Who is Colluding?

The recent revelations about Uranium One and infamous Dossier being paid for by the Clinton’s campaign now turns the Russian Collusion story upside down. There are two scandals, the first being the Trump Dossier, which was paid for by the Clinton campaign and apparently used as a rationale to investigate Trump’s possible collusion with the Russians.  What we are finding out is that the Clinton’s administration did in fact, whether willing or not, collude with Russian intelligence and became part of a Russian disinformation campaign.  It could easily be argued that many within the Clinton’s camp knew that much of the information gathered was provided by Russian intelligence agencies.

The Uranium One scandal may be worse since Russia obtained 20% of our uranium and was involved in both bribery and extortion to gain access to our energy fields.   The FBI was investigating serious charges of Russian bribery and yet, the Obama administration allowed the deal to go through while Bill Clinton collected a nice speaking payday and the foundation collected nearly 150 million dollars.  

Russia plotted to gain control of Uranium One and billions of dollars.  As Andrew McCartney wrote in National Review, “The Uranium One scandal is not only, or even principally, a Clinton scandal. It is an Obama-administration scandal. The Clintons were just doing what the Clintons do: cashing in on their “public service.” The Obama administration, with Secretary Clinton at the forefront but hardly alone, was knowingly compromising American national-security interests. The administration green-lighted the transfer of control over one-fifth of American uranium-mining capacity to Russia, a hostile regime — and specifically to Russia’s state-controlled nuclear-energy conglomerate, Rosatom. Worse, at the time the administration approved the transfer, it knew that Rosatom’s American subsidiary was engaged in a lucrative racketeering enterprise that had already committed felony extortion, fraud, and money-laundering offenses.” McCartney added, “The Obama administration also knew that congressional Republicans were trying to stop the transfer. Consequently, the Justice Department concealed what it knew. DOJ allowed the racketeering enterprise to continue compromising the American Uranium industry rather than commencing a prosecution that would have scotched the transfer. Prosecutors waited four years before quietly pleading the case out for a song, in violation of Justice Department charging guidelines. Meanwhile, the administration stonewalled Congress, reportedly threatening an informant who wanted to go public.” McCartney charged that the Obama Administration carried water for the Clintons and denied valuable information to Congress that could have stopped this deal.  While greenlighting this deal, they knew that Russian American subsidiary engaged in racketeering, fraud and extortion but kept that information private from Congress.  The Clinton operation corrupted the Obama Department of Justice.

The key element in the Uranium One was that Clinton’s Foundation which proved to be nothing more than a pay to play in which the Clintons’ did favors for donors.  There were members of the incoming Obama administration concern about the potential of pay for play with the Clinton’s receiving big payouts for the Foundation and Mrs. Clinton agreed that her Foundation would disclose donors and seek pre-approval from White House before accepting foreign donations.  Recent disclosures showed that Obama Administration may have cooperated with the Clinton’s in covering up key illegal activities committed by the Russians dealing with obtaining Uranium One and 20 percent of our Uranium.  The other questions concerns the role of the FBI, which includes Jim Comey, Robert Mueller and others either in the present Department of Justice or now part of the investigation into Trump’s possible collusion.

Did Mueller keep crucial information as director of the FBI from Congress that would have led Congress to stop the deal?  Did the FBI fail to follow up leads that would have would have created a path to Clintons’ and their foundation?   Mueller was the FBI director during this investigation and Rod Rosentstein, present Deputy Attorney General and who appointed Mueller to be special prosecutor, led the prosecution of the case and like the FBI failed to follow all leads.  Clinton’s were protected by the Obama justice department and the FBI.  The Mueller failure to follow the leads will come in later during the infamous Trump Dossier put together by Fusion GPS. Wall Street Journal calling for Mueller to resign is a result of his past failure to pursue leads that could have hurt the Clintons and ultimately led to the Trump investigation.  Mueller along with the Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein should have resigned their positions due to conflict of interest, not only due to past relationship with Comey but also due to failure in the investigating the Uranium One incident.  

Now we know that the Clinton campaign paid Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie, whose attorney Marc Elias was doing work on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Working with former British agent Christopher Steele and working with Russian sources including intelligence agents, Fusion GPS came up with infamous Trump Dossier. Fusion GPS did work on behalf of Washington Free Beacon and Republican donors but the work was done not just on Trump but also on other Republican candidates.  No Republican donors or conservative outlets funded the Dossier itself or Christopher Steele, so the Dossier was a definite Clinton paid operation.

Mollie Hemingway noted about this dossier, “We have no evidence to suggest that anything significant from the dossier has been verified. Journalists who are friendly with Fusion GPS and opponents of the Trump administration claim, without any evidence of any kind beyond anonymous sources’ vague say-so, that the dossier has parts that were “verified.” That could mean something as simple as the parts about Russia trying to find information about Trump, or about Trump affiliates having friendly business relations with Russians. We have no evidence to suggest that anything significant from the dossier has been verified… Far from being “verified,” the dossier is better described as demonstrably false. That includes getting basic facts about Russia wrong, making claims — such as the claim that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen met with Federation Council foreign affairs head Konstantin Kosachev in Prague — that are verifiably  wrong, making cartoonishly outlandish claims about finances, and various other problems.”

Russian officials were the key sources for information, which should alert any campaign or media reading the report, but many reporters were friends of members of Fusion GPS.  Hemingway noted, “The principals at Fusion GPS are well-connected to mainstream media reporters. They are former journalists themselves, and know how to package stories and provide information to push narratives. They are, in fact, close friends with some of the top reporters who have covered the Russia-Trump collusion story…Fusion GPS has placed stories with friendly reporters while fighting congressional investigators’ attempts to find out the group’s sources of funding. Fusion GPS leaders have taken the Fifth and fought subpoenas for information about the group’s involvement with Russia. Their close friendships with key reporters on these stories have paid huge dividends for the firm, although these friendships and cooperative relationships have not served the public well.”

One example of this was CNN reporter Evan Perez had ties to members of Fusion GPS while reporting on them without any mention of this relationship.   The Daily Caller noted, “CNN’s reporting on the dossier, led by justice correspondent Evan Perez, has been favorable to the firm, Fusion GPS, and hyped the dossier’s credibility. Left out of Perez’s reporting, which has relied largely on unnamed sources, is his personal closeness to Fusion GPS’ operatives. Fusion has repeatedly been described in Senate testimonies as a smear-for-hire operation that manufactures misleading or false media narratives for its clients…Glenn Simpson, the Fusion co-founder most often associated with the dossier, is used to working on stories with Perez. As reporters at The Wall Street Journal, Perez and Simpson regularly co-authored stories on national security...Another Fusion founder, Tom Catan, worked as a reporter for the Journal at the same time as Perez and Simpson. The third Fusion co-founder, Peter Fritsch, worked above Perez and Simpson as the senior national security editor.” This is just another reason that half of America hates the media or doesn’t trust the media.  

The problem is that there is evidence that the FBI may have depended upon this for FISA warrants and Powerlineblog Scott Johnson noted, “Why was the “dossier” ultimately so important for the anti-Trump conspiracy (if you think of a better way of putting it, let me know)? The reason, I think, is that the use of standard political smears against Trump had proven ineffective. Therefore it became necessary to take it all a step further and to attempt to make some superficially credible allegations of action against the national interest (again, the vague allegations of Mafia ties had fallen flat)… But in the anti-Trump conspiracy that’s exactly what was needed: FISA coverage, “wiretaps.” There was no time to do the painstaking research on Trump and his associates–they needed FISA and they needed it NOW. They’d already been turned down at least once. The NSA info was essentially useless, because what they really wanted was to get conversations between Trump and his associates here in the US–all USPERs–not international conversations (those were either lacking or harmless). Yes, NSA probably scoops up internal US communications of USPERs, too, but to use it without a FI and without a FISA order would be illegal. Therefore, the “dossier.”…For the conspirators the significance of the “dossier” was that it provided supposed “reason to believe” that Trump or those close to him were “agents of a foreign power,” subject to blackmail or pressure by a foreign power, already cooperating with a foreign power. The ability to claim that most of this “information” was coming via friendly foreign intel services with contacts in Russia added a bit of verisimilitude.”

Scott Johnson’s point is that nothing up to this point in the 2016 election worked against Trump so make the case that Trump was colluding with a foreign government and this could damage him.  The Dossier was used to make the case to investigate Trump’s campaign and keep up the mantra, the Russian helped Trump to win the elections. Scott Johnson observed that this dossier was needed since as he pointed out, “This is why I believe that the dossier took on added importance after the initial denial of a FISA order. We know, or think we do, that the FBI wanted Steele to do additional research. The focus of that research, however, would have to be to establish “reason to believe” that Trump or persons close to his campaign were “agents of a foreign power.” Only that would get them the FISA coverage they wanted. Lacking those, FISA was the quick route, but it required “reason to believe” that Trump or persons close to his campaign were “agents of a foreign power.” Voila the “dossier” as it apparently featured in the successful FISA application in October, the height of the campaign. And then it came to be used in the attempt to nullify the election (the attempted “coup)?”

The Dossier was designed to push an investigation into the Trump campaign and after the election, it was designed to undermine the Trump administration and delegitimize the election result.  

Reporters Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote in their book Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed campaign, wrote, “Within 24 hours of [Clinton’s] concession speech, [campaign chair John Podesta and manager Robby Mook] assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up. For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”   The entire premise of the Trump investigation  may have been based on a Dossier with information provided by Russia's intelligence agencies and paid for by Hillary Clinton Campaign.  We are now finding out that the Clintons with aid by the Obama Administration possibly allowed Putin to purchased 20% of our uranium reserves and many of those investigators who allowed Clinton to stake are now investigating Trump.   Maybe Trump should simply turn the table and launch investigation beginning with Clintons and members of the Obama Administration while including Robert Mueller, Jim Comey and others who failed to do their duty in exposing Hillary Clinton.

This put to rest the lie that Russians wanted Trump to win but more likely simply wanted to sow chaos in our election process and as Scott Johnson noted, “The Russians have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, thanks to the unwillingness of Hillary Clinton and her backers in the mainstream media to live with the result of last November’s presidential election.” If Hillary Clinton and the Democrats simply accepted the results, this would have failed but instead Hillary last act as a public official was to instill complete distrust in our political process and add to the sour civil discourse. America is better off with Hillary Clinton losing.  In the process of the Russian obtaining this uranium, the Clintons manage to possibly corrupt the Department of Justice and the FBI.