As the special prosecutor in the Russian hacking investigation pursues any and all threads he can find that might link President Trump to colluding with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, another story, one much more potentially explosive, is brewing.
Back in 2010, the Obama administration approved the sale of a mining company called Uranium One, which controlled 20 percent of the U.S.’s uranium deposits, to a Russian company called Rosatom.
Just a year before the deal, however, the FBI had collected evidence that Russian nuclear officials were engaged in money laundering, blackmail, and bribery, all in an effort to bolster “Vladimir Putin’s atomic-energy business inside the United States.” The purchase of Uranium One and securing a fifth of the U.S’s uranium deposits would certainly be an important step in that direction.
But the sale needed some help to guarantee that it would go through. Securing 20 percent of the U.S.’s uranium supply through the purchase of a Canadian mining company might raise some objections, especially since the buyer was a Russian nuclear energy company.
This kind of deal was far from a sure thing so recruiting a few influentional players to join the team was paramount. Who better to have on the team than Bill and Hillary Clinton. One was a former president with connections everywhere and the other was his wife, the acting Secretary of State who sat on the committee that would decide whether the deal was approved or not. Wallets and checkbooks would have to be opened. These players would not come cheap.
According to FBI documents, millions of dollars were routed to people and organizations in the U.S. that could help in securing the sale of Uranium One to the Russian company. One recipient of the cash was the Clinton Foundation, which received $145 million.
While the investigation into the corruption began back in 2009, charges were not filed until 2014, four years following the sale. Between the beginning of the investigation and the time when charges were brought, President Obama’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) approved the sale.
Members of that committee included former Attorney General Eric Holder and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. President Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a single speech given to a group associated with the deal.
It’s not difficult to see why the FBI decided to investigate what appears to be a potential violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits paying off foreign government officials to assist in obtaining or retaining business.
With the enormous payments given to President Bill Clinton and his foundation while his wife Hillary was Secretary of State and sat on the committee that approved the sale, the case could possibly serve as a textbook example of what a violation of the act looks like.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee begins its probe into the sale, its focus will be the question of whether or not the Obama Administration was aware of the FBI corruption investigation before it approved the deal. After all, its hard to conceive of such a deal being approved by Obama’s multi-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in the midst of an ongoing FBI corruption investigation.
But on the other hand, it’s hard to conceive of anyone getting paid half a million dollars to give a single speech.
