Uranium One Scandal: Moscow Routed $3 Million To Clinton Global Initiative

An informant has come forward with evidence that the Clinton Global Initiative received $3 million from Moscow in lobbying fees in exchange for nuclear support. But it gets worse for Democrats as more evidence that the media covered up this scandal surfaces as well.

Don’t expect the mainstream media to report on this:

An undercover FBI informant embedded in the Russian nuclear industry who was made to sign an “illegal NDA (non-disclosure agreement)” by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch has finally given his testimony to three Congressional committees.  William D. Campbell became an FBI counterintelligence asset after spending several years as a CIA operative who developed working relationships in the nuclear industry in Kazakhstan and Russia.

Campbell discovered that Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm, Transport Logistics International (TLI) in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bribed a Russian nuclear official in exchange for a contract transport Russian-mined U.S. uranium, including “yellowcake” uranium secured in the Uranium One deal.

What happened next, according to Campbell’s testimony, was that Moscow routed millions of dollars to the United States with the expectation it would be used to benefit Bill Clinton‘s charitable efforts while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterbacked a “reset” in US-Russian relations. Campbell said in the statement obtained by The Hill that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in a position to influence the Obama administration, and more specifically Hillary Clinton.

Campbell said Russian nuclear officials “told me at various times that they expected APCO to apply a portion of the $3 million annual lobbying fee it was receiving from the Russians to provide in-kind support for the Clinton’s Global Initiative,” he added in the testimony.  “The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.” Now, who’s been caught “colluding with Russia?”

APCO Worldwide immediately went into damage control mode.” APCO Worldwide’s activities involving client work on behalf of Tenex and The Clinton Global Initiative were totally separate and unconnected in any way,” APCO told The Hill in a statement. “All actions on these two unconnected activities were appropriate, publicly documented from the outset and consistent with regulations and the law. Any assertion otherwise is false and unfounded.”

Meanwhile, Campbell claims to have video evidence of bribe money related to the Uranium One deal being stuffed into suitcases. Obama’s FBI knew about the bribery scheme, yet the administration still approved the Uranium One deal. Campbell was paid $51,000 by FBI officials at a 2016 celebration dinner in Crystal City to “thank him for his service.” When it emerged that Campbell had evidence against the Clinton Foundation, a Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff (of FISA warrant application fame) slammed Campbell as a “disaster” potential witness.

This is more evidence that the media is covering up major scandals of The Obama Administration and other powerful Democrats, like Hillary and Bill Clinton.

Campbell told Congressional investigators that the Uranium One deal, along with billions in other uranium contracts inside the United States during the Obama administration, was part of a “Russian uranium dominance strategy” involving Tenex and its American arm Tenem – both subsidiaries of state-owned Russian energy company Rosatom.

“The emails and documents I intercepted during 2010 made clear that Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One – for both its Kazakh and American assets – was part of Russia’s geopolitical strategy to gain leverage in global energy markets,” he testified.  “I obtained documentary proof that Tenex was helping Rosatom win CFIUS approval, including an October 6, 2010 email …  asking me specifically to help overcome opposition to the Uranium One deal. Rosatom/Tenex threw a party to celebrate, which was widely attended by American nuclear industry officials. At the request of the FBI, I attended and recorded video footage of Tenam’s new offices,” he added.

Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Clinton, also attempted some damage control.  Merrill said Campbell’s account is simply being used to distract from the investigations into President Trump and Russia. “Just yesterday the committee made clear that this secret informant charade was just that, a charade. Along with the widely debunked text-message-gate and Nunes’ embarrassing memo episode, we have a trifecta of GOP-manufactured scandals designed to distract from their own President’s problems and the threat to democracy he poses,” Merrill said.

Campell painted a different picture, however. He accused Obama administration officials of making decisions that ended up benefitting the Russian nuclear industry, which he said was seeking to build a monopoly in the global uranium market to help President Vladimir Putin seek a geopolitical advantage over the United States. 

“I remember one response I got from an agent when I asked how it was possible CFIUS would approve the Uranium One sale when the FBI could prove Rosatom was engaged in criminal conduct. His answer: ‘Ask your politics,’ ” Campbell said.

For a more in-depth timeline of the events unfolding around this scandal, please click here. This is a developing story and we will update you as information becomes available.

FBI Informant “Threatened” After Offering Details Linking Clinton Foundation To Russian Bribery Case

This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge

While the mainstream media has largely ignored it, the scandal surrounding Russian efforts to acquire 20% of America’s uranium reserves, a deal which was ultimately approved by the Obama administration, and more specifically the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) which included Hillary Clinton and Eric Holder, is becoming more problematic for Democrats by the hour.

As The Hill pointed out earlier this morning, the latest development in this sordid tale revolves around a man that the FBI used as an informant back in 2009 and beyond to build a case against a Russian perpetrator who ultimately admitted to bribery, extortion and money laundering. The informant, who is so far only known as “Confidential Source 1,” says that when he attempted to come forward last year with information that linked the Clinton Foundation directly to the scandal he was promptly silenced by the FBI and the Obama administration.

Working as a confidential witness, the businessman made kickback payments to the Russians with the approval of his FBI handlers and gathered other evidence, the records show.

Sources told The Hill the informant’s work was crucial to the government’s ability to crack a multimillion dollar racketeering scheme by Russian nuclear officials on U.S. soil that involved bribery, kickbacks, money laundering and extortion. In the end, the main Russian executive sent to the U.S. to expand Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear business, an executive of an American trucking firm and a Russian financier from New Jersey pled guilty to various crimes in a case that started in 2009 and ended in late 2015.

Toensing added her client has had contact from multiple congressional committees seeking information about what he witnessed inside the Russian nuclear industry and has been unable to provide that information because of the NDA.

“He can’t disclose anything that he came upon in the course of his work,” she said.

The information the client possesses includes specific allegations that Russian executives made to him about how they facilitated the Obama administration’s 2010 approval of the Uranium One deal and sent millions of dollars in Russian nuclear funds to the U.S. to an entity assisting Bill Clinton’s foundation. At the time, Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of State on the government panel that approved the deal, the lawyer said.

It has been previously reported that Bill Clinton accepted $500,000 in Russian speaking fees in 2010 and collected millions more in donations for his foundation from parties with a stake in the Uranium One deal, transactions that both the Clintons and the Obama administration denied had any influence on the approval.

In the midst of the new discoveries revealed yesterday about the Uranium One case (see: FBI Uncovered Russian Bribery Plot Before Obama Approved Uranium One Deal, Netting Clintons Millions), “Confidential Source 1” has once again hired an attorney, Victoria Toensing, a former Reagan Justice Department official and former chief counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to get his story out.

Sitting down with The Hill earlier, Toensing said that the last time her client tried to speak out “both his reputation and liberty” were “threatened” by the Obama administration in a effort to force his silence. 

“All of the information about this corruption has not come out,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “And so my client, the same part of my client that made him go into the FBI in the first place, says, ‘This is wrong. What should I do about it?’”

Toensing said she also possesses memos that recount how the Justice Department last year 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.

The undercover client witnessed “a lot of bribery going on around the U.S.” but was asked by the FBI to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that prevents him from revealing what he knows to Congress, Toensing explained.

When he tried to bring some of the allegations to light in the lawsuit last year, “the Obama Justice Department threatened him with loss of freedom. They said they would bring a criminal case against him for violating an NDA,” she added.

Emails obtained by The Hill show that a civil attorney working with the former undercover witness described the pressure the Justice Department exerted to keep the client from disclosing to a federal court what he knew last summer.

“The government was taking a very harsh position that threatened both your reputation and liberty,” the civil lawyer wrote in one email. In another, she added, “As you will recall the gov’t made serious threats sufficient to cause you to withdraw your civil complaint.”

As we pointed out last summer when Peter Schweizer first released his feature documentary Clinton Cash, the Uranium One deal at the center of this scandal is believed to have netted the Clintons and their Clinton Foundation millions of dollars in donations and ‘speaking fees’ from Uranium One shareholders and other Russian entities.

Russian Purchase of US Uranium Assets in Return for $145mm in Contributions to the Clinton Foundation – Bill and Hillary Clinton assisted a Canadian financier, Frank Giustra, and his company, Uranium One, in the acquisition of uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan and the United States.  Subsequently, the Russian government sought to purchase Uranium One but required approval from the Obama administration given the strategic importance of the uranium assets. In the run-up to the approval of the deal by the State Department, nine shareholders of Uranium One just happened to make $145mm in donations to the Clinton Foundation. Moreover, the New Yorker confirmed that Bill Clinton received $500,000 in speaking fees from a Russian investment bank, with ties to the Kremlin, around the same time. Needless to say, the State Department approved the deal giving Russia ownership of 20% of U.S. uranium assets.

Meanwhile, the ‘journalists’ over at CNN are still trying to get to the bottom of exactly who spent the $100,000 on Facebook ads…