Monthly Archives: October 2017

Uranium One Goes Back to ‘Senator’ Hillary Clinton

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The Clinton’s were masters at cunning operations for power, money and access. Along the way, they exploited people for help and threw others under the bus. The Clinton’s were crafty and cunning enough to ensure their fingerprints were never on the evidence and deferred to loyal lawyers due to the ability to apply attorney client privileges.

Going back in time and space with Hillary takes us to at least as far back as when she was a New York senator, the foundation and her craft in politics. Conspiracy and connivance were and are a daily action by Hillary. Not all the blame with Uranium One belongs to Hillary. There are her lawyers and powerbrokers globally that belong to this network.

Russia has intruded into all things America because at least Hillary and the Obama administration allowed them in.

There were several members of congress that had various depths of knowledge regarding selling uranium to Russia and expressed concerns including documents to Obama administration officials only to get nothing. Assigned FBI agents admitted being stonewalled due to ‘politics’ as well to the informant.

So, what did the media know and did they report? Yes, some of them for sure, yet there were so many scandals running concurrently, it was hardly noticed if at all. Even the New York Times reported.

As a refresher:

2015/The story involves a Canadian company called Uranium One, a Russian investor, the State Department, and The Clinton Foundation.

“As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation,” The Times reports.

Here’s the high-level summary. There are more details below.

• Canadian company Uranium One owned uranium mines in the US and Kazakhstan.

• Uranium One’s mines account for 20% of the uranium mined in the US. Uranium is used for nuclear weapons, and it’s considered a strategic asset to the US.

• Russia’s state-owned atomic agency, Rosatom, bought a 17% stake in Uranium One in June 2009.

• The Russian atomic agency decided it wanted to own 51% of Uranium One in June 2010. To take a majority stake in Uranium One, it needed approval from a special committee that included the State Department, which Hillary Clinton led at the time.

• Investors in Uranium One gave money to the Clinton Foundation starting in 2005 and through 2011. On June 29, 2010, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Russia by an investment bank with ties to Russia’s government that had a buy rating on Uranium One’s stock.

• In January 2013, despite assurances to the contrary, a subsidiary of Rosatom took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

• Clinton was required to disclose all of her foundation’s contributors before she became secretary of state, but the Clintons did not disclose millions of dollars donated by the chairman of Uranium One while the review of the deal was ongoing.

“Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million,” The Times reports. “Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

The Times’ revelations appear to have originated from reporting in “Clinton Cash,” a forthcoming book by conservative author Peter Schweizer, which was provided to the newspaper for advance reporting. The report said The Times “scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.”

The Clinton campaign and its allies have aggressively dismissed the book as partisan conspiracy-mongering. In a statement to The Times, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the State Department was only one of multiple US government bodies that approved the transaction.

“[No one] has produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation,” Fallon told The Times. “To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the US government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless.”

Here are some key points from the Times report:

  • According to The Times, Uranium One’s involvement with the Clintons stretches back to 2005, when former President Bill Clinton accompanied Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to Kazakhstan, where they met with authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Going against American foreign policy at the time, Bill Clinton expressed support for Nazarbayev’s bid to lead an international elections monitoring group.
  • Soon after, Giustra’s company, UrAsia Energy (the predecessor to Uranium One) won stakes in three uranium mines controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-run uranium agency. Months after the deal, Giustra reportedly donated $31.3 million to Clinton’s foundation.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev greets former U.S. president Bill ClintonKazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev with former US President Bill Clinton in Almaty in 2005. Clinton traveled to the ex-Soviet Central Asian state to sign an agreement with the government, admitting Kazakhstan into the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative Procurement Consortium.REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov SZH/DH

  • After the legality of the Kazakhstan deal was called into question, Uranium One asked the American embassy in Kazakhstan for help. Uranium One’s executive vice president copied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a cable saying he wanted an official written confirmation that the company’s licenses in Kazakhstan were still valid, according to The Times. Soon after, the embassy’s energy officer met with Kazakh officials.
  • In June 2009 ARMZ, a subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency Rosatom, finalized a deal for a 17% stake in Uranium One. In June 2010, the Russian government sought a 51% controlling stake in the company that would have to be approved by the American government. Rosatom also said that after that, the agency “did not plan to increase its stake in Uranium One or to take the company private,” The Times noted in a timeline of the events.
  • Investors with ties to Uranium One and UrAsia donated millions to the foundation in 2010 and 2011. These donations were disclosed. In addition to this, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month that the Russians closed the deal for the majority stake in Uranium One. The speaking fee was one of Clinton’s highest, according to The Times.
  • The US Committee on Foreign Investment, which includes the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, and the secretary of state, were charged with reviewing the deal that would give Rosatom a majority stake because uranium is “considered a strategic asset with implications for national security,” according to The Times.
  • The concern was American dependence on foreign uranium. The Times notes that while the US “gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20% of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves.”
  • Four members of Congress signed a letter expressing concern over the deal, and two others drafted legislation to kill it. One senator contended that the deal “would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity” as well as “a significant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made assurances that the US uranium would be preserved for domestic use regardless of the deal.
  • Final say over the deal rested with the foreign investment committee, “including Mrs. Clinton — whose husband was collecting millions of dollars in donations from people associated with Uranium One,” The Times notes.
  • After the deal was approved in October 2010, Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko, said in an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20% of US reserves.”
    • A source with knowledge of the Clintons’ fundraising pointed out to The Times that people donate because they hope that money will buy influence. The source said: “Why do you think they are doing it — because they love them?”
    • Despite claims by Russia that the country didn’t intend to increase its stake in Uranium One or take the company private, ARMZ — the subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency — took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange in January 2013.

    “Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown,” The Times concluded. “But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.”

    Now that Hillary Clinton formally announced a presidential run, her foundation has come under increasing scrutiny.

    Her family’s charities are refiling at least five tax returns after Reuters found errors in how the foundations reported donations from governments, the news wire reported this week.

 

 

Trump Delays Release of Some JFK Files

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Donald Trump delays release of some of the final JFK assassination files

Here is the link to the archives.

The National Archives will release 2,800 documents on Thursday, the White House said in a call with reporters that afternoon. The release of a number of other documents with redactions will be postponed for 180 days to allow for further review. “The vast majority” of the redactions were requested by the FBI and CIA, according to a White House spokeswoman.

According to the archives, “much of what will be released will be tangential to the assassination events.”

The documents were expected to focus on Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and his exploits in Mexico City two months before he shot the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, according to USA Today.

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ChicagoTribune: President Donald Trump acted Thursday to block the release of hundreds of records on the John F. Kennedy assassination, bending to CIA and FBI appeals to keep those secrets.

“I have no choice,” Trump said in a memo, according to White House officials. He was placing those files under a six-month review while letting 2,800 other records come out Thursday evening, racing a deadline to honor a law mandating their release.

Officials say Trump will impress upon federal agencies that JFK files should stay secret after the six-month review “only in the rarest cases.”

Much of Thursday passed with nothing from the White House or National Archives except silence, leaving unclear how the government would comply with a law requiring the records to come out by the end of the day — unless Trump had been persuaded by intelligence agencies to hold some back.

White House officials said the FBI and CIA made the most requests within the government to withhold some information.

No blockbusters had been expected in the last trove of secret files regarding Kennedy’s assassination Nov. 22, 1963, given a statement months ago by the Archives that it assumed the records, then under preparation, would be “tangential” to what’s known about the killing.

But for historians, it’s a chance to answer lingering questions, put some unfounded conspiracy theories to rest, perhaps give life to other theories — or none of that, if the material adds little to the record.

Researchers were frustrated by the uncertainty that surrounded the release for much of the day.

“The government has had 25 years_with a known end-date_to prepare #JFKfiles for release,” University of Virginia historian Larry Sabato tweeted in the afternoon. “Deadline is here. Chaos.”

Asked what he meant, Sabato emailed to say: “Contradictory signals were given all day. Trump’s tweets led us to believe that disclosure was ready to go. Everybody outside government was ready to move quickly.”

Trump had been a bit coy about the scheduled release on the eve of it, tweeting: “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!”

Experts say the publication of the last trove of evidence could help allay suspicions of a conspiracy — at least for some.

“As long as the government is withholding documents like these, it’s going to fuel suspicion that there is a smoking gun out there about the Kennedy assassination,” said Patrick Maney, a presidential historian at Boston College.

The collection includes more than 3,100 records — comprising hundreds of thousands of pages — that have never been seen by the public. About 30,000 documents were released previously — with redactions.

Experts said intelligence agencies pushed Trump to keep some of the remaining materials secret — the CIA didn’t comment on that.

Whatever details are released, they’re not expected to give a definitive answer to a question that still lingers for some: Whether anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was involved in the assassination.

The Warren Commission in 1964 reported that Oswald had been the lone gunman, and another congressional probe in 1979 found no evidence to support the theory that the CIA had been involved. But other interpretations, some more creative than others, have persisted.

The 1992 law mandating release of the JFK documents states that all the files “shall be publicly disclosed in full” within 25 years — that means by Thursday — unless the president certifies that “continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense; intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations.”

That doesn’t allow the president, for example, to hold some records back because they might be embarrassing to agencies or people.

“In any release of this size, there always are embarrassing details,” said Douglas Brinkley, a professor at Rice University.

The law does not specify penalties for noncompliance, saying only that House and Senate committees are responsible for oversight of the collection.

3rd Carrier in Region as Mattis is in Seoul v. N Korea

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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Pentagon boss Jim Mattis arrived in South Korea on Friday to meet with the nation’s top defense officials and American military commanders on the front line in countering North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Mattis is emphasizing the Trump administration’s push for a diplomatic solution to the problem. But he also has said the U.S. is prepared to take military action if the North does not halt its development of missiles that could strike the entirety of the United States, potentially with a nuclear warhead.

Making his second trip as defense secretary to the U.S. ally, Mattis will meet with South Korean officials as part of an annual consultation on defense issues on the Korean peninsula. He’ll be joined in Seoul by the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford. President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit the city next month.

Related reading: Breakdown in North Korea Talks Sounds Alarms on Capitol Hill

US Navy sends a 3rd aircraft carrier to the Pacific after it completes mission against ISIS

  • The US has three aircraft carriers in the Pacific amid soaring tensions with North Korea.
  • The US Navy says the deployment of the USS Nimitz, the third carrier, was previously planned, but the US Navy has been busy near Korea.
  • The US, South Korea, and Japan jus t wrapped up a missile-defense drill in the region, and North Korea remains quiet for now.

The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying strike group of destroyers have left the Middle East, where they had launched airstrikes against ISIS, to back up US forces in the Pacific, the US Navy announced on Wednesday.

The Navy says the Nimitz is heading to the Pacific on a previously scheduled visit, but it will be the third carrier in the region joining the USS Ronald Reagan, which stays in Japan year-round, and the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is currently in the Pacific well east of Japan.

According to the Navy, the Nimitz just finished three months fighting ISIS, with over 903 bombs dropped. ISIS fighters are now surrendering en masse as US-back ed regional forces close in on them.

Gen. Jeong Kyeong-doo, chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and US Forces Korea chief Army Gen. Vincent Brooks met aboard the Reagan after the drills, with Jeong saying that the carrier sent a “strong warning” to North Korea “amid an unprecedentedly grave security situation,” according to Yonhap news.

The US, South Korea, and Japan just concluded a missile-defense drill near Korea with their cutting-edge naval-defense platforms. The drill focused on improving situational awarene ss and readiness while North Korea threatens to send more missiles flying over Japan.

The guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon fires an SM-2 missile during a live-fire exercise. Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Jiang/USN

Despite North Korea’s talk of firing missiles at Guam or into the Pacific, the country remains quiet. Pyongyang hasn’t launched a missile in over a month, marking the longest period of relative quiet since its first missile launch in February.

But a recen t report states that North Korea has remained resolute and unwilling to talk to the US. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump seems intent on hinting at the possibility of war whenever possible.

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North Korean official: Take hydrogen bomb threat ‘literally’

A senior North Korean official has issued a stern warning to the world that it should take “literally” his country’s threat to test a nuclear weapon above ground.

The official, Ri Yong Pil, told CNN in an exclusive conversation in Pyongyang that the threat made by North Korea’s foreign minister last month should not be dismissed. North Korea “has always brought its words into action,” Ri said, visibly angry. More here.

Anyone in the Trump NSC Siding with the Kurds v. Iran? Anyone?

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photo

3 days ago..not working out –> Tillerson Urges Iraqis, Kurds To Settle Differences, Commit To Country’s Unity

Kurdish and Iraqi forces, militias clash in northern Iraq

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Video reportedly showing Iraqi military and PMU forces near the town of Faysh Khabur

Earlier today, Iraqi forces backed by Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) launched an offensive in the Zummar district of northern Ninewa governorate at the same time they launched an offensive on Islamic State positions near the border town of al Qaim. Reliable casualty counts have not been given yet, but fierce fighting and shelling has been reported by both sides.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) tweeted this morning that “Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units began an unprovoked, four-pronged assault on Peshmerga positions in north west Mosul.” The statement also claimed that three tanks, five US-made Humvees, and one armored personnel carrier have been destroyed by the Kurdish forces so far. Simultaneously, clashes between Peshmerga and PMU forces were reported near the town of Faysh Khabur near the border with Syria.

An Iraqi official speaking to Al Hayat confirmed the clashes took place, adding that they “resulted in a number of death and wounded among the Peshmerga.” Rudaw, a Kurdish news site, has reported at at least one Peshmerga commander has been killed by shelling near Zummar, while relaying that Peshmerga forces also destroyed one US Abrams tank. PMU forces also reportedly captured the town of Makhmour in Erbil after Kurdish forces withdrew, but that remains unconfirmed.

The KRSC statement said that the PMU forces involved in the operations included the Badr Organization, Kata’ib Imam Ali, and Harakat al Nujaba. All three are key Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) proxies in the region. Social media pages affiliated to Badr and Kata’ib Imam Ali confirmed they are each taking part in the clashes. However, most news is being distributed by pages and individuals linked to Badr.

Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the deputy leader of the PMUs, and Hadi al Ameri, the leader of the Badr Organization, as well as two important IRGC advisers, have reportedly been spotted in the area. A video uploaded on a pro-Iraqi military Twitter account also purports to show Muhandis in the area earlier today.

One affiliated page gave a rundown of where Badr units are being deployed in the offensive. According to the Facebook page, three of its brigades – the 3rd, 5th, and 10th – are being sent to the Faysh Khabur area, while the 4th brigade is being sent to the borders with the Erbil area of Iraqi Kurdistan.

This is not the first time Iraqi forces, PMUs and the Peshmerga have clashed in recent days. Last week, fierce clashes were also reported in Kirkuk governorate. Those skirmishes came after Iraqi PM Haider al Abadi ordered his forces to enter the governorate to retake several key areas. Clashes were also reported late last month between Kurdistan Workers Party members, Peshmerga forces, and Kata’ib Imam Ali near Sinjar.

Recent skirmishes between Iraqi and Kurdish forces have been linked to the Kurdish independence referendum, which the Kurdistan Regional Government recently announced it will freeze the results due to the fighting taking place in northern Iraq. The Kurdish announcement does not seem to have dissuaded Iraqi forces from continuing to recapture formerly Kurdish-held areas.

Iraqi forces shelling Peshmerga locations, originally uploaded by a Badr-linked Facebook page:

*** More videos here.

IRGC-QF militia AAH sets up recruiting station in Kirkuk

 
10 hours ago

Replying to

This is a blatant violation of the Iraqi Constitution which forbids the use of the army to settle political disputes.

We condemn Iraq’s military aggression in the strongest terms. Intl community must denounce Iraq’s reckless behavior in the last two weeks.

It has destabilized some of the country’s safest areas, displaced over 150,000 individuals and created dangerous security vacuums.

 

Trump Names New IRS Comish, DoJ Settles Targeting Case

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DC: President Trump made it official on Thursday that embattled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be out of a job next month.

Trump tapped David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, to serve as interim IRS commissioner, beginning Nov. 13.

Koskinen’s term ends on Nov. 12. He was eligible for reappointment, but Koskinen is fiercely opposed by congressional Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus attempted but failed to impeach Koskinen last year, largely over his handling of the scandal involving former IRS official Lois Lerner.

Prior to Koskinen’s tenure, Lerner was accused targeting conservative groups who applied for non-profit status. Koskinen was accused of stonewalling congressional investigators looking into Lerner’s activities as well as of covering up for the Obama administration.

Trump had faced pressure from many Republicans to fire Koskinen, who was appointed to head the IRS by President Obama in 2013.

Kautter, Koskinen’s intended replacement, was appointed to his role at Treasury in August. He worked as a tax attorney at the firm Ernst & Young for more than three decades.

Kautter will still perform his Treasury Department duties while overseeing the IRS, according to Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin.

“David will provide important leadership while we wait to confirm a permanent commissioner,” Mnuchin said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.

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In part:

There are still some parts to the cases outstanding.

Mr. Greim and his team managed to depose former senior IRS executive Lois G. Lerner during the four years his case ran, but those transcripts remain sealed along with records of the deposition of another employee, Holly Paz. The two women have told a judge they fear for their safety if their testimony is released.

But on Wednesday the Cincinnati Enquirer asked the court to make those records public, as well as unredacted court documents that refer to the testimony.

The settlements end two separate lawsuits covering more than 450 groups identified by the IRS as having been snared in the targeting.

The vast majority of them are conservative-leaning groups which began to see long delays, intrusive questioning and other illegal scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status as either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organizations beginning in 2009.

In the new filings the singled out Ms. Lerner for particular blame in the scheme, saying she “failed” to stop the targeting going on by her employees, and further failed to alert higher-ups at headquarters in Washington — where she also worked — of the problems.

That’s a major shift from before, where the Justice Department — far from blaming Ms. Lerner — actually credited her with being a hero, saying she tried to stop the targeting when she became aware of it.

A lawyer for Ms. Lerner didn’t return an email for comment sent late Wednesday.

Tom Zawistowski, head of the Portage County TEA Party in Ohio, said Ms. Lerner should have faced criminal charges for her role, which court documents filed earlier in the case show involved her trying to shield the activity by changing names, but overall approving and in fact intensifying the scrutiny the conservative groups were given.

He said he still wants to see a special counsel appointed at the Justice Department to pursue the case and get to the bottom of the motive behind the targeting.

Despite initial claims by some Republicans, no evidence has ever traced the targeting back to Mr. Obama or his top political aides.

But emails released this year show the IRS was made aware by its own agents that it was singling out groups based on their politics, not on questions about their tax behavior.

“These cases are held back primarily because of their political party affiliation rather than specifically any political activities,” Elizabeth C. Kastenberg, an official in the agency’s Exempt Organizations division, wrote in an April 1, 2011, email to other IRS employees, including her supervisor.

That contradicts the IRS’s long-stated position that Ms. Lerner and others involved in the targeting were worried in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court decision about a surge of groups going beyond the usual rules of politics. More here.