Mention the words, “Uranium One,” and many Americans shrug their shoulders, either blissfully unaware of the controversy or convinced that it’s a Republican ploy targeting Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. Others see a major scandal with far greater impact than Watergate. They see the covert sale of 20 percent of our uranium deposits to a Russian-owned company in exchange for bribes at the highest levels of our government.
After dealing with so many scandals throughout her career, Clinton has become particularly adept at avoiding tough questioning. So in today’s controlled interviews, she easily deflects any questions on the matter, blithely claiming it’s old news, and it’s all been “debunked.” None of her fawning interviewers ever ask the obvious follow-up question: Exactly how has it been debunked?
The main point made by her supporters – those debunkers – is that Clinton had no power to approve the deal herself. They argue that responsibility belonged to a nine-member inter-agency group, The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), of which she was only one member.
It sounds reasonable, assuming all nine members were objective, independent thinkers with national security as their top priority. But, in fact, they were all Barack Obama appointees.
Everything we’ve seen suggests that his entire administration was of one single mind, loyal to Obama’s whims. We saw Lois Lerner and others in the IRS working hard to stymie Republican opposition groups. We saw the head of the FBI, once one of the most trusted agencies in our government, acquiesce to the demands of Obama’s Attorney General by soft-peddling the criminal investigation of Clinton’s covert email server. And when Obama lied about the impact of Obamacare, his whole administration and all Democrats parroted his lies. And whenever Obama skirted the Constitution, as he did with our immigration laws, there was never any push-back from his agency heads. It was a perversion of the loyalty we expect in a unified, cohesive government. It was, instead, the kind of blind loyalty that can corrupt an entire administration.
There’s little doubt where that administration stood with Russia. From the very beginning, when then-Secretary of State Clinton presented the Russian Foreign Minister with that buffoonish red reset button, Clinton and Obama did everything they could to appease the Russian government. That was made abundantly clear when Obama scrapped plans for a European missile defense shield, and when he did nothing in response to the Russian annexation of Crimea. Those with any doubts about Obama’s soft spot for the Kremlin need only listen again to that candid promise Obama quietly made to Russian President Medvedev, assuring him that he would have more flexibility on certain matters after his re-election.
Call it political ideology, amateurish diplomacy, appeasement, or naiveté, Barack Obama might very well have arranged for that nine-member panel to approve the Uranium One deal, even without any money changing hands. But the Russians were desperate for this de`al and needed some assurances. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was the primary conduit between Russia and the US. She sat on the CIFIUS panel and, more importantly, had Obama’s ear. Influence peddling is one of the most serious charges any politician can face. Clinton clearly had the influence, and, according to many credible reports, she was peddling. Only her staunch defenders would call “coincidence” those massive payments she and her husband received and the nearly simultaneous approval of the Uranium One deal.
When her supporters say that Clinton, alone, could not have made that deal happen, they’re right. But that doesn’t exonerate her. It only suggests she had help.
There are many other questions that remain unanswered – unasked by Hillary’s enablers.
- Why did the Obama administration go to such lengths to keep the Uranium One deal under wraps?
- Why did it later approve the transfer of our uranium to Canada and ultimately to Europe, contrary to the provisions of the deal?
- Why did that administration place a gag order on the primary witness in the FBI investigation of Russian bribery and extortion in our uranium industry?
- And, especially in light of that investigation, how could any such deal have been authorized?
Uranium One is a major scandal, and just like Hillary’s incredible bonanza in cattle futures back in 1979, Bill Clinton’s serial abuse of women, and all the other scandals that enveloped them throughout their careers, it has never been debunked – only dismissed or ignored by the left.
