Top Nuclear Official Agrees With Senator Who Says Obama Admin "Misled" On Uranium One Deal

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Kristine Svinicki responded to questions raised by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) regarding a key aspect of the Uranium One deal, agreeing that the Obama Administration had not "fully depicted" the complexity of the transaction which ultimately gave the Kremlin control over 20% of US uranium. 

“I would note that, as your letter makes clear, the responses you have received have not fully depicted the complexity of this issue” -Kristine Svinicki, NRC Chair

Svinicki"s response fell short of agreeing with Barrasso that he had been "misled" over the deal to export yellowcake uranium from the Senator"s home state of Wyoming out of the country.

Barrasso says he was given "misleading" answers on whether or not Russian mined US uranium would be allowed to leave the country, based on revelations from The Hill which revealed the Obama administration allowed the uranium to leave the country by "piggy-backing" onto an export license held by shipping company, RSB Logistic Services Inc. 

Rep. John Barrasso (R-WY)

In a Monday letter to the NRC and the Energy Department, Barrasso wrote:

Prior to the approval of the sale [of Uranium One], I wrote to then-President Barack Obama registering my strong concerns regarding Russian control over American uranium production facilities and Russia"s ability to ship U.S. uranium overseas. I also requested immediate notification should ARMZ file for a license to export U.S. uranium. Based on information that has recently come to light, I now believe the response I received, and the process by which I received it, were both misleading.

 

On March 21, 2011, former NRC Chairman Greg Jaczko responded to my letter on behalf of then-President Obama stating:

 ‘At this time, neither Uranium One Inc. nor ARMZ holds a specific NRC export license. In order to export uranium from the United States, Uranium One, Inc. or 

ARMZ would need to apply for and obtain a specific NRC license authorizing the export of uranium for use in reactor fuel’

 

The NRC staff made a similar statement in their recommendation to approve the transfer control of Uranium One to ARMZ, stating: 

 

 "before the licensee may export uranium to a foreign country, they must first comply with the NRC"s regulations and seek a specific license for such purpose."

 

Recent reporting by The Hill uncovered that Uranium One was able to export uranium without obtaining a specific export license. Beginning in 2012, Uranium One exported U.S. uranium by ‘piggy-backing’ as a supplier on an export license held by the shipping company, RSB Logistic Services Inc.

Barrasso originally wrote to the Obama administration in 2010 with concerns over Russia"s ability to export uranium overseas. In 2011, Obama-appointed NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko off the letter, noting the company would need an export license.

Barrasso says this was misleading during a Wednesday Senate hearing, stating “I specifically raised concerns about future exports of U.S. uranium by Uranium One,” adding “I believe the Obama administration’s response to my letter was at best misleading.”

Following Barrasso"s comments, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works requested that the NRC and the Energy Department produce documents related to the Obama administration"s response to the 2010 letter. Barrasso says he has evidence that the Energy Department misled him on their role in approving the uranium exports, and pointed out the enormous loophole which allowed Uranium One to export without a license. 

“Uranium One did not need a specific NRC license to export U.S. uranium,” said Barrasso, adding “Instead, Uranium One only needed to be, and later was, listed as a supplier on a transport company’s NRC export license.”

The New York Times covered the Uranium One story in 2015, detailing donations which poured into the Clinton Foundation from individuals associated with the deal - which was later found to be upwards of $140 million. Meanwhile, a series of follow-up reports from The Hill have filled in the gaps with several bombshells, including: 

• The FBI had a mole deep within the Russian uranium industry who gathered evidence of millions of dollars routed to  the Clinton Foundation by Russian nuclear officials. 


• The mole says there is a video showing Russians stuffing a briefcase full of bribe money, joking about Americans.


• Bill Clinton met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at his Moscow estate right before the Uranium One deal was approved, which was the same day he collected a $500,000 check for a speech to a Russian investment bank which issued a favorable rating to Uranium One stock. 

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. -The Hill

• There was an internal scramble at the FBI to preserve records from all of the agencies which approved the Uranium One deal, as uncovered by Twitter user "Katica" after pouring through emails obtained via FOIA request. 

The agencies which received the request included the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Dept. of Treasury, the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI James Clapper), The National Counter Terrorism Center, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

 

Five days after the initial request, the same FBI agent sent another round of notifications to the same agencies, adding the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Secret Service (USSS).

The next day, September 3rd, 2015, three more agencies were added to the preservation request: The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Defense (DOD)

 

At this point, every single member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) which signed off on the Uranium One deal was served with a notice to preserve records. 

There is so much more to the deal involving players like Tony Podesta, Paul Manafort, and various members of the Obama administration - one wonders if, and when, the dam will ever break under the overwhelming weight of malfeasance - sending waves of corrupt politicians and lobbyists down the drain. 

Identity of Secret Informant In FBI’s Clinton Probe Unveiled

More information about the Congressional probes into the Obama-era Uranium One deal leaked out Thursday when Reuters reported that Senate Republicans say their investigation into the Clinton’s role in approving the deal largely hinges on the testimony of a secret informant who was until recently the subject of a federal gag order.

But a month after Trump asked the DOJ to lift the gag order - a command that the DOJ promptly obeyed - the man has decided to speak out publicly for the first time in an interview with Reuters.

His name is Christopher Campbell, and was formerly a lobbyist for Tenex, the US-based arm of Rosatom, the Russian government’s nuclear agency.

At the time the Uranium One deal was approved, Campbell was a confidential source for the FBI in a Maryland bribery and kickback investigation that eventually led to the conviction of the head of the US unit of Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear power company that received permission to buy Uranium One from a US strategic-resources panel, on bribery and corruption charges. Campbell was identified as an FBI informant by prosecutors in open court and by himself in a publicly available lawsuit he filed last year, but his identity as the informant was somehow not widely known, Reuters noted.

That’s largely because the DOJ put Campbell under a gag order after the investigation was settled. The FBI never informed Congress of its investigation into corruption at Rosatom and Uranium One, and in 2010, Hillary Clinton and a majority of the nine-member panel voted to approve the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom - thereby ceding control of 20% of US uranium assets to Russia.

Campbell’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, who has not previously identified her client, said despite Campbell telling the government ”how corrupt the company was,” Rosatom still got permission to buy Uranium One. And while that certainly sounds suspicious, she didn’t say what Campbell would reveal regarding any alleged wrongdoing by Clinton.

A Uranium One Facility

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Campbell said he wanted to testify because of his concerns about Russia’s activities in the United States, but declined to comment further.

Campbell’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, who has not previously identified her client, said despite Campbell telling the government ”how corrupt the company was,” Rosatom still got permission to buy Uranium One. She did not say what Campbell would reveal regarding any alleged wrongdoing by Clinton.

However, some law enforcement officials who spoke with Reuters under cover of anonymity said they doubt Campbell would be much help to investigators digging into Uranium One.  That’s because although both Uranium One and the bribery cases involved Rosatom, the two cases involved different business units, executives and allegations, with little other apparent overlap, Reuters found in a review of the court records of the bribery case.

Yet Campbell insisted that he had meaningful evidence of corruption related specifically to the Uranium One deal.

Campbell countered those who dismiss his knowledge of the Uranium One deal. “I have worked with the Justice Department undercover for several years, and documentation relating to Uranium One and political influence does exist and I have it,” Campbell said. He declined to give details of those documents.

And Campbell’s role in the probe will likely only expand if the Justice Department does end up appointing a special prosecutor, as a leak to the Washington Post Monday suggested it might. Though AG Jeff Sessions was quick to play down those rumors during public testimony earlier this week.

Campbell potentially now has a larger starring role in the Washington drama after the Justice Department said in a letter to Congress on Monday that it was considering appointing a special prosecutor to launch an investigation into Republican allegations of wrongdoing by Clinton, Trump’s former political rival, in the deal.

 

Under Clinton, the State Department was part of a nine-agency government Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States that approved the purchase of Uranium One. Her critics, including Trump, allege large donations by people connected to the Uranium One deal made to her family’s foundation influenced the State Department’s decision to approve it.

 

Reuters has no evidence that Clinton orchestrated the approval of Uranium One.

 

In an email, Rosatom said the company had made no donations to the Clinton Foundation and had not asked others to do so. The foundation stressed the State Department was only one member of the committee that approved the deal and said Clinton had no personal involvement in the decision.

 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley said in a letter to Toensing, Campbell’s lawyer, that her client appears to have information “critical to the Committee’s oversight of the Justice Department and its ongoing inquiry into the manner in which” the Uranium One sale was approved.

As Reuters reports, Campbell was slated to testify against Vadim Mikerin, the Russian official in charge of US operations for Tenex, the US-based unit of Rosatom. Authorities later accused Mikerin of taking bribes from a shipping company in exchange for contracts to transport Russian uranium into the United States. He pleaded guilty in federal court in Maryland and was sentenced to prison for four years. The Justice Department had also initially charged Mikerin with extorting kickbacks from Campbell after hiring him as a $50,000-a-month lobbyist.

However, prosecutors eventually decided against it, saying Campbell lacked credibility.

Prosecutors alleged Mikerin had demanded Campbell pay between one-third and half of that money back to him each month under threat of losing the contract and veiled warnings of violence from the Russians. The demand prompted Campbell to turn to the FBI in 2010, which gave its blessing for him to remain part of the scheme.

 

Federal prosecutors were ready to use Campbell as a star witness against Mikerin, but they backed away after defense attorneys raised questions about Campbell’s credibility and whether he was a victim or had “entered into a business arrangement with eyes wide open,” according to court records.

As is often the case when it comes to international espionage and corruption, many questions remain unanswered. Prosecutors dropped the extortion charges against Mikerin and never mentioned Campbell again in any charging documents. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the case. Campbell also declined to comment on the issue.

Reuters has been unable to learn why Tenex chose Campbell as its lobbyist. He acknowledged in lawsuit he filed in 2016 that he was hired despite the fact he “had no experience with nuclear fuel sales."

Given his proximity to some of the individuals at the center of the Congressional investigations, it’s possible Campbell might be able to provide some game-changing information about Uranium One that could better illuminate the Clintons’ role in approving the deal. Of course, he could be just another crank.

New FOIA Documents Reveal FBI Scramble To Preserve CFIUS Records In Uranium One Scandal

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

An internet researcher has uncovered what appears to be proof that the FBI was investigating the Uranium One deal back in 2015 – months after the Peter Schweizer book Clinton Cash exposed the scheme, along with an article in the New York Times which laid out allegations of criminal malfeasance by the Clintons, their charitable foundation, and several associates.

Twitter user Katica (@GOPPollAnalyst) – who notably discovered Hillary Clinton’s IT guy ‘Stonetear’ asking Reddit users how to strip Clinton’s name from archived emails – discovered several Preservation and Records requests sent by an FBI special agent to various agencies involved in the approval of the Uranium One deal on August 28th, 2015, as first published by The Conservative Treehouse. Katica found the requests buried in an FBI file released via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Revealing Timeline

While the Clinton email investigation was launched in March of 2015 after it was revealed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used a personal server and non-approved email accounts to conduct government business, reports from August, 2015 revealed that the FBI investigation was actually a criminal probe – though most assumed it was simply covering Clinton’s mishandling of classified information and not the content of her emails.

What Katica discovered is that weeks after the criminal probe began, the FBI sent notices to every agency involved in the Uranium One approval process to preserve records.

This is huge… 

The agencies which received the request included the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Dept. of Treasury, the Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI James Clapper), The National Counter Terrorism Center, and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Five days after the initial request, the same FBI agent sent another round of notifications to the same agencies, adding the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.S. Secret Service (USSS).

The next day, September 3rd, 2015, three more agencies were added to the preservation request: The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Department of Defense (DOD)

At this point, every single member of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) which signed off on the Uranium One deal was served with a notice to preserve records. 

As The Conservative Treehouse notes:

It would be intellectually dishonest not to see the very likely attachment of the special agent’s action.  That is to say an FBI probe originating as an outcome of information retrieved in parallel to the timing of the “criminal probe” of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email use.

The sequence of events highlights a criminal probe starting [early August 2015], followed by notifications to the “Uranium One” CFIUS participants [late August 2015].

If you consider the larger Clinton timeline; along with the FBI special agent requests from identified participants; and overlay the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the leading entity surrounding the probe elements; and the fact that the CFIUS participants were the recipients of the retention requests;  well, it’s just too coincidental to think this is unrelated to the Uranium One deal and the more alarming implications.

FBI Mole 

Let’s not forget a bombshell report from The Hill two weeks ago which revealed that as early as 2009, the FBI – led by Robert Mueller at the time, had a mole in the Russian uranium industry, and that the agency had evidence that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow” – a deal which would grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America’s uranium supply. 

The mole was forced to sign an iron-clad non-disclosure agreement (NDA) which threatened criminal penalties for revealing information, even to Congress. After a request was made by Reps Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) calling for the Justice department to invalidate the NDA, the gag order was lifted, and the FBI informant was authorized to speak with congress.

BREAKING: DOJ authorizes FBI Informant to speak with Congress concerning alleged corruption involving Clintons & Uranium One. #MAGA #DTS

— Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) October 25, 2017

Tony Podesta and Uranium One

While one-time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort turned himself in to the FBI a week ago on charges of money laundering, let’s not forget what a former Podesta Group executive interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller told Tucker Carlson Tonight: the FBI probe is now focusing on people in Washington who have worked as de-facto operatives on behalf of Russian government and business. To that end, he had quite a bit to say about his former boss Tony and his relationship to the Uranium One deal.

• In late 2013 or early 2014, Tony Podesta and a representative for the Clinton Foundation met to discuss how to help Uranium One – the Russian owned company that controls 20 percent of American Uranium Production – and whose board members gave over $100 million to the Clinton Foundation.


• In 2013, John Podesta recommended that Tony hire David Adams, Hillary Clinton’s chief adviser at the State Department, giving them a “direct liaison” between the group’s Russian clients and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.


• “Tony Podesta was basically part of the Clinton Foundation.”

As far as the current state of the FBI investigation, “They are more focused on facilitators of Russian influence in this country than they are on election collusion,” Carlson’s source told Fox.

Tying it together – previous reports of Federal investigations into the Clinton Foundation: 

Katica’s FOIA discovery corroborates a New York Times report from November 1, 2016, which asserts that an FBI investigation was kicked off based on revelations of pay-for-play in the book “Clinton Cash” written by Peter Schweizer:

The investigation, based in New York, had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book “Clinton Cash,” according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.

The book asserted that foreign entities gave money to former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, and in return received favors from the State Department when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton has adamantly denied those claims. -NYT

The Wall St. Journal also reported last October that five FBI field offices were investigating the Clinton Foundation; New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Little Rock and  Miami, and “were collecting information about the Clinton Foundation to see if there was evidence of financial crimes or influence-peddling, according to people familiar with the matter.”

The FBI field office in New York had done the most work on the Clinton Foundation case and received help from the FBI field office in Little Rock, the people familiar with the matter said. –WSJ

And in November, as tweeted by Wikileaks and reported on by the Dallas Observer, the Clinton Foundation has been under investigation by the IRS since July of 2016, after 64 GOP members of Congress received letters urging them to push for an investigation. The investigation has been notably held at the Dallas IRS office – far away from Washington.

The Earle Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas is an all purpose office complex, a bastion of federal bureaucracy located at 1100 Commerce St. Most people come for a passport or to get business done in front of a federal judge. But inside, a quiet review is underway that has direct ties to the raging presidential election: The local branch of the IRS’ Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division is reviewing the tax status of the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

So – while the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton was sold as a simple matter of mishandling of classified material, we now have proof that the FBI set their sights on the Uranium One scandal weeks after they began looking into Hillary Clinton’s emails. We also know that five FBI field offices and the IRS have been investigating the Clinton Foundation on accusations of pay-to-play and other criminal acts. 

Bets on who’s indicted next?

Flashback to October 27, 2016

Wallace Says HARD NEW PROOF Hillary Clinton Foundation/Bill & State Colluded 4PAY4PLAYS via Doug Band #PodestaEmails20 "s #Thursdaythoughts pic.twitter.com/CxOpiKtW3w

— ????STOCK MONSTER???? (@StockMonsterUSA) October 27, 2016

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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.

Senate Seeks To Interview FBI Informant Linking Russian Nuclear Bribery Case To Clinton Foundation

Yesterday we wrote about the FBI"s undercover informant in the Russian nuclear bribery scandal who tried to come forward with his story last year but was silenced after being "threatened" by the Obama administration (full summary at the bottom of this post). 

Now it seems as though the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Grassley, has finally taken an interest in what "Confidential Source 1" might have to say about Russians, bribes, the Clinton Foundation and the Obama administration"s efforts to silence him.  According to Circa, Chuck Grassley has sent a formal letter to the informant"s attorney requesting that her client testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley asked the attorney of a former FBI informant Wednesday to allow her client to testify before his committee regarding the FBI"s investigation regarding kickbacks and bribery by the Russian state controlled nuclear company that was approved to purchase twenty percent of United States uranium supply in 2010, Circa has learned.

In a formal letter, Grassley, an Iowa Republican, asked Victoria Toensing, the lawyer representing the former FBI informant, to allow her client, who says he worked as a voluntary informant for the FBI, to be allowed to testify about the "crucial" eyewitness testimony he provided to the FBI regarding members of the Russian subsidiary and other connected players from 2009 until the FBI"s prosecution of the defendants in 2014.

"Reporting indicates that “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” and that the scheme involved “bribery, kickbacks, money laundering, and extortion," Grassley states in his letter. "Further, the reporting indicates that your client can testify that "FBI agents made comments to him suggesting political pressure was exerted during the Justice Department probe" and "that there was specific evidence that could have scuttled approval of the Uranium One deal." It appears that your client possesses unique information about the Uranium One/Rosatom transaction and how the Justice Department handled the criminal investigation into the Russian criminal conspiracy."

Grassley added that "such information is critical to the Committee’s oversight of the Justice Department and its ongoing inquiry into the manner in which CFIUS approved the transaction. Accordingly, the Committee requests to interview your client."

* * *

For those who missed it, below is further background on "Confidential Source 1" from our post yesterday.

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...

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

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...