Real Collusion: the Clinton and Podesta Record - Daniel John Sobieski

by Daniel John Sobieski

Here’s an idea -- how about going after the real criminals?

So now it appears that short-lived national security advisor Mike Flynn made speeches before various Russian entities and was paid for it. To those suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome this is further evidence of collusion with the Russians. Collusion to do what is to [n]ever said, though it was probably Putin who kept Hillary from campaigning in Wisconsin, made Debbie Wasserman Schultz sabotage Bernie Sanders, and forced Donna Brazile to leak CNN debate questions to Team Clinton.

Speaking of the Clinton News Network, CNN has been reduced to fact-checking jokes about Team Trump members using Russian dressing on their salads:

Proving that the rabidly partisan journalists at CNN have way too much time on their hands, reporter Michelle Krupa on Wednesday actually fact checked a White House joke about Russian salad dressing. During his daily briefing on Tuesday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer teased, “If the President puts Russian salad dressing on his salad tonight, somehow that's a Russia connection.”
The humor-challenged CNN sprung into action. On CNN.com, Krupa wrote, “Thing is, Russian dressing isn't Russian." Wait for it, here is the devastating bombshell:
The mayo and ketchup concoction -- often dressed up with horseradish and spices -- was created in Nashua, New Hampshire.
It was grocer James E. Colburn who invented the spread in 1924, according to "New Hampshire Resources, Attractions and Its People, a History," by Hobart Pillsbury. The Washington Post cites the 1927 text, which says Colburn sold the condiment to "retailers and hotels across the country, earning 'wealth on which he was enabled to retire.'"

Democracy and our republic are safe. Another Team Trump lie has been exposed. For all the righteous indignation about Michael Flynn’s dealings as a private citizen with Russia, one would have thought he was Bill Clinton, making speeches to foreign entities seeking influence with his Secretary of State wife for ungodly sums while donations poured into the Clinton Foundation from foreign governments and individuals to pay, among other thigs, for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding dress and lifestyle.

One would have thought for all the outrage against Flynn and other members of Team Trump, maybe the chattering class has Flynn confused with John Podesta, the doofus whose password was “password” and may have violated federal disclosure laws for not disclosing he was paid to sit on the board of various Russian entities:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, may have violated federal law when he failed to fully disclose details surrounding his membership on the executive board of Joule Unlimited and the “75,000 common shares” he received. The energy company accepted millions from a Vladimir Putin-connected Russian government fund.
Podesta joined the executive board of Joule Unlimited Technologies -- a firm partly financed by Putin’s Russia -- in June 2011 and received 100,000 shares of stock options, according to an email uncovered by WikiLeaks. Podesta’s membership on the board of directors of Joule Unlimited was first revealed in research from Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer.
Podesta never disclosed his position on Joule Unlimited’s board of directors and failed to include the stock payout in his federal financial disclosures, as required by law, before he became President Obama’s senior adviser in January 2014 -- a possible violation for federal law, according to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group (The DCNF).

Team Trump and Flynn critics focus on a bogus charge of collusion for which there is no concrete evidence, only reports and speculation about speculation while ignoring the one thing we do know -- that the leaking of intelligence surveillance is a felony. Here’s an idea -- how about going after the real criminals?

Let us concede that short-lived national security adviser and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency Gen. Michael Flynn did a dumb thing when he misled Vice-President Pence on whether he discussed sanctions on Russia in a conversation with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak before President Trump was sworn in January 20.
Flynn may even had said some dumb things in a conversation he should have known was being recorded. But an incoming National Security adviser talking with a Russian counterpart is a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from conducting what is essentially foreign policy with foreign governments. Flynn was clearly not a private citizen at the time. He was a member of an administration whose president, Donald Trump, has historically demanded loyalty and truthfulness from his subordinates. Flynn hung Vice President Pence out to dry and gave the administration’s enemies ammunition and a scalp they had been looking for. For that his resignation was well-deserved.

Critics of hard-liner Flynn have shamefully accused him and President Trump of being soft on Vladimir Putin and Russia and cite Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador as proof. Congressional Democrats want a full investigation. Yet they had no problem with Bill and Hillary Clinton brokering deals giving Russia and Putin 20 percent of our uranium supply to benefit Clinton Foundation donors, including Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra.

Giustra earlier had a cozy relationship with Bill Clinton and participated in and benefitted from his involvement in a scam run by the Clinton Foundation in Colombia.

Clinton donor Giustra benefited significantly from his association, even if the people of Columbia didn’t:
When we met him (Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo) in his wood-paneled office in Colombia’s Capitol building in May, his desk was stacked high with papers related to Pacific Rubiales’s labor practices, the result of years of investigative work by his staff. He did not see the Clinton Foundation and its partnership with Giustra’s Pacific Rubiales as either progressive or positive. “The territory where Pacific Rubiales operated,” he said, thumbing through pages of alleged human-rights violations, “was a type of concentration camp for workers.”…
In September 2005, Giustra and Clinton flew to Kazakhstan together to meet the Central Asian nation’s president. Shortly thereafter, Giustra secured a lucrative concession to mine Kazakh uranium, despite his company’s lack of experience with the radioactive ore. As Bill Clinton opened doors for Giustra, the financier gave generously to Clinton’s foundation.

As the New York Times reported, this mutual back-scratching gave Clinton donor Giustra control of a significant portion of the world’s uranium supply:

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.
Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton….
Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges….
In February 2007, a company called Uranium One agreed to pay $3.1 billion to acquire UrAsia. Mr. Giustra, a director and major shareholder in UrAsia, would be paid $7.05 per share for a company that just two years earlier was trading at 10 cents per share.

Now isn’t that special. Both the Clintons and their donor made off handsomely. Uranium One, which was gradually taken over by the Russians, would later be involved in a curious deal involving Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. As the New York Times reported:

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States. Since uranium is considered a strategic asset, with implications for national security, the deal had to be approved by a committee composed of representatives from a number of United States government agencies. Among the agencies that eventually signed off was the State Department, then headed by Mr. Clinton’s wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation. Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well….
Soon, Uranium One began to snap up companies with assets in the United States. In April 2007, it announced the purchase of a uranium mill in Utah and more than 38,000 acres of uranium exploration properties in four Western states, followed quickly by the acquisition of the Energy Metals Corporation and its uranium holdings in Wyoming, Texas and Utah.

So Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, along with husband Bill, in exchange for donations, gave nuclear power Russia and Putin control of 20 percent of the world’s uranium supply. Is that what Hillary Clinton meant by a “Russian reset”? Yet neither congressional Democrats, who accuse Trump and Flynn of being too cozy with Moscow, nor their wholly owned subsidiary, the mainstream media, are eager to talk about the Clinton uranium deals with Russia. They are more curious about an illegally released transcript of an illegally monitored conversation.

Investigate Hillary Clinton’s collusion with the Russians, not Michael Flynn. 


Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/real_collusion_the_clinton_and_podesta_record.html

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