With Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly preparing to make another round of arrests in his probe into the Trump campaign’s efforts to “collude” with Russia, House and Senate Republicans - not to mention President Donald Trump - will be thrilled to learn that Attorney General Jeff Sessions might soon appoint a second special counsel to investigate allegations of corruption and self-dealing involving several prominent Democrats and Obama-era officials, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.
According to the Washington Post, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia. A letter obtained by WaPo shows Sessions directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of these matters and report back to him and his top deputy, Rod Rosenstein, as to whether the DOJ should follow up with a full-blown investigation.
For months now, President Trump has encouraged Sessions to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Clintons. Those calls grew louder - and were joined by several senior Republicans in Congress - after it was revealed that the DNC and the Clinton campaign jointly financed the infamous “Trump dossier” - which contained several salacious claims that the FBI reportedly used to justify launching the original investigation into collusion between the Trump camp and Russia back in July 2016.
Those calls only intensified further after the Hill reported that the FBI had launched an investigation into corruption surrounding Russia’s efforts to gain control over a stockpile of Uranium based in the US - uranium that was owned by the Canadian company Uranium One and represented 20% of total uranium assets in the US. That investigation led to the arrest of the most senior official of the US subsidiary of Rosatom, the Russian state-backed nuclear agency. Yet, for some unknown reason, the FBI neglected to inform Congress of the investigation. Several months after the arrest of the Russian, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton voted to approve the sale of the Uranium One assets to Rosatom. Around the time she voted ‘yes’ on the deal, her husband Bill Clinton received a $500,000 speaking fee from Kremlin-aligned Alfa Bank, while the Clinton Foundation received more than $100 million in donations from Russia-affiliated entities.
Session’s letter was a response from the Justice Department to an inquiry from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte, who in July and again in September called for Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate concerns he had related to the 2016 election and its aftermath.
The list of matters he wanted probed was wide ranging, but included the FBI’s handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, various dealings of the Clinton Foundation and several matters connected to the purchase of the Canadian mining company Uranium One by Russia’s nuclear energy agency. Goodlatte took particular aim at former FBI director James Comey, asking for a second special counsel to evaluate the leaks he directed about his conversations with President Trump, among other things.
Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd wrote that Sessions had “directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate certain issues raised in your letters,” and those prosecutors would “report directly to the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, as appropriate, and will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel."
It appears that, after a year of being dogged by allegations that Russia was partly responsible for Trump’s upset victory over Clinton in the 2016 election, Trump’s claim that the DOJ “should be looking at the Democrats” is finally being heeded by his own attorney general.
As we’ve long maintained, the Clintons have just as many - if not more - connections to the Russian government than Trump and his affiliates. And given the recent revelations about Don Jr’s contact with Wikileaks and Carter Page’s freelance trips to Moscow, it’s about time that these connections were brought into full public view.
We can only hope that Sessions follows through.
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