not even required?" • More on Russia tomorrow. • But, let's end today on a positive note. Military widow Natasha De Alencar has released the audio of the phone conversation she had with President Trump in April about the death of her husband, Army Staff Sergeant Mark R. De Alencar, who was killed in Afghanistan. President Trump told her in the call : "I am so sorry to hear about the whole situation. What a horrible thing, except that he's an unbelievable hero." Trump told her repeatedly that her husband was a hero, and Natasha stayed composed as she thanked him : "Thank you. I really, really appreciated it. I really do, sir." Trump also used the call, reported by the Washington Post, to invite her to the White House : "If you're around Washington, you come over and see me in the Oval Office. You just come over and see me because you are just the kind of family...Say hello to your children, and tell them your father he was a great hero that I respected. Just tell them I said your father was a great hero." The call is another indication of the ProgDem lies about President Trump being insensitive on a call with another widow, listened to by Representative Frederica Wilson, who said Trump told the widow that her husband "knew what he was getting into." AND, consider this -- the widow of Sergeant La David Johnson was given a 24-hour advance notice before the Trump phone call. More than enough time for the Progressive hate purveyors to do their dirty work. • Make America Great Again -- it isn't easy, but we will do it.