The tangled web of the Clintons, Uranium One, Rosatom, CFIUS, and the tens of millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation was uncovered by Schweizer and revealed in his book. But other news organizations, in addition to Fox News, examined his evidence and determined that the facts he discovered were accurate and the conclusions he reached were sound.
The New York Times, which did extensive reporting of its own, also closely scrutinized Schweizer’s book, vetted his sources, and confirmed his key findings in a front-page story of some four thousand words, “Cash Flowed to the Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.”26 The Times reported, “As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show that a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation.”27
The Washington Post did some digging and discovered that 1,110 donors to the Clinton Foundation from a charity closely associated with both Giustra and Telfer at the Russian-owned Uranium One were kept secret and never properly disclosed. Roughly $25 million found its way to the Clinton’s Foundation.28
Two years later, the Post published another story about all the donations from Russia to the Clintons that drew the following conclusion: “It is virtually impossible to view these donations as anything other than an attempt to curry favor with Clinton.”29 But was she influenced in her decision? Clinton has denied it, but the volume and strength of the evidence belie that claim.
Russia Used Bribes to Secure U.S. Uranium
Before the Obama administration approved the sale of its uranium assets to Moscow in 2010, the FBI discovered that the Russians had secured the deal through an elaborate and illegal conspiracy involving bribery, kickbacks, extortion, money laundering, and racketeering.30 And yet, it appeared the FBI kept this knowledge secret. There is no evidence that the bureau ever advised key members of Congress, which would surely have stopped the transaction from being consummated. There is also no publicly known evidence as to whether the CFIUS committee itself was told of the Russian corruption before the sale was approved. Americans, most certainly, were kept in the dark.
The evidence of crimes by the Russians was considerable. It included a confidential informant, eyewitness accounts, intercepted emails, secret tape recordings, and financial records. Whether the FBI, a division of the Justice Department, informed Attorney General Eric Holder is unclear. But Holder was among the cabinet secretaries who sat on the CFIUS committee. If he knew and failed to inform fellow members of the committee who approved the deal, he committed an egregious breach of trust.
Did Hillary Clinton know? Unproven. Or covered up. However, in a series of stories broken by John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill, the undercover informant, later identified as William Douglas Campbell, allegedly witnessed conversations about how “Russian nuclear officials tried to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons.”31 Documents also showed “the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation.”32
That entity is APCO, a Washington, D.C., lobby firm, which has numerous former Clinton staffers on its payroll. According to Campbell, the Russians paid APCO $3 million for one year.33 The funds were to include free in-kind work for the Clinton Foundation.
Campbell’s work as an informant was seen as both valuable and reliable by the U.S. government. So much so, he was paid nearly $200,000, according to the Justice Department.34 He had intimate knowledge of Russia’s illegal scheme to seize control of U.S. uranium, because he worked inside Rosatom posing as a consultant beginning in 2008, some two years before CFIUS sanctioned the sale. His work helped the FBI and Justice Department eventually obtain the convictions of several Russian and American executives. Yet, despite all the incriminating evidence Campbell uncovered for the FBI, Clinton’s CFIUS committee approved the sale of America’s uranium to Russia. Campbell couldn’t believe it; he told Solomon in an on-camera interview:
I was shocked and appalled because I believed that my reporting to the United States government would head off or would, at least, have some type of consideration before approval was made for those acquisitions.
Because it was a matter of national security, I felt sure that it was being handled on a high level and I was actually assured of that by agents that this strategy would be offset because it was a liability to our country.35
Campbell’s work exposing Russia’s corruption seems to have been hidden or buried as Moscow took control of a substantial amount of America’s uranium. While undercover, Campbell also gathered valuable evidence that Russia was assisting Iran’s nuclear program of providing equipment and services.36 The yellowcake uranium that was shipped out of the United States by Russia may well have made its way to Tehran.
Thanks to Campbell, the truth finally emerged. But the damage was done; the sale of America’s uranium was consummated. The Senate Judiciary Committee immediately launched an investigation, demanding to know what the agencies that approved the uranium sale knew about the bribery scheme and why the transaction was not stopped in the face of such corruption. They also wanted to know what role Hillary Clinton may have played.
As recently as December 2017, FBI agents interviewed Campbell for five hours about “whether donations to the Clintons charitable empire were used to influence U.S. nuclear policy during the Obama years.”37 Then, in February 2018, Campbell briefed three congressional committees behind closed doors before Congress. He confirmed to them that Moscow routed millions of dollars to an American lobbying firm to influence Clinton.38 Russian nuclear officials, according to Campbell, expected that some $3 million of their payment to APCO would be redirected to the Clinton’s Global Initiative at the same time Rosatom sought approval to purchase Uranium One.39
Campbell’s testimony to Congress, obtained by The Hill and Fox News, described a meeting in which Russian officials “boasted about how weak the U.S. government was in giving away uranium business” to achieve President Putin’s “strategic plan” to “take over the uranium industry.”40 Campbell’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, explained it in blunt terms: “(The Russians) were so confident that they told Mr. Campbell that with the Clintons’ help, it was a shoo-in to get CFIUS approval.”41
Did President Obama know? Toensing said the FBI informed her client that the president was aware. “He was told that President Obama had it in his daily briefing twice,” said Toensing.42
The Law
If it can be shown that Clinton used her office as secretary of state to confer benefits to Russia in exchange for millions of dollars in donations to her foundation and cash to her husband, she should be prosecuted under a variety of anti-corruption laws passed by Congress. The most obvious felony is bribing a public official under 18 U.S.C. 201. It makes it a crime if someone in Clinton’s position:
. . . corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act . . . or being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person.43
This code section criminalizes acts by public officials that are “directly or indirectly” corrupt. There is substantial evidence that Clinton’s actions violated this statute.* Based on much of the same evidence, she could also be charged under the federal gratuity statute (18 U.S.C. 201-c),44 the mail fraud statute (18 U.S.C. 1341),45 the wire fraud statute (18 U.S.C. 1343),46 the honest services fraud statute (18 U.S.C. 1346),47 and the Travel Act (18 U.S.C. 1952).48
The FBI evidence, if true, would seem to show that one or more of these illegal “pay-to-play” laws were broken. The government would have to prove that Hillary and Bill got paid, while the Russians got to “play.” While prosecutors are required to demonstrate a “quid pro quo” or “nexus” (depending on the statute) between the payments and the benefit provided, it appears that the FBI may already possess
all the evidence it needs to make a persuasive criminal case.
Moreover, if Clinton leveraged her public office as secretary of state for personal enrichment for herself or her husband while using her charity as a receptacle or conduit for money obtained illegally, it would also constitute money laundering (18 U.S.C. 1956)49 and racketeering or RICO (“Racketeer Influenced and Corruption Organizations Act,” 18 U.S.C 1961-1968).50
The Department of Justice defines “racketeering” as the use of a business for a corrupt and illegal enterprise or to operate that business with illegally derived income, domestic or foreign:
It is unlawful for anyone associated with any enterprise engaged in, or the activities of which affect interstate or foreign commerce, to conduct or participate, directly or indirectly, in the conduct of such enterprise’s affairs through a pattern of racketeering activity or collection of unlawful debt.51
Thus, repeated acts of foreign bribery involving a U.S. charity would constitute “racketeering activity” under the statute.
The “mafia” and other organized crime syndicates are often prosecuted under the RICO laws. Frequently, they devise a dual-purpose company—one that operates lawfully from the front door, but unlawfully out the back door.
There is little doubt the Clinton Foundation operated as a charity. But if the FBI documents, many of which have not been made public, demonstrate that there was a secondary, hidden purpose devoted to self-dealing and personal enrichment, then Clinton could and should be prosecuted for racketeering.
Finally, in December 2017, amid increasing news reports of corruption and complaints by members of Congress who were demanding a special counsel to investigate Clinton, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors to question FBI agents about the evidence they had uncovered and explain why no action had been taken.52 Then, in late March 2018, Sessions sent a letter to Congress advising that he had named U.S. Attorney John Huber to conduct a “full, complete, and objective evaluation of these matters in a manner that is consistent with the law and facts.”53 It would be up to Huber to decide whether a special counsel is warranted.
According to the Associated Press, more than half the people outside the government who met with Clinton while she was secretary of state donated money to her foundation.54 If Clinton was peddling access, was she also peddling influence? Again, the reported FBI documents may hold the answer to that question.
Why has there been no prosecution of Clinton to date? Why did the FBI and, presumably, the Department of Justice during the Obama years keep the evidence secret? Was it concealed to prevent a scandal that would poison Barack Obama’s presidency? Was Hillary Clinton being protected in her quest to succeed him?
The answer may lie with the very people who oversaw the Russian bribery investigation and who knew of its explosive impact. Who are they?
Mueller, Comey, and Rosenstein
Robert Mueller was the FBI director during the time of the Russian uranium probe, and so was his successor James Comey who took over in 2013 as the FBI was accumulating even more damaging evidence of Russian corruption. Documents show that Rod Rosenstein, who was U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland at the time, was supervising the Russian bribery prosecutions. Andrew Weissmann was then the Chief of the Fraud Section in the Criminal Division at the Justice Department. Both their signatures appear on a plea agreement in the criminal case that was kept quiet. There is no public information that these three men ever advised Congress of any of the incriminating materials they had discovered documenting Russian corruption. It appears they buried the evidence from Congress, key officials in the executive branch, and the American public.
It would seem that these three government officials saw no danger in Clinton’s allowing Russia to control more of the world’s nuclear power supply, yet they later became the three top people most alarmed by allegations that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mueller, Comey, Rosenstein, and Weissmann ignored potential crimes involving Clinton and Russia, but were more than eager to conjure some evidence that Trump “colluded” with Russia.
How can anyone have confidence in the outcome of the Trump-Russia matter if the integrity and impartiality of the lead investigators were compromised by ineptitude, or possible malfeasance, in the Clinton-Russia case?
The “Smoking Gun” Doug Band Emails
To understand how Hillary Clinton could be influenced by charitable donations, and want to keep any correspondence about the Foundation hidden, it’s important to understand how their scam worked.
In the WikiLeaks emails from October 2016 is correspondence from Douglas Band who worked for the Clinton Foundation.55 He described how he not only raised money for the charity but also steered millions of dollars to Bill by using the charity’s donors. If the foundation was not operating strictly as a charity under the laws governing nonprofit groups, it should have been deemed an illegal enterprise. In other words, criminal fraud.
Band used his consulting firm, Teneo, to solicit money from corporations for both the Clinton Foundation and Bill personally in what the memo described as “Bill Clinton Inc.” Band specifically identified all the sources of the money given by corporate entities to the foundation and then explained how those same companies, at his behest, simultaneously supported Bill:
Throughout the past almost 11 years since President Clinton left office, I have sought to leverage my activities, including my partner role at Teneo, to support and raise funds for the Foundation. This memorandum strives to set forth how I have endeavored to support the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton personally.56
We have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities.57
How much money did the former president pocket through the combination of for-profit and nonprofit foundation connections? One passage from the Band email is especially revealing:
Since 2001, President Clinton’s business arrangements have yielded more than $30 million for him personally, with $66 million to be paid out over the next nine years should he choose to continue with the current engagements.58
A review of the list of donors offered by Band shows that an astonishing amount of cash that went to Bill came from Clinton foundation donors. These are the very same donors who sometimes had business before Hillary’s State Department and some of whom appear to have received benefits therefrom.
For example, in 2009 Hillary helped UBS, the Swiss bank, avoid the IRS, and then Bill got paid $1.5 million for speeches. Soon after, their foundation received a tenfold increase in donations. Reporters from the Wall Street Journal discovered that “total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014.”59 If that was a reward for Hillary’s influence, as it appeared to have been, it could constitute the crime of bribery under federal law (18 U.S.C. 201).60
It wasn’t just UBS that was lining Bill’s pocket with cold hard cash. Ericsson and Barclays paid him speaking fees of $900,000 and more than $700,000, respectively.61 The same companies gave generously to the Clinton Foundation and had overseas business interests over which Hillary could exert influence. More than a dozen other corporations made similar contributions.
When asked to explain what appeared to be blatant double-dealing and the stench of pay-to-play, the Clinton campaign did not really deny it, but simply stated that the charity did wonderful work.
Band wasn’t the only person in the Clinton inner circle that was shilling for dollars by using the foundation as a conduit. Huma Abedin, a longtime confidant of Hillary, held three jobs simultaneously: deputy chief of staff to the secretary of state, a paid consultant to the Clinton Foundation, and an income-earning consultant to Band’s company, Teneo. Hillary is the one who arranged for the “special government employee” exception to the rules that normally forbid such conflicts of interest. Documents show that Abedin exploited her triple role to
grant access to her boss whenever a generous contributor wanted something.62 The copacetic setup worked well. Donors were accommodated, while the charity enjoyed remuneration.
Band seemed to have known that his pivotal role in the Clinton gravy train was suspect. In an email to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, he wrote, “I’m starting to worry that if this story gets out, we are screwed.”63
Even foundation lawyers knew corruption was likely afoot. After an audit, the law firm authored a draft memo identifying a myriad of problems that could escalate to legal jeopardy. No conflict of interest policy had ever been implemented at the foundation. The December 5, 2011, draft reads like the makings of an indictment:
In addition, some interviewees reported conflicts of those raising funds or donors, some of whom may have an expectation of quid pro quo benefits in return for gifts.64
If a legal team of foundation auditors was able to uncover quid pro quo expectations, imagine what a team of prosecutors would find if they examined in earnest the Clintons and their dual-purpose charity. It is a fair assumption that criminal charges would follow.
The Clinton Gravy Train Crashes
Once Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, contributions to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative began to dwindle.65 What foreign business or government wanted to shell out big bucks for nothing in return? Hillary was no longer in office, with little prospect for returning to power. She was in no position to confer benefits in exchange for money. No chance for a quid pro quo of favors for cash.
Tax filings showed that donations plummeted 37 percent, while income from speeches dropped from $3.6 million to just $357,500 when Clinton began to distance herself from the foundation before the election and amid reports of possible corruption.66 Contributions plunged another 42 percent the year she lost.67 The most recent tax filings won’t be available until the end of 2018, but are expected to be even worse.
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