One of the mysteries of the election campaign has been the ongoing Russian hacking conspiracy nonsense that was forced on us by the Democrats after the election. The absurdity of it should have been enough to get the story laughed off the stage. Even if the Russians had meddled in the election, which happens all the time. The Chinese invested heavily in the Clintons during the 1996 election. Israeli maintains massive lobbying efforts in the US, including campaign operations. It is the nature of empires.
Even if it was just a distraction to shift the focus from the problems of the Democrats, it is a one week story at best. Yet, it went on and on, forcing Trump to appoint a special prosecutor to chase ghosts and phantoms that could not possibly exist. My hunch was that maybe some FBI insiders were simply using the fake scandal as a pretext to circle the wagons and protect their own. Former director Comey seems to be exposed six ways to Sunday for the way he handled himself in the job.
Well, we may now have an answer. It may simply have been the old Progressive tactic of preemptively accusing others of something they are doing. The Hill is reporting that the FBI had stumbled onto a plot that looks a lot like bribery by the Russians to get the Clinton’s support in their efforts to grow their nuclear business inside the US. This goes back to when Cankles was working for Obama as Secretary of State and had the authority to approve foreign energy deals, like selling uranium to Russia.
Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.
Federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, FBI and court documents show.
They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating 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, sources told The Hill.
The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.
Assuming the evidence presented is accurate, it looks a lot like the sort of frauds the Clinton crime family has been running since their days in Arkansas. Hillary has always had a thing for the old fashioned graft rackets. This is where the Clintons grant favors from the government in exchange for cash. In order to avoid bribery charges, they always use a cutout of some sort. In Arkansas, it was campaign contributors who laundered the cash for them. In the 90’s, Chinese money flowed into the campaign.
The Clinton Foundation has always looked like a money laundering operation. The whole point of money laundering is to make the transactions seem legitimate. The smarter drug dealers in Baltimore will have a cash business they move their drug proceeds through in an effort to hide the source of their income. Famous people have foundations so they can use it to hire friends, family and supporters, but get a tax break. Politicians put their family on the campaign payroll at inflated salaries so they can keep some of the cash.
That is what the Clinton Foundation was for initially. The millions Bubba was getting from speeches and back dated transactions would go tax free into the charity. The Clintons would take a salary, but the foundation would pick up a lot of their expenses, like travel and security. It would also be a nice patronage system for future campaign workers and contributors. The Foundation was always a front operation. It was never intended to do any charitable work, which is why it has done no charitable work.
The thing with Hillary Clinton is that all of her scandals are about money. Going back to Arkansas, everything she was mixed up in was a money scheme of some sort. Bill was always getting jammed up with sex. It is reasonable to think he got into politics for the easy access to women. Hillary, on the other hand, has always been about the cash. That is why the Russians were willing to bribe her. They knew she would play ball if the price was right. That is what this looks like. Old fashioned pay for play.
This brings as back to the Russia probe.
In evidentiary affidavits signed in 2014 and 2015, an Energy Department agent assigned to assist the FBI in the case testified that Mikerin supervised a “racketeering scheme” that involved extortion, bribery, money laundering and kickbacks that were both directed by and provided benefit to more senior officials back in Russia.
“As part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts,” Agent David Gadren testified.
“Mikerin apparently then shared the proceeds with other co-conspirators associated with TENEX in Russia and elsewhere,” the agent added.
The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.
Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI. The probe is not focused on McAuliffe’s conduct but rather on whether McCabe’s attendance violated the Hatch Act or other FBI conflict rules.
The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.
There are a number of possibilities here. One is incompetence. Her team may have started the “Russian hacking” chant without realizing that it would lead back to this deal. That is another trait of Hillary Clinton. She screws up everything she touches. Going back to her days on the Watergate committee as an entry level staffer, her career is one foul up after another. The only thing she has done well is stay married to Bill. That is how she stays out of jail and how she keeps getting shot to run another fraud.
The more likely answer, though, is the old Progressive habit of accusing others of the very thing they are doing. In this case, she was willing to do business with the Russians, so she just assumed the other side was too. Perhaps it is evidence of a guilty mind or maybe it is something else, but Progressives have a habit, an instinct, for accusing their enemies of crimes committed by Progressives. It muddies the waters and that may be the sole purpose. It is another way of shifting the focus.
The other possibility is what we see with corrupt police precincts. The dirty cops know that cops do not like ratting on one another. They also assume that everyone has something they would not like to see exposed to the public. The result is everyone keeps their mouth shut until something goes very wrong. Washington is a sea of corruption, much of it dealing with foreign money. The Democrats may be working on the assumption that no one in the political class wants this investigation to go anywhere.
Of course, if you want to go super 4-D chess, deep state conspiracy mongering, then maybe this was the target all along. Rosenstein knew all about this old case and maybe he wanted another bite at the apple. That is far fetched, but not outside the realm of the possible. Team Trump has a funny habit of being a few steps ahead of everyone on the controversial stuff. It would certainly be poetic if this is how Clinton ends up in an orange jumpsuit, waddling around a federal prison.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. And the older I get, the more I realize that all of politics boils down to Two Rules:
(1) It’s always about the money.
(2) When they say it’s not about the money, that means it’s about a sh**-load of money.
“….The thing with Hillary Clinton is that all of her scandals over the years have been about money……..” True. And also true is that the Clinton’s are above the law. She and Bubba have never been investigated, indicted, tried, etc. . They literally could commit murder and their powerful friends within the govt/media/legal profession circle the wagons and protect them. Copious quantities of $$$$ + political power = immunity from any and all laws (but only if you are a democrat). So, this latest revelation is just another re-wind of the same old Clinton corruption/scandal movie. No need to get… Read more »
I would agree with you if any other person were POTUS, but Trump has to see that examples need to be made.
Both will be dead soon, so a fuller picture will emerge in the coming decade. Political corruption in the South has always favored a model where the proceeds are spread out among many people. It’s a lot like how the Mafia would “protect” the neighborhood so the neighborhood would protect them. It often works like that in the south. The big man gets the first taste and the biggest taste, but everyone gets a taste. That makes it hard to police. I suspect that is the model the Clintons brought to Washington. They got everyone in on the action. It’s… Read more »
Since I am quoting movie lines today.
In the Road to Perdition Tom Hanks confronts Paul Newman on killing someone close, Newman says:There are only murderers in this room.
I suppose that’s how the political parties view corruption.
If they die anywhere other than a Federal prison… getting a “fuller picture” means nothing.
Most likely, the FBI and Mueller investigative teams have come to the obvious conclusion that there is no Trump/Russia concern, and so somebody in the FBI has “leaked” this information in an attempt to resume the earlier investigation. I sincerely doubt that it’ll happen seeing as how “off limits” the Clinton Foundation has been. That corrupt scam of a charity is the Harvey Weinstein of D.C. politics: everybody is in on it, a lot of very important and powerful people stand to be taken down by it, and if the dam breaks at the Clinton Foundation, heads are gonna roll… Read more »
We are long overdue for a massive scandal. Abscam was the late 70’s and early 80’s. There were the HUD scandals of the 80’s. Other than some Kabuki theater, we have not had a lot of pols going to the can since the Clintons arrived in DC.
This is one of those areas where Trump shows his naiveté about politics. He could flip a switch, and Sessions and the FBI resume this Clinton Foundation (and email) fraud. He could agree to shut it down if Mueller closes up shop and goes home. Once Mueller closes up shop, press on with the investigation anyway.
The narrative in the last 10-15 days has shifted to “25th Amendment” and Trump is “unstable”. The Russia investigation is unofficially over as a pretext for removing Trump from office.
Alternatively, Trump may be holding some cards for later. His negotiating style has always been a variation of the nibble. Instead of making one grand deal, he strikes a bunch of small deals, holding out the hope of the big bonanza. He may think it is best to hold these cards. That may be why someone leaked this story to the Hill. Keep in mind that The Hill is nothing but leaks from Congressional staffers. This story came from Congress to pump some attention into their upcoming hearings.
Many knives are out for Trump, so he just might be holding back the most damning stuff for leverage. The closer he gets to quitting or terming out, the more dangerous it is for those who oppose him. A guy who has operated successfully in NYC for decades knows exactly how the games are played and must be very good at it. That he can go that long and not get easily muddied up in any substantial way is extraordinary. Beyond that, I have always viewed Progressive accusations as projection, and a fascinating view as to how those people think… Read more »
I just don’t see that “go in for the kill” instinct in Trump. A lot of the people around him are a) New York libs and b) long-time Government Party types (e.g. John Kelly). The thing about the Clinton Foundation is that none of those people wants to look under the hood. Over in the Senate, it’s just politics, so the Senate can have these committee hearings that are quickly brushed aside. The Clinton Foundation = Harvey Weinstein. They still have enough money and power to keep people from taking them down. They still are playing the card that Hillary… Read more »
The Clinton Foundation and CGI will not collapse. Their budgets consist almost exclusively of paying all the pilot fish that provide various services that make the Clintons and their friends comfortable. Most of them probably work for almost nothing, as they are promised big things later if they do well. The budget for such things will be expanded or cut back to fit the situation. It’s not like these entities have a fixed production payroll to meet.
I am guessing that the Clintons are behind all the media and chat room speculations about Hillary’s claiming the presidency from Trump or running in 2020. The grift can’t keep going if the reason for it appears to be drying up and going away.
My guess is the issue is timing. Trump is going to release the Clinton/Obama/Uranium info in two tranches, the first in the run up to the 2018 elections, the second in the run up to the 2020 elections. I just hope he has enough control over the justice department to pull this off.
It’s going to be like the end of the Godfather movie, when all the players get their denouement. I see Obama in the role of Mo Green.
The most obvious exception to your observation about the dearth of politicians going to the clink would be the hapless Rod Blagojevich. Blago made the HUUUUGE mistake of crossing Chocolate Jesus in his own town, and one has to suppose that Blago was told, in no uncertain terms, that not only was he going away for 14 years, but if he uttered as much as a PEEP, his wife and daughters would start to disappear. Nothing else explains the silence coming from Rod since his own side sent him away. This is, let’s remember, a man who prior was famous… Read more »
On the subject of Blago, my boss is from Chicago. I asked him what friends/family thought of things and it was basically we can’t believe this guy didn’t end up in jail years ago.
I viewed as more of Blago being stupid and giving the scam away. Someone had to take the fall to protect the bamster after that.
Would you leave this poor woman alone! She just fell again and now broke a toe.
One of the surprises of this ( why should I be) is the authority given to a department or official. ” authority to approve foreign energy deals”
No temptations there, huh?
The line from Star Wars about the space port definitely applies to D.C.
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious”
A more likely possibility is that Rosenstein was corrupted and appointed Mueller with the understanding that Mueller would bury any evidence that might expose the pervasive corruption at the Department of Justice during the Obama era. Nobody held a gun to Rosenstein’s head and forced him to appoint a special prosecutor. Once he decided to proceed, Rosenstein could have appointed anyone he wanted to the position. And somehow Rosenstein decided that the best person to lead the investigation into alleged Russian interference in U.S elections was Mueller, who headed the FBI during the relevant time period. We’ve seen this play… Read more »
Forgot to finish a sentence.
Should read: The fact that Mueller stacked his panel with Democratic Party operatives tells you all you need to know about this investigation.
The whole “Russia hacked the Election!” meme always was hilarious, even if true. As someone put it a few weeks ago “Russia meddled in the election?!? How dare they! Don’t they know that only China, Mexico, Israel, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the EU get to do that?!?”
If you want any further proof of the massive grift that is the CGI, look at the massive drop off in “donations” immediately after the 2016 election.
Also note that the hedge fund run by Chelsea Clinton’s husband collapsed in December 2016. It had racked up huge losses on Greek debt that had been well-known for months. I am convinced that, if the Clintons had won, they would have ordered various crony-capitalists to “invest” enormous amounts in the fund, thereby keeping it alive for at least four more years.
I’m no stranger to corruption (I’m Irish and live in South America), but I’ve come to accept the reality of it, however lamentable (a favorite word where I live) it may be. I was born in and lived many years in the USA and in spite of the obvious, it continues to sadden me that the USA has become sooo corrupt that my contemporaries the Clintons continue to get away with… well, what might even include murder for hire.
Will there ever be an end to shamelessness?
Long and short, No. The US was founded on slavery for cheap labor treason to evade taxes and genocide to increase land. And while yes Liberty all that , its more about having a mileau in which screwing people over is easier. That this happens to allow real economic growth is more accident than design We kind of ran out of room and opportunity to everyone has a little side thing now. Once corruption sets in deep enough it becomes the new permanent social model , throw in a society where many people are atomized and don’t even have enough… Read more »
Well, can personally vouch for the description of the Clinton Foundation/CGI. Did a lot of “cleaner” work in my old firm…one assignment was vetting CGI when two large trading partners put the arm on us to join. Had to attend two meetings (including the one where Chelsea introduced Braverman), plus a pitch session over at the 6th ave. offices. This was simply a bundle and skim operation–the sales pitch was all about “access to decision makers”. Cash flowed in, favors flowed out, and the entire Clinton lifestyle was “Foundation business”. The trick was gracefully declining, nothing in their finances met… Read more »
I worked the other side of the CGI fence, trying to get a small grant for electrification and water purification work in the middle of nowheresville Africa, back about 2010 or so. CGI gave us the polite runaround and deferred decision making, without actually telling us “no”, and with no guidance as to how to follow up our application with any meaningful information that could be used in their process. There wasn’t actually a process that I could detect, just an on-line storefront that made them look good. Our app and project were lean and tight, with little room for… Read more »
Do I have this straight? YOU were attempting to get money from the CLINTONS. Dude, you have it backwards.
Some relatives were doing the work in Africa and thought this was a good way to add to the capitalization (especially as the financial commitment was high risk and the project would look great on the CGI resume). I did some foot work on this end, but found that there was a black hole where the application process was supposed to be. The old Hollywood “don’t call us, we’ll call you”.
After I made the post, I thought about it myself, it looked rather ridiculous, once it was all laid out in black and white.
Doesn’t surprise at all. And one of the crimes was the number of people floating around at these meetings looking for funds that probably were never going to get a dime, but it made a good show for the Clinton’s benefit. From the other side we kept asking for metrics on programs but got rope-a-doped. And what data they gave really was just stuff that was subcontracted. More efficient to give to that org directly. And the meetings, between plenary sessions would have these Seinfeld-esque ‘working sessions” on problems like “community resilience”. And the membership model was a pyramid scheme.… Read more »
Sam; $350k_? Wow, price sure went up. I was slightly involved on the (far) periphery when The Clinton Crime Family was just getting started on a national scale. Our firm was invited to send a rep. or two on Commerce Sec. Ron Brown’s ‘business promotion’ trips for a mere $100k per each per trip DNC donation in the early-mid ’90s. I was queried as to what business for us might be promoted. A quick look at the itinerary showed that the obvious answer was “None.” It was clearly a junket for any senior exec’s with nothing else important to do… Read more »
The main significance of this story is that the cancer of corruption is now at Stage 4 in Washington DC. Virtually all players and power centers are fully complicit in selling out the country for personal gain (politicians, media, law enforcement). It’s insane to cross your fingers and hope for a white knight to arrive and clean things up. Even if someone took down the Clintons (which is not going to happen), you can’t cure cancer by taking out a few cells here and there. We’re still in the denial phase.
It is called psychological projection and the evil left is habituated to it.
Also, remember that Cankles had the raw Federal BI files in th eWhite House and so she has got the dirt on everyone.
Mueller, who was complicit in the Whitey Bulgar fiasco in South (Boston) is a lying dirt bag
You’re completely on the money. Every time I hear the left attack and accuse the right, it’s like reading their soul. And it sure ain’t pretty is it?
This is strong evidence to support the idea that the Russians, even if they did meddle in the election, would have backed Clinton and not Trump. The Russians owned Clinton, she had been bought and paid for. As President Clinton the Russians would have had this incident to threaten her and say, “If you don’t go along with us on this policy/action we will let it be known that the monies paid to Bill and the Clinton Foundation were bribes.” They would have no such leverage over a President Trump. The Russians would have been better off under a President… Read more »
As a connoisseur of Chicago politics in my youth I always thought that the Clintons Inc. lacked the sense of proportion and self-restraint of the the Daily Machine. The Daily’s practiced ‘honest graft’. You want something special, you pay one guy one time, otherwise it’s business as usual.
This is why Chicago didn’t resemble the 3rd world at the time (but now_?). There you have to pay everybody all the time until you get big enough that everybody has to pay you.
To quote a friend of mine, “Under the Daly Machine, it cost ten times as much as it should to get something done, and when it was paid for it got done within ten or twenty percent of the projected due date, or heads rolled – into the river. (And then it got done very fast indeed for no extra money.)
Now in Chicago it costs twenty times as much, and it doesn’t get done, and heads don’t roll. No one should wonder why Chicagoans are nostalgic for the old regime.”
Have read that Mueller is involved in covering this up, so hopefully he will be indicted at the same time Hillary is. Poor Bill, will be all alone (with all the money) once the Mrs goes down.
The Arkansas Borgias no doubt are in possession of a Burn Book of epic scope. They will not go down without a nukefest. PDJT is the wild card-just wish he would awaken AG Sessions from his coma.
I’m thinking hubris.They really thought they couldn’t lose, Obama knew all about the criminal part, and let it go to hold on to the power of the presidency via blackmail.
The funny thing is, what does Hillary do with all that ill gotten lucre? Nothing that I can see. Lives in an ok house, but nothing special. Wears clothes made out of carpet samples. Gets drunk early and often. And that’s about it. But that is the nature of madness I suppose; mindless behavior for it’s own sake.
Great point! She has more lucre than any 1,000 average people put together, and yet she is a miserable old wretch, by her own choice.
This illuminating scene from the movie, “Chinatown” answers your question. Private eye Gittes asks Noah Cross, the villain, about his motives. Jake Gittes: How much are you worth? Noah Cross: I have no idea. How much do you want? Jake Gittes: I just wanna know what you’re worth. More than 10 million? Noah Cross: Oh my, yes! Jake Gittes: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can’t already afford? Noah Cross: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future. Now, where’s the girl? I want the only daughter I’ve got left. As… Read more »
I have no confidence that anything will come from this. The Clinton’s are like Teflon. Nothing ever sticks to them. Which tells more about the wholesale corruption of our justice system than it does about their criminal personalities. This is why I have faith in God and heaven, becasue it will literally take a supernatural and divine court to see these two and others like them receive true justice. Otherwise, they will just have the last laugh on their death beds, having cheated the very system they were suppose to uphold.
Screwing around with Russia and the Crimea, and playing regime-change games with countries that aren’t just the provenance of inbred sand people (i.e. the Ukraine) and doing shady deals involving uranium, sounds like a recipe for something to go very, very wrong. I’m not ready to build a fallout shelter, but what if (consciously or unconsciously) the adherents of the prog religion are secretly hoping to bring about the eschaton, to destroy the world now that the anti-Christ Trump is in ascendancy? I forget who said (paraphrase) religions can survive without Gods, but they need devils. The derangement syndrome caused… Read more »
Progressives have a habit, an instinct, for accusing their enemies of crimes committed by Progressives
That is so true. Look at the latest “me,too” campaign on Facebook. So another rich powerful liberal, this time a Hollywood titan and Clinton supporter, behaves abominably towards women, and now the focus is on what scum men are in general.
Lets see how far this goes. Likely it will wind up like the e-mail fiasco, nowhere. Hope I am wrong.
Prediction: This investigation, like all others involving the Clintons, peters out after the expenditure of uncounted funds with no definite finding of culpability. Clintons declare themselves as having been found completely innocent. Like OJ.
Most of the story is not new information. We already knew about Uranium One, the $145 million to Clinton Inc., the $500K speaking fees for Bill, and Hillary’s sign-off on Russia acquiring control of 20% of our uranium in return.
I suppose the new information adds a bit of depth and detail – but the only question that really matters remains: IS ANYONE GOING TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT?
You lost me after *Once….
Proof Read Zman! x)