Uranium One (2005- ) was a South African company bought by a Canadian uranium mining company in 2007. It has holdings in South Africa, Australia, Canada, the US, and Kazakhstan. Its holdings in the US are mainly in Wyoming and Utah. In 2014 it produced 11% of the uranium in the US.
In 2009 Rosatom, the Russian government’s nuclear energy company, bought 17% of Uranium One. In 2010 it had 51%, and in 2013 it had 100%.
In 2017 it is part of the latest Hillary Clinton scandal being pushed hard by Fox News – a year after she lost the presidential election! Congress is now looking into it. And Banana Republicans want the FBI to look into it too.
Trump himself brought up the Uranium One scandal back when he was running for president. On June 22nd 2016 he said:
“[Hillary Clinton’s State Department] approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”
Trump is talking about the deal in 2010 where Rosatom bought a controlling stake in Uranium One. The US government approved the deal when Clinton was Secretary of State.
The claim comes from “Clinton Cash” (2015) by Peter Schweizer of Breitbart News.
PolitiFact rates the claim as Mostly False:
“The bottom line: While the connections between the Clinton Foundation and the Russian deal may appear fishy, there’s simply no proof of any quid pro quo.”
First, the deal would not allow Russia to export uranium from the US. Thus no real “transfer”.
Second, only one of the nine investors gave money at the time of the deal: Ian Telfer. He gave between $1.3 to $5.6 million. While Clinton would presumably look more favourably on Telfer, the decision was not in her gift because:
Third, the deal required the approval of CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States). The State Department was only one of nine government agencies on that committee. There were also the departments of:
- Treasury (chairman),
- Defence,
- Justice,
- Commerce,
- Energy,
- Homeland Security,
and the:
- Office of the US Trade Representative, and the
- Office of Science and Technology Policy.
In addition to CFIUS, the deal also had to be approved by the:
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and
- Utah’s nuclear regulator,
All 11 approved the deal.
Fourth, the person who approved it at State was Jose Fernandez, the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs. He said that Clinton “never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.” The Secretary of State generally does not, nor in this case is there (yet) any proof to the contrary.
Note that there might be some huge Clinton Foundation “pay to play” scandal, but so far this does not appear to be one.
Far more troubling is Trump’s Banana Republicanism. In the past US presidents did not use the power of the state to go after their defeated opponents. Obama did not go after Romney, etc. This is more like what they do in banana republics, where opposition leaders often find themselves in jail by election time.
– Abagond, 2017.
Source: mainly PolitiFact.
See also:
- The 2016 election
- banana republic
- Republican Bubble
- Russiagate – the scandal being deflected from
- Autocracy: Rules for Survival
531
Mugabe got pretty much smacked down today
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@ v8driver
A poster child for term limits if ever I saw one.
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Whitewater was the Watergate that got away from the GOP. And ever since then, Republicans have been desperately scrambling to avenge Watergate by finding a major scandal – any scandal – that’d result in the incarceration of a major Dem political figure. It’s little wonder the GOP’s constantly salivating over the mere thought of Hillary Clinton being collared, cuffed and convicted.
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@ abagond
You gotta admit one thing – For a 91-year-old guy, Mugabe doesn’t look a day over 75.
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Even though I know that Abagond is no big fan of Hillary, the tone of these kinds of posts sound like he might be a Hillary apologist. Maybe it is because it discusses how HIllary was wrongly accused, but Trump is guilty as sin.
To sound less apologetic, maybe it might be good to add a clause where HIllary is or at least might be guilty of something, or where Trump has been wrongly accused, eg,
“Unlike (XXX incident) where Hillary’s role in the matter is still suspect, …
or
“Trump is not guilty of everything the press has published about him. For example, the story of his hanging a Confederate flag in the White house has now been marked as a hoax.”
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@ jefe
I added:
As to Trump, this post does not presume the truth of any of the scandals he has been accused of. It DOES take issue with an anti-democratic precedent he might be setting.
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@ Abagond
Curious.
In Third World societies we oft think that the main difference between us and the First World is just that the late are characterized by strong institutions.
Are we supposed to think that this time those strong institutions are not able to prevent those misdeeds by fractions of the ruling elite?
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@ munubantu
At this point in the USA, strong institutions have been hollowed out. Institutions such as an independent media, a powerful judiciary and an autonomous academic sector are shells of their former selves.
The hollowing out has been done for profit (corporatization) or ideology
(rightwing takeovers). In the case of the media, their business model based on advertising revenue collapsed. Scores of US newspapers have ceased operations in the past fifteen years alone.
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@ Munubantu
“Are we supposed to think that this time those strong institutions are not able to prevent those misdeeds by fractions of the ruling elite?”
It is a constant struggle to keep those institutions strong, especially when people within those institutions may themselves be corrupt and may commit misdeeds or collude with the ruling elite.
There is a popular saying in the U.S. that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Many people right now interpret this to mean military vigilance. But I think historically it has been applied more often to vigilance against our own citizen leaders who would love to weaken our democracy.
For example, this 1852 quote by the U.S. abolitionist Wendell Phillips:
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@ munubantu
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