Bill Clinton Met With Putin During Uranium One Nuclear Deal

Bill Clinton Met With Putin During Uranium One Nuclear Deal

The hits keep coming against the Clintons as more information is revealed what happened during the controversial uranium deal with Russia while Hillary served as secretary of state. You know, the country that failed Democrat presidential candidate Hillary claims she kept trying to warn us about.

The Hill’s latest report states that President Bill Clinton met with then-Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2010 after he sought permission to meet with a board director at Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy firm, that wanted to receive “a majority stake in Canadian company Uranium One.”

From The Hill:

As he prepared to collect a $500,000 payday in Moscow in 2010, Bill Clinton sought clearance from the State Department to meet with a key board director of the Russian nuclear energy firm Rosatom — which at the time needed the Obama administration’s approval for a controversial uranium deal, government records show.

Arkady Dvorkovich, a top aide to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and one of the highest-ranking government officials to serve on Rosatom’s board of supervisors, was listed on a May 14, 2010, email as one of 15 Russians the former president wanted to meet during a late June 2010 trip, the documents show.

“In the context of a possible trip to Russia at the end of June, WJC is being asked to see the business/government folks below. Would State have concerns about WJC seeing any of these folks,” Clinton Foundation foreign policy adviser Amitabh Desai wrote the State Department on May 14, 2010, using the former president’s initials and forwarding the list of names to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team.

Desai sent the email to Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills, Hillary’s top aides. After two weeks without an answer, Desai pressed Sullivan for an answer, who asked another State official, “What’s the deal w this?”

None of the documents show what the State eventually decided, but those close to the Clintons told The Hill that everyone decided “in the end not to hold any of the meetings with the Russians on the list.” They chose to go this route because the list of people “raised some questions after Bill Clinton’s speaker bureau got the invite for the lucrative speech” especially since Hillary had just returned from Moscow.

The list included Dvorkovich as mentioned above, but also Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg. The Hill continued:

Two days after Hillary Clinton’s visit to Russia, Vekselberg was named by Medvedev to oversee a new technology investment project called Skolkovo, designed to be Russia’s new Silicon Valley, according to media reports.

Hillary Clinton had directly discussed the Skolkovo project with Medvedev, and her State Department was whipping up support for it among U.S. companies, creating the potential appearance for a conflict. She even attended a major event with the Russians in 2010 to promote the project.

“We want to help because we think that it’s in everyone’s interest do so,” she was quoted as saying at the time.

He met with someone else instead:

Bill Clinton instead got together with Vladimir Putin at the Russian leader’s private homestead.

Here’s another point that will raise eyebrows:

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.

Corruption and Lies

Earlier this week, Kemberlee blogged about the reports that allege President Barack Obama’s administration covered for failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her family on a few occasions.

One instance included the Clinton Foundation’s dealings with Canadian Uranium One, a bribery scandal the FBI knew about and decided to sit on the evidence. Then The Hill reported that an undercover FBI agent in Russia alleges that President Barack Obama’s blocked him from speaking to Congress “about conversations and transactions he witnessed related to the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton and influence Obama administration decisions.”

His lawyer Victoria Toensing, who served as a Reagan DOJ official and chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that she has memos that show how the DOJ “threatened her client when he attempted to file a lawsuit that could have drawn attention to the Russian corruption during the 2016 presidential race as well as helped him recover some of the money Russians stole from him through kickbacks during the FBI probe.”

More Than a $500,000 Speaker Fee

Oh, you think Bill only received $500,000 for a 90-minute speech in Russia? Nope. The Clinton Foundation received millions from those who had a stake in the lucrative uranium deal, including Ian Telfer, the chairman of Uranium One, who has a family charity in Canada called the Fernwood Foundation that has donated money to the Clintons:

His donations through the Fernwood Foundation included $1 million reported in 2009, the year his company appealed to the American Embassy to help it keep its mines in Kazakhstan; $250,000 in 2010, the year the Russians sought majority control; as well as $600,000 in 2011; and $500,000 in 2012. Mr. Telfer said that his donations had nothing to do with his business dealings, and that he had never discussed Uranium One with Mr. or Mrs. Clinton. He said he had given the money because he wanted to support Mr. Giustra’s charitable endeavors with Mr. Clinton. “Frank and I have been friends and business partners for almost 20 years,” he said.

The Clinton campaign left it to the foundation to reply to questions about the Fernwood donations; the foundation did not provide a response.

Mr. Telfer’s undisclosed donations came in addition to between $1.3 million and $5.6 million in contributions, which were reported, from a constellation of people with ties to Uranium One or UrAsia, the company that originally acquired Uranium One’s most valuable asset: the Kazakhstan mines. Without those assets, the Russians would have had no interest in the deal: “It wasn’t the goal to buy the Wyoming mines. The goal was to acquire the Kazakh assets, which are very good,” Mr. Novikov, the Rosatom spokesman, said in an interview.

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