Emails Reveal Bill Clinton Met With Vladimir Putin Just Before Uranium One Deal

If President Trump or anyone even remotely close to his presidency, including his best friend from 2nd grade that he hadn"t seen in 40 years, sought to meet with key Russian nuclear officials, in Moscow, just months before the federal government approved a very controversial deal handing Vladimir Putin 20% of U.S. uranium reserves, despite an ongoing investigation into Russian fraud, bribery, extortion and money laundering, it would be the only story played on a 24 x 7 loop on CNN and MSNBC.

Ironically, that is exactly what new emails dug up by The Hill show that Bill Clinton did in June 2010, just months before the Uranium One deal was approved by a committee on which his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, sat.  Oh, and did we mention that Bill"s Clinton Foundation just happened to collect millions of dollars in bribes donations from Russian sources and Uranium One shareholders shortly after his Moscow meetings?

As you will recall, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), approved the Uranium One transaction in October 2010.  According to new emails revealed by The Hill, just months before that approval, Bill Clinton sought permission from the State Department, run by his wife at the time, to meet 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, the company which was ultimately approved to purchase Uranium One.

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.

While we apparently still don"t know whether Bill Clinton was ultimately approved to hold those meetings, his team did confirm that he met with Vladimir Putin at his private residence.

The documents don’t indicate what decision the State Department finally made. But current and former aides to both Clintons told The Hill on Thursday the request to meet the various Russians came from other people, and the ex-president’s aides and State decided in the end not to hold any of the meetings with the Russians on the list.

 

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

Meanwhile, The Hill revealed yet another facet to the story from a "close associate of Bill Clinton" who says that his trip to Russia may have been as much about helping family members “grow investments in their business with Russian oligarchs and other businesses," businesses in which we"re sure Bill and Hillary just happened to have a stake, as it was about trading American uranium reserves for Clinton Foundation donations.

A close associate of Bill Clinton who was directly involved in the Moscow trip and spoke on condition of anonymity, described to The Hill the circumstances surrounding how Bill Clinton landed a $500,000 speaking gig in Russia and then came up with the list of Russians he wanted to meet.

 

The friend said Hillary Clinton had just returned in late March 2010 from an official trip to Moscow where she met with both Putin and Medvedev. The president’s speaker’s bureau had just received an offer from Renaissance Capital to pay the former president $500,000 for a single speech in Russia.

 

Documents show Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer on April 5, 2010, sent a conflict of interest review to the State Department asking for permission to give the speech in late June, and it was approved two days later.

 

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.

 

“We knew of some sort of transactions in which the Clintons received funds and Russia received approvals, and the question has always been how and if those two events are connected,” he said. “I think this provides further evidence the two may be connected.”

Of course, Hillary contends that this entire story is a "big nothing-burger" and that everyone should promptly return their focus to the $100,000 worth of Facebook ads that destroyed her campaign and the entire American democratic process...

Aides to the ex-president, Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation said Bill Clinton did not have any conversations about Rosatom or the Uranium One deal while in Russia, and that no one connected to the deal was involved in the trip. A spokesman for Secretary Clinton said Thursday the continued focus on the Uranium One deal smacked of partisan politics aimed at benefiting Donald Trump.

 

“At every turn this storyline has been debunked on the merits. Its roots are with a project shepherded by Steve Bannon, which should tell you all you need to know,” said Nick Merrill. “This latest iteration is simply more of the right doing Trump’s bidding for him to distract from his own Russia problems, which are real and a grave threat to our national security.” Current and former Clinton aides told The Hill that the list of proposed business executives the former president planned to meet raised some sensitivities after Bill Clinton’s speaker bureau got the invite for the lucrative speech.

...and we"re confident CNN wholeheartedly agrees.

The Clinton Foundation Is Shutting Down The Clinton Global Initiative

In a "mass layoff" event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of "pay for play" which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta "If this story gets out, we are screwed."

Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor"s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation"s Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a "Plant Layoff" it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as "Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative." The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

As the Daily Caller notes, the layoffs were reportedly announced , ahead of Clinton’s stunning loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Many other employees had already begun looking for or accepting other jobs at that time, as it had become clear the future of the initiative was in doubt. It’s unclear how many of the once 200 strong staff might remain at the Clinton Foundation in some other capacity.

As a reminder, while the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing regarding her use of a private email server, a parallel probe into the Clinton Foundation regarding allegations of corruption is still ongoing.

The decision to sunset the Clinton Global Initiative reportedly set off a dispute within Clinton Foundation circles regarding the best way to handle the fallout from the allegations. Some complained the layoff process was “insensitively” handled, Politico reported, while others took issue with the optics of allowing anyone with the Clinton Global Initiative to stay on.

And while CGI is now officially being "discontinued", the same fate likely awaits the Clinton Foundation itself following news in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton"s loss to Trump that Australia has cut its donations to the foundation to $0, while the far more generous Norway likewise slashed its donations by 87% as the political cout of the "charitable" organization dried up and as the opportunity for any future "quid pro quo" is now effectively gone.

Clinton Foundation Admits It Broke The Law In Leaked "Smoking Gun" Memo

While there are conflicting reports whether the FBI may or may not indict the Clinton Foundation, which as the WSJ reported last week is being investigated by various FBI teams, even as other parts of the Bureau - and the DOJ - seek to squash the probe, the latest dump of Podesta emails has revealed a critical, confidential memo from prominent New York lawyer Kumiki Gibson to Clinton Foundation Chairman Bruce Lindsey (and former Bill Clinton attorney) which was performed as part of an inside audit of the foundation, and confirms that the charitable organization (which it found "operates more like a political operation") was engaged in practices that broke the law.

Bruce Lindsey serves as the chairman of the Board for the Clinton Foundation

As Gibson, who according to her resume "counseled the William J. Clinton Foundation, an international not-for-profit organization, on structural, legal, and compliance issues” from May 2008 until January 2014, wrote the purpose of the confidential November 10, 2008 memo, was to "set forth the findings of my review of the Legal and Human Resources Departments of the William J. Clinton Foundation (“Foundation”) and those pertaining to other areas of the Foundation revealed during this review, and my recommendations to the Foundation based on this review."

The summary reveals serious reservations about the viability of the foundation - which "operates more like a political operation" than a "professional, strategic, and sustainable corporation committed to advancing its overall mission" - if and when Bill Clinton were to depart and "the Foundation has to rise and/or fall on its own name and work only."

While the Foundation has grown impressively over the past several years, it has a number of fundamental organizational challenges and deficiencies that undermine its effectiveness, expose it to significant risk, and, ultimately, threaten its long-term survival.  The Foundation (as opposed to its initiatives, which I have not reviewed) operates more like a political operation focused on immediate situations, tasks, and events, as opposed to a professional, strategic, and sustainable corporation committed to advancing its overall mission.  While that may not be a problem while the President is personally involved in the Foundation -- and can garner support based on that involvement -- it will be a problem when he is no longer involved, and the Foundation has to rise and/or fall on its own name and work only.

The chief risks identified in Gibson"s outside review, stem from both its Legal and Human Resource Departments, as well as Bill Clinton"s unwillingness to "allow the Board and CEO to make the changes necessary for it to become sustainable, even great."

If the leadership (that is, the Board and the CEO) intends and wants the organization to survive beyond the President’s personal involvement, then it must take measures to move the organization onto a path of sustainability, starting with revamping both the Legal and Human Resources (“HR”) Departments; reviewing its corporate structure and governance documents; and, perhaps most importantly, having a frank discussion with the President about the current state of the organization, the future of the organization, and his appetite and willingness to allow the Board and CEO to make the changes necessary for it to become sustainable, even great.    

As the summary concludes, "the time for making these changes, if they are desired, could not be better:  The presidential campaign, which distracted some key employees and caused uncertainty among others about the future of the organization, is now over; virtually all of the employees interviewed are anxious for more structure, professionalism, and mission-focus; and funders are expecting the same."

Next follows a detailed and highly critical analysis of the Foundation"s (1) shared values, (2) strategy, (3) structure, (4) systems, (5) staff, (6) style, and (7) skills, which the review finds "the Foundation to significant legal and reputational risks, results in inconsistencies and inefficiencies, and undermines its work and viability" and leads to the following conclusion about the CF"s operational shortcomings:

The assessment of the organization through the 7-S Framework makes clear that the organization is not operating as effectively or efficiently as it should or could.  Indeed, it has major deficiencies in each of the fundamental areas.  Each of these deficiencies, standing alone, threatens the effectiveness of the Foundation in the short and long term.  When combined, as currently the case, they threaten its very existence (absent the President’s involvement).    

The outside legal review of the Clinton Foundation is that, at least operationally, the only thing that was keeping the enterprise going was the presence of Bill Clinton, whose anchor role to match donors with "uses of funds" and subsequent distribution of favors , aka "pay for play" made the former president indispensable in an organization that would otherwise not survive:

Because it is unclear whether the President wants the Foundation to exist beyond his personal involvement, the Foundation’s leadership (that is, the Board and CEO) should address this question head-on with the President.  That will require a frank discussion with the President about his desire, willingness, and appetite to move the Foundation to the next level of development.  If the President concludes that he does, in fact, want the Foundation to survive and thrive beyond his involvement, then he should authorize and empower the CEO and Board to make the changes necessary for this survival.

* * *

However, while all of that is troubling, and suggests that the CF was - from day one - just a corporate extension of Bill Clinton"s persona, it was in no way illegal. Where the alarm bells go off, however, is taking a look at page 9 of the memo, where Gibson does a review of the Foundation"s "Legal and HR Departments", something troubling emerges, which perhaps the FBI may want to take a particularly close look at. The following:

No matter what the leadership decides about the larger, over-arching question, it must act immediately to bring the Foundation into compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits, and must create strong legal and HR offices so to prevent any lapses in the future. 

The memo also notes that "the Foundation has very few procedures, processes, and systems in place, and even fewer that are consistent across the organization.  For example, it is missing several policies/procedures that are required by law (e.g., record retention policy).  Moreover, although it has an employee manual, that manual is not comprehensive and is not distributed or followed consistently across the organization."

What makes this (systems) deficiency particularly problematic is that (1) the organization is legally liable for the acts of its offices and initiatives and those who run them; (2) managers in key positions have no to little experience in not-for-profit management and thus do not even possess the right instincts when faced with a problem for which there is no policy or procedure; and (3) there is no established mechanism for catching problems and mistakes.  

Gibson"s take: "In short, the systems deficiency subjects the Foundation to significant legal and reputational risks, results in inconsistencies and inefficiencies, and undermines its work and viability. "

Simply stated, as of the day the memo was written, the Foundation was not in compliance with the law and with standards that govern "not-for-profits."

* * *

Among the policies and procedures that Gibson found missing or inadequate at the Foundation were the following, some of which - such as the procedures the CF was utilizing in Harlem -  may be in violation of the law. Here is a brief sample of the findings:

• The Foundation lacks important policies and procedures and a real process to ensure compliance, resulting in increased risks, confusion, conflicting (and perhaps arbitrary) decisions, and inefficiencies.  


• The Foundation does not have a record retention policy, and the procedures currently utilized in Harlem may violate the law.


• It is unclear whether lower level employees actually meet the definition of exempt under the Fair Labor Standards Act.


• Processes and employment decisions are made on an ad hoc basis. 


• Staff complained about the lack of comprehensive and/or written policies and procedures.


• Staff complained about the lack of a real complaint and/or whistleblower policy.

And many more.

Furthermore, and more troubling, the review pointed to a high-ranking but unnamed foundation executive who was “being paid by [President Clinton], the government and the foundation” who “allowed the foundation to host what may have been (or may have been viewed as) a political event, apparently without official pre-approval from the foundation’s legal department and without regard, before the fact, to the impact of that decision on the foundation’s tax exempt status.”

While the conclusion avoids repeating the explicit accusation of operating outside of the law - we assume Gibson did not want to scare the Clinton Foundation too much, and thus avoid repeat work - it is a stark condemnation of the underlying practices and principles of operation:

The challenges and deficiencies plaguing the Foundation cannot be over-stated:  They are real and undermine the organization’s effectiveness, immediately and more long term.  To address the issues that present immediate threats, the Foundation should revamp its Legal and HR operations, should review its governance structure and documents; and should have an open and honest discussion with the President about the future of the Foundation. 

It is illegal for tax-exempt non-profit foundations like the Clinton Foundation to be linked with partisan political events as described in the review report.

The Lindsey memo was distributed just two days before the Clinton Foundation with Obama’s transition office Dec. 12, 2008, as part of the president-elect’s decision to appoint Hillary Clinton as the nation’s chief diplomat. Obama wanted assurance that no conflicts of interest would arise between Clinton’s work as Secretary of State and the foundation, which had operations in numerous foreign countries.

It is unclear if any of these recommendations were implemented, or if the CF is now in "compliance with the law and standards that govern not-for-profits." It is clear, however, that at least at one point it was not. It remains to be seen if such illegal activity will be grounds for the DOJ to permit the FBI to do its job and indict a foundation that, as lawyer determined, was operating in a fraudulent fashion.

Full leaked memo below (link):