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For Thurs. Dec. 7, 2017
~All Gave Some~Some Gave
All~God Bless America
America’s Farmers Don’t Depend On Illegal Immigration
Liberals frame the debate over illegal immigration as a dilemma: either America grants amnesty to aliens or the economy will collapse. Some even imply that Americans will starve to death because of higher food prices—who will pick America’s fruits and veggies if not illegals? Bruce Goldstein, president of a nonprofit called Farmworker Justice, boldly claims that “if we were to [deport all illegal aliens], our agricultural system would collapse.” Collapse.
This is nonsense. American agriculture won’t collapse without illegal labor. Why not? Because there are plenty of technological solutions, and American workers available to pick up the slack. It’s time we put this myth to bed: here are the facts.
To begin with, agriculture is not a labor-intensive industry, and it hasn’t been for decades. Less than 2 percent of Americans work in agriculture according to data from the World Bank. This figure has declined since 1960, where roughly 6 percent of Americans worked on farms. If trends continue, we can expect the number to continue to fall. This is because of the wonders of mechanization: machines now do everything from thresh wheat to milk cows. The bottom line: most farmers do not “benefit” from cheap illegal labor, since their labor costs are minimal to begin with.
The “exception” to this rule are fruit and nut farms, located primarily in California. Crops like raspberries and almonds are notoriously difficult for machines to pick. There are many reasons for this including the fact that berries require a “soft touch”, they ripen at different times, and bushes are tough for machinery to navigate. These labor-intensive farms are the main agricultural culprits when it comes to hiring illegal workers—after all, they have the most to gain.
That being said, even labor-intensive agriculture doesn’t depend upon illegal labor—that’s just icing on the cake. In reality, the industry could get by without illegal workers since only four percent of American agricultural workers are illegal aliens, according to a report in the National Review. Likewise, only 1 in 6 workers in California’s nut orchards are illegals. Removing illegals from the system would be inconvenient for orchards, but it wouldn’t drive them out of business—the remaining employees would simply have to work a few hours of overtime per day.
Without Illegal Aliens Who Will Pick America’s Crops?
There are two ways for the agriculture industry to replace illegal workers: they could either hire Americans, or invest in better technology.
At this moment there are roughly 23 million unemployed Americans, some of whom have experience in agriculture. On top of this, America has a massive problem with seasonal unemployment for its college students. Either way, there are more than enough Americans to fill the potential labor shortage. The only reason Americans are not working in agriculture is because they are out-competed by cheap illegal workers. If you read this document published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will find that millions of Americans—of all races—currently work as janitors, laborers, and agricultural workers. If farmers were required to pay market wages, they wouldn’t have a problem finding employees.
At this point you may be thinking “without illegal immigrants, won’t the cost of produce go up?” Yes—but not by much. Higher labor costs can only result in higher prices to the degree that labor impacts the product’s cost. For example, higher wages for train conductors do not appreciably impact rail shipping costs because there are so few conductors per unit of freight—rail is capital-intensive. Contrast this with some retail outlets that spend 70 percent of their revenue on labor costs.
Agriculture—even fruit and nut orchards—are relatively capital-intensive, ie. the labor costs aren’t all that significant per unit of produce. Proof is in the numbers. A 2011 report published by the Federation for American Immigration Reform found that the agriculture industry was one of America’s most profitable sectors, and could easily afford to pay its workers 20-30 percent more without significantly impacting profits.
Furthermore, research conducted by Philip Martin, a leading expert on farm labor and migration issues, found that labor costs are negligible compared to the retail cost of produce. In 2006 Martin found that only 5-6 cents of every dollar spent on produce is due to labor costs. Therefore, if illegal aliens were removed from the labor force entirely, and labor costs rose by up to 40 percent to attract American workers, labor would still only account for 7-9 cents. Over the course of a year, this works out to just $9.00 extra for the average household. This is nothing, especially when you remember that illegal immigration costs America between $115 and $140 billion annually.
The second option, improving technology and embracing mechanization, is the strategy employed by America’s wheat, corn, and dairy industry. Have you ever had trouble affording flour or milk? Probably not. You can thank mechanization for this fact, not illegal aliens.
Although adopting new technology can be expensive, it brings costs down in the long run. And as it turns out, there’s a good argument to be made that the American fruit and nut industry’s addiction to cheap illegal labor has stifled technological development, and kept prices artificially high. Farmers should, and could mechanize—today. The technology exists, if only America’s fruit farms would embrace it. For example, an American company called “Abundant Robotics” has developed a fruit-picking robot that can harvest apples and peaches. Other companies have developed machines that are able to pick much smaller, more delicate fruit, like grapes and strawberries.
US Farmers Don’t Depend on Illegal Immigrants
America’s farmers don’t rely on illegal alien labor. This is a myth cooked up by the pro-illegal immigration lobby to further their agenda. Nothing more. I’d go so far as to argue that illegal immigration actually has no economic benefits on the whole—the gains are reaped only by special interest groups, while America pays the price. If you need more proof then America pays the price. This is a one-sided debate.
Nolte: A Media Week of Fake News, Homophobia, Perverts, Enablers, and Resistance
As though we do not already have enough proof that the American media is nothing less than a rolling clown car packed with deviants, sycophants, and propagandists, in His infinite wisdom and generosity, the Good Lord used all of last week to reveal once again just who these terrible people truly are.
ABC Tanks the Stock Market with Fake News
Are we at a point yet where “BrianRossing” is now a verb that describes a left-wing reporter (but I repeat myself) rushing before a network news camera to spread flat-out lies? Or maybe “BrianRossing” should be used to describe the consequences of that behavior — such as a month off to enjoy the holidays.
Back in 2012, Ross, a marquee reporter for ABC, could not wait to falsely blame a Tea Partier for a horrific mass-shooting in a Colorado movie theater. Fast-forward to last Friday, and this very same Ross could not wait to tell the world that candidate Trumpissued orders to get in touch with the Russians — which would prove Trump must be impeached for colluding with said Russians.
The only problem is that none of that was true. Nevertheless, ABC News took all day, seven full hours, before issuing a “clarification.”
Not a retraction or correction — a clarification.
Did I mention that ABC’s fake news tanked the stock market?
MSNBC’s Favorite Homophobe
Between 2007-2009, in what is unquestionably the most blatant and inexcusable act of homophobia attached to any single person currently working in the legitimate media, NBC’s Joy Reid — who anchors a show at MSNBC but has appeared on NBC News programs like Meet the Press — authored somewhere around a dozen articles that committed two breathtaking sins…
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1) Without any proof, she outed then-Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist as gay. 2) The left-wing Reid ridiculed and demeaned Crist for being gay.
Writing for her online Reid Report, and hurling nicknames like “Miss Charlie,” the NBC News star repeatedly and mercilessly attempted to denigrate Crist over his sexuality. She even questioned his marriage: “Now that he’s married to a girl,” Reid wrote, “Charlie Crist is being sought out for all KINDS of good stuff… [The GOP] are wooing Miss Charlie to run.”
“I can just see poor Charlie on the honeymoon, ogling the male waiters and thinking to himself, ‘god, do I actually have to see her naked…?’,” she added.
Naturally, after getting caught by the left-wing Mediaite, Reid apologized Monday, and because her politics are “correct,’ that apology will be good enough for a mainstream media that has no scruples, decency, or integrity.
But in an effort to save Reid, a cherished member of the anti-Trump Resistance, no one wants to discuss the full context of her monstrous behavior. At the time, Reid’s homophobic attacks on Crist were all part of a concerted effort on the left to kill his presidential aspirations.
After 2008, this smear campaign went nuclear to protect Barack Obama’s re-election chances. Because Crist was seen as a comer, an inevitable 2012 presidential candidate, and the popular governor of a crucial swing state, the left went so far as to produce and release a theatrical documentary as a means to (falsely) out him as gay.
Moreover, Reid was not some young, immature blogger when she did this. Rather, she was a 40 year-old woman with more than ten years of journalism under her belt.
Again, Crist, who is now a Democrat congressman, has been married twice, both times to women. There is absolutely no proof he is a homosexual. This was a straight-up smear campaign.
Regardless, no one at NBC News will ever again have the moral authority to lecture anyone about anything, much less homophobia.
The Failing New York Times and Very-Fake-News-CNN Openly Join The Resistance
Speaking of coming out…
Although the left-wing New York Times itself avoided paying any taxes in 2014 and has spent years railing against big corporations influencing our political system, last week this very same tax-dodging big corporation took full advantage (if only in spirit) of the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision with an all-out partisan assault against the tax reform bill that ended up passing in the U.S. Senate.
Going way above and beyond an editorial, the Times launched a full-fledged Resistance Campaign to kill the bill. On its print and web pages, and through social media, the Timeswent so far as to publish the phone numbers of senators and urged its readers to call and demand a “vote against the Senate tax bill because it would increase the deficit by more than $1.4 trillion.”
Yes, after eight years of their Precious Barry doubling 230 years of national debt all on his own, suddenly the Times is worried about deficits.
Over at CNN, national laughingstock and White House correspondent/preener Jim Acosta spoke at the Poynter Journalism Ethics Summit and proved that entire concept a joke by calling on his fellow preeners “to resist” Trump.
“Acosta says reporters are not a part of the ‘resistance,’ but adds: ‘When journalists are attacked, journalists have to resist,'” Politico’s Cristiano Lima reported.
NBC News’ (alleged) Pervert
Sex toys and James Bond door-locks; a woman bent over a chair and “harassed” until she passed out out — allegedly.
This is the 20 year face of NBC’s Today Show, the 20 year face of NBC News, the man paid $25 million annually to be that face, the alleged serial predator given an office hidden away in some dark corner of 30 Rockefeller…
The MSM’s Pervert-Enablers
And with Matt Lauer we have been told — just as we were with NBC/ABC/Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin and the New York Times/Politico’s Glenn Thrush and CBS’s Charlie Roseand countless others — that everyone knew! about Lauer.
Up and down the corporate ladder, everyone knew!
According to a report last week, this includes current CNN chief Jeff Zucker, who, in various roles, oversaw the Today Show for well over a decade.
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So take a good look at your mainstream media, folks… And what you will see is nothing less than an institution little different from the mafia, one populated only by liars, propagandists, homophobic smear-merchants, activists, perverts, abusers, and their enablers.
Evil. Pure evil.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
Robert Mueller’s ‘Russia’ Investigation is Turning Into ‘Dumb and Dumber 3’
Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels better look out because Robert Mueller’s so-called “investigation” into alleged Trump collusion with Russia is starting to look like the third installment of their absurdist movie series Dumb and Dumber.
With each indictment or “scalp” taken by team Mueller, we see this investigation drifting farther and farther from the claimed goal of looking to ferret out any “collusion” Donald Trump and his campaign is supposed to have committed with the Russians to affect our 2016 presidential election. In fact, to date, not a single aspect of Mueller’s efforts seem to lead anywhere near proving any such collusion.
Indeed, as far as former assistant United States Attorney Andrew C. McCarthy can tell, the actual goal was never to discover any legal evidence of “collusion,” but has been instead an effort to lead to a political goal of impeachment.
Contrary to what many liberals and media blatherers try to tell Americans, impeaching a president is not an action of the law, it is politics from start to finish. Even the main charge for impeachment “high crimes and misdemeanors” is purposely vague so as to allow the process its political air instead of giving it any procedures based solidly on the law.
As far as McCarthy can tell, the whole Mueller deal has been meant as a political ploy all along. The National Review columnist and legal expert specifically points out that the low-end charges that Mueller’s targets have pled guilty to so far prove that Mueller does not have a case for “collusion.” Not only that, McCarthy says the whole joke-of-a-case seems to show Mueller isn’t even interested in making any case for the charges his investigation was convened to prove.
In his December 4 article, McCarthy points out to readers that the minor charges that Manafort, Flynn, and Papadopoulos have pled guilty to have nothing whatsoever to do with collusion. And in the case of Manafort, it doesn’t even have anything to do with Trump!
McCarthy notes that many in the media imagine that Mueller is hitting them with small charges to get them to flip on Trump of someone high up on his presidential campaign team. But, that isn’t how any of this works McCarthy says. Prosecutors don’t go for the minor charges. They go for the toughest, most serious charges right out of the box and try to use that to force cooperation. It doesn’t work the other way around.
Bottom line: If the FBI had a collusion case of some kind, after well over a year of intensive investigation, Flynn and Papadopoulos would have been pressured to plead guilty to very serious charges — and those serious offenses would be reflected in the charges lodged against Manafort. Obviously, the pleas and the indictment have nothing to do with collusion because Mueller has no collusion case.
McCarthy concludes:
1.) There is a great deal of misinformation in the commentariat about how prosecutors build cases.
2.) For all practical purposes, the collusion probe is over. While the “counterintelligence” cover will continue to be exploited so that no jurisdictional limits are placed on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, this is now an obstruction investigation.
3.) That means it is, as it has always been, an impeachment investigation.
So, it’s all politics and has nothing at all to do with law. Another incident inside Mueller’s team also proves this to be true. We found out months ago that one of Mueller’s FBI investigators was fired off the case, but it wasn’t until last week that we found out why he was eliminated.
It turns out this FBI official was fired because he was so clearly in the tank for Hillary Clinton that his judgment was suspect.
Peter Strzok, the FBI agent in charge of the so-called investigation into Russia collusion, was let go from the team four months ago, but now we find out that he was dismissed because it had been found out Strzok was engaging in numerous anti-Trump communications with his mistress, the Daily Caller reported.
“Peter Strzok’s text messages — which he exchanged with Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer who worked briefly on the Russia investigation — are perhaps the most significant evidence of anti-Trump bias uncovered so far on the Mueller team,” Daily Caller wrote.
So, one of the people put in charge of investigating Trump was a virulent Trump hater. No wonder his judgment was suspect.
Worse, now at least one former FBI official is warning that Mueller himself has a “huge conflict of interest” in this whole investigation. As Breitbart News reported on Monday:
Not only do observers describe Mueller and the man he recommended to replace him as FBI director, James Comey, as close or even best friends, but the special counsel pursues an investigation heavily involving the bureau he once led. How one maintains detachment in leading a team that includes numerous anti-Trump partisans in a probe involving one’s close friend and the former bureau for which Mueller served as director goes unexplained.
“Bob Mueller should have never been offered nor accepted the job as special counsel as he has a huge conflict of interest,” former FBI assistant director Jim Kallstrom said. “He should have recused himself.”
In the end, it is clear that this Mueller investigation is a farce on the level of Jim Carrey’s Dumb and Dumber movies and could yet qualify as the biggest joke in Washington D.C.
Successful KJU Missile Was Faked: Plane Crew Saw Disastrous Results
BY CILLIAN ZEAL
It was the missile shot heard ’round the world: North Korea’s latest ICBM was test-fired last week and, according to CNN, flew higher and farther than any of the Kim regime’s past weapons.
“The Hwasong-15 weaponry system, capable of carrying super-heavy nuclear warhead and striking the whole mainland of the U.S., has greater advantages in its tactical and technological specifications and technical characteristics than Hwasong-14 whose test-fire was conducted in July last,” a statement from the state-run Korea Central News Agency read.
“This is the most powerful ICBM, which means that the DPRK has attained its goal of completing the rocket weaponry system development set by it,” the release said, using the initials for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “The successful launch of Hwasong-15 is a great event that proved that no force on the earth can block our dynamic advance toward the final victory of socialism.”
Unfortunately, there is one force that could block the dynamic advance toward the final victory of socialism that the Hwasong-15 allegedly represents: namely, the crew of Cathay Pacific Flight 893.
According to an internal company message from the crew of Flight 893, which was flying in the vicinity of the Nov. 29 missile test, the pilots saw the North Korean missile break up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, essentially rendering the test a failure.
The message was obtained by the South China Morning Post, a newspaper in Cathay Pacific’s home base of Hong Kong.
According to the Morning Post, the crew of the San Francisco-bound flight witnessed the disintegration of the missile upon re-entry at approximately 2:18 a.m. Hong Kong Time.
“Be advised, we witnessed the DPRK missile blow up and fall apart near our current location,” the message read. “We advised ATC (air traffic control) and ops (operations) normal. Just letting you know’. Looking at the actual plots, CX096 (a Cathay Pacific Cargo flight) might have been the closest, at a few hundred miles laterally.”
An airline spokeswoman said the flight was over Japan when the Hwasong-15 was launched.
An airline spokeswoman said the flight was over Japan when the Hwasong-15 was launched.
“Though the flight was far from the event location, the crew advised Japan (air traffic control) according to procedure,” she said.
While North Korea has made major strides in the range of its ballistic missiles over the past few years, experts have long suspected that the Kim regime still has a ways to go in two areas: guidance systems and heat shielding to allow the missiles to survive re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
On the latter front, CIA reports had seemed to indicate that while the shielding wasn’t perfect, the North Koreans are getting close enough to pose a legitimate threat.
That may indeed still be the case. However, as the disastrous results of the Hwasong-15 launch proves, they’re not quite there yet.
In the KCNA’s news announcing the “successful” ICBM launch, the state news agency said that “(t)his great victory will shine long in the history of our Party and country and further propel the all-out general offensive for implementing the decision set forth at the Seventh Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea.”
It may have shone, all right. However, my guess was that was mostly just from the disintegration upon re-entry.
New documents confirm the FBI ran cover-up for Clinton
Gage Skidmore / CCL
While Bill and Hillary Clinton are linked to an ever-growing list of scandals that go back decades, they still manage to evade justice thanks to the endless support they receive from their followers. Now, more information has come out showing just how far some government agencies will go to help the Clintons escape what they deserve.
Documents released by Judicial Watch on Thursday show that the FBI tried desperately to hide the details of Bill Clinton’s tarmac meeting with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch – even going on an all-out hunt for the leaker.
You can’t make this stuff up.
The tarmac meeting
In the summer of 2016, Hillary Clinton was not only the heavily-favored Democratic candidate for the presidency — she was also at the center of an investigation into unauthorized, private email servers in her bathroom. Clinton was using the servers to send and receive classified information outside of regular protocols that would archive her communications as public records.
Around the same time, former President Bill Clinton secretly met with Lynch on the tarmac at Phoenix International Airport. Their 30-minute clandestine meeting was leaked to the press,
Clinton and Lynch claimed it was a totally coincidental meeting, and all they discussed was their grandchildren; it was completely unrelated, of course, when a few days later, FBI Director James Comey said he would not recommend charging Hillary in regard to the emails.
Watchdog group Judicial Watch filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in attempt to learn more about the meeting. And while the FBI claimed in October 2016 that no records pertaining to the meeting existed, emails unearthed in a related lawsuit forced the FBI to admit in August that “potentially responsive documents may exist.”
And not only did they exist, they were highly damning.
FBI only cared about the leak
The documents revealed that the tarmac meeting threw the FBI into a panic. The problem was that they didn’t care about the meeting itself or its implications — the agency only cared about who leaked it to the press.
“We need to find that guy,” read one email from a blacked-out source, referring to the whistleblower who leaked the meeting to the press. “[I]n an attempt to stem any further damage.” Another message called a news article about the meeting “infuriating.”
Another email said of the press article:
This is exactly why our Discretion and Judgement are the foundation of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] trust in our team, which is why we can never violate that trust, like the source did in this article.
Another email said of the press article:
This is exactly why our Discretion and Judgement are the foundation of the AG’s [Attorney General’s] trust in our team, which is why we can never violate that trust, like the source did in this article.
The documents also showed that the Phoenix FBI office was contacted with guidance as to how agents could help cover up details of the meeting.
This evidence plainly shows the FBI was — and maybe is — involved in a cover-up to protect Hillary Clinton. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton says, “These new documents confirm the urgent need to reopen the Clinton email scandal and criminally investigate the resulting Obama FBI/DOJ sham investigation.”
Luckily, watchdog groups like Judicial Watch are poised to ensure that every rock is overturned.
Alan Dershowitz Says Flynn Indictment Proves Trump Was Right All Along
By Joe Setyon
President Donald Trump is under fire from many in the mainstream media following Friday’s news that former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to special counsel Robert Mueller’s charge that he lied to the FBI.
Flynn was charged with “willfully and knowingly” making “false, fictitious and fraudulent statements” regarding conversations he had with former Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak between Trump’s election and his inauguration.
But according to Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Flynn’s guilty plea does not implicate Trump. Instead, it does the opposite — proves that the president was right all along.
Trump has consistently denied that his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election, and argued that the investigation into alleged collusion is nothing more than a witch hunt.
During a Saturday appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Dershowitz indicated that Mueller has nothing on Trump. If he did, then he wouldn’t have indicted Flynn for lying, which, according to the legal scholar, makes him a “useless witness.”
“Well, the last thing any prosecutor wants to do is to have to indict his primary witness for lying,” Dershowitz said. “Because if you indict your witness for lying, it really means he’s not useful as a witness, he has no credibility.”
“Well, the last thing any prosecutor wants to do is to have to indict his primary witness for lying,” Dershowitz said. “Because if you indict your witness for lying, it really means he’s not useful as a witness, he has no credibility.”
“I’m sure the prosecutor was trying to indict him for some scheme or conspiracy that involved other people in the White House, but there is nothing there, and he had to, finally come down and indict him for lying, which makes him a useless witness.”
As a result, Dershowtiz contended, this shows that indicting Flynn for a lying was the best he could do. Thus, “it’s not a show of strength by the prosecutor. It’s a show of weakness.”
“It’s a show that they really have nothing on anybody above of Flynn and that Flynn made the terrible mistake about lying about something he could have told truth about,” he said.
In an op-ed column for The Hill published Saturday, Dershowitz expanded on this point. He noted that what Flynn did — contact Kislyak to urge the Russians not to vote in favor of a United Nations Security Council vote relating to Israel — was not illegal, considering that it was done after Trump had already been elected.
In fact, he said, “it was the right thing to do.”
“As the president-elect, Donald Trump was constitutionally and politically entitled to try to protect his ability to broker a fair peace between the Israelis and Palestinians by urging all members of the Security Council to vote against or delay the enactment of the resolution,” he wrote.
On Friday, ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross incorrectly reported that Flynn was getting ready to testify that while Trump was a candidate for president, he instructed Flynn to make contact with the Russians.
Such testimony, if true, could support claims that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in order to win presidency. But the report was false. It was during the transition period, after Trump had already been elected president, that the then-president-elect reportedly told Flynn to contact the Russians.
Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI, but Dershowitz pointed out on Fox that what he lied about was “perfectly lawful and perfectly proper for somebody to do during the transition.”
The Harvard law professor added that Mueller is “going on the domino theory, one domino at the time. You go for the lowest-hanging fruit.”
“You indict people for lying to the FBI, failing to fill out the proper forms,” he said. “These are forms of essentially political jaywalking, then you squeeze them and you hope that maybe they’ll give you information that would lead to somebody higher up.”
“But in the end,” he concluded, “it’s hope over reality. So, I would not say this is a day for celebrating for the prosecution in the Mueller office.”
What We Know About The Russia-Clinton Uranium One Deal So Far Is Crazy Enough
This massive global corruption case implicates the very U.S. presidential candidate who projected similar nefarious activities onto her opponent.
By James H. Hyde
In 2013, Russia’s state-run uranium monopoly, Rosatom, purchased a Canadian mining company, Uranium One, in which it had previously held a controlling interest. Uranium One owns a controlling interest in other global uranium companies, whose owners have donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Clinton Foundation, with pledges of millions more.
Uranium is a highly sensitive material key to nuclear weapons, and the Uranium One sale was approved by various Obama administration agencies, including the U.S. State Department then headed by Hillary Clinton. In 2017, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee opened an investigation into Russia’s purchase of Uranium One following New York Times reports that Russian business people with close financial ties to Uranium One donated millions to the Clinton Foundation before and after the sale.
In October, President Trump directed the U.S. Department of Justice to release an informant from a nondisclosure agreement he had signed regarding a “bribery and extortion” scheme inside a U.S. branch of Rosatom during its acquisition of Uranium One, Reuters reported last month. On Monday, The Hill reported that prosecutors did not interview the informant, lobbyist William Campbell, “in the FBI’s Russian nuclear bribery case before it filed criminal charges in the case in 2014. And the prosecutors did not let a grand jury hear from the paid informant before it handed up an indictment portraying him as a ‘victim’ of the Russian corruption scheme or fully review his extensive trove of documents until months later, the officials confirmed.”
More:
Justice Department officials began briefing Congress last week, divulging missteps in a case that nonetheless proved the Russian state-owned Rosatom was engaged in criminal activity through its top American executive beginning in 2009, well before the Obama administration made a series of favorable decisions benefitting Moscow’s nuclear giant.
Multiple House and Senate committees already are investigating whether the FBI alerted President Obama or his top aides to the Russian criminal activity and plan to interview the undercover informant soon.
The new revelations, however, could tip some scrutiny toward federal prosecutors’ own conduct in the case, a sensitive topic since Rosenstein [whose office failed to interview Campbell in 2014] is now Justice’s No. 2 official and the supervisor of the special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering.
The deal gave Uranium One, and thus Russia, access to 20 percent of the U.S. uranium market. That’s problematic for two reasons: 1. The United States has to import uranium because it can’t produce enough on its own; and 2. It suggests a potentially serious breach of national security, possibly greased by corruption. The agreement enabled the Clintons to reap a financial windfall for their foundation and Bill personally.
It will take months, if not years, for key information in this case to be uncovered. For now, here’s an overview of what we know and what that suggests has been going on in this massive global corruption case that potentially implicates the very U.S. presidential candidate who projected similar nefarious activities onto her opponent.
About the Uranium One Deal
In 2005 Vladimir Putin launched a quest to increase the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation (Rosatom’s) control of uranium worldwide. According to Casey Research, “Among other things, [Putin] is working to corner the uranium market – his country already controls 40% of global uranium enrichment capacity, the lion’s share of the world’s downblending facilities, and a fair chunk of the world’s uranium resources.”
As part of Putin’s plan, Rosatom, which he backs, planned to find a way to own uranium produced inside the United States. Under the tenets of the deal, Rosatom was allowed to buy a controlling interest in Uranium One, a Canadian company, which just happened to have contracts to mine uranium here in the United States. Specifically, it owns 20 percent of our uranium.
While the U.S. uranium that Uranium One mined was to be sold only to U.S. companies, it hasn’t been—not all of it, anyway. The New York Times reports that some of our uranium has been exported.
“Asked about [where it has gone, the Nuclear Regulatory] commission confirmed that Uranium One has, in fact, shipped yellowcake to Canada even though it does not have an export license. A commission spokesman said that ‘to the best of our knowledge’ most of the uranium sent to Canada for processing was returned for use in the United States. [But] A Uranium One spokeswoman, Donna Wichers, said 25 percent had gone to Western Europe and Japan.”
Sources aren’t certain where the yellowcake has actually gone, a chilling potential national security threat.
When it came time to approve the deal, nine Obama administration departments gave it a green light, and the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) gave it final approval. Among the nine people sitting on the CFIUS board were then secretary of state Hillary Clinton and attorney general Eric Holder. Both approved the agreement, and were likely to know of the FBI’s investigation into significant corruption in which U.S.-based Russian industry officials were engaged to obtain an interest in our uranium.
Once the deal was consummated, it gave the United States nothing tangible, but was endorsed by the Obama administration to advance Obama and Hillary Clinton’s flawed “Russian Reset” policy, according to The New York Post.
Then What Looks Like Corruption and a Coverup
The proof of the malfeasance involved in this deal may well rest with Campbell, an eyewitness to the Rosatom corruption and possibly the Clintons’ roles. It should have prevented the deal from ever coming to fruition. According to John Solomon and Alison Spann of The Hill, back in 2007 Russian nuclear officials here in the United Statesworking for Rosatom were heavily engaged in extortion, bribery, kickbacks, and money laundering. Their mission was to do whatever it took to enable Putin to access U.S. uranium.
Reuters reports that Campbell was lobbying for the Russian oil industry at the time. According to his attorney, Victoria Toensing, he informed the FBI about what was occurring as early as 2008. The bureau made him a confidential informant (CI), put a wire on him, and sent him back into the cesspool. There he, with FBI permission, paid bribes himself and collected a trove of incriminating documents, emails, audio, and video evidence.
Sara Carter of Circa News interviewed Toensing, who explained, “My client was providing information for a couple years [to the FBI] before [the Uranium One deal] really got voted on by CFIUS, and here’s the rub. High-ranking law enforcement officials in the Obama Administration knew that there was corruption in this company and that information about the corruption in this Russian entity never made it to CFIUS, evidently, because CFIUS authorized the purchase in 2010.”
But Campbell’s desire to tell Congress what he knew before the agreement was signed met threats from the Obama Justice Department and the FBI, his attorney says. When his undercover work was over, he was made to sign a nondisclosure agreement, which is highly irregular for a confidential informant, according to Toensing. It barred him from disclosing anything about the case. Toensing told Circa News, “[My client] is not only afraid of the Russian people, but he is afraid of the U.S. government because of the threats the Obama administration made against him.”
The threats were leveled, Toensing said, when Campbell sued the government to be reimbursed for money he had paid out of pocket for bribes made at the FBI’s direction. The informant’s lawyer at the time was called by the Justice Department and Rod Rosenstein, Toensing told Fox News. The FBI and Rosenstein, who was U.S. attorney for Maryland at the time and overseeing the prosecution of the Russians, warned Campbell to drop his case, or his “reputation and liberty would be at stake,” Toensing says. Sounds like some U.S. agencies, or people in charge of them, really wanted this Uranium One deal to go through.
The news of Campbell’s existence and the evidence he promises to disclose are contributing to a seismic shift in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. It could be devastating not only to the Clintons, but the Obama administration as well.
Peter Schweizer, author of “Clinton Cash,” told Fox News about one particularly damaging audiotape Campbell recorded. Schweizer alleges, “I’ve heard about the tape from people at the FBI, and that audiotape apparently is Russian officials with this uranium company talking about making donations to the Clinton Foundation to gain favorable action.” When asked by Fox News about the tape, Toensing acknowledged that it exists, but declined to reveal what was on it.
How the Clintons Benefitted From the Uranium One Deal
The New York Times published an inclusive timeline (see chart below) detailing how a Clinton crony, Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra, and others involved in the Uranium One deal donated tens of millions to the Clinton Foundation starting in 2006.
The story begins in 2005, when Bill Clinton and Giustra visited Kazakhstan. While there, Clinton made some introductions and Giustra inked a lucrative mining deal for his company, UrAsia. The New York Times reports that in 2007, Giustra merged his company, UrAsia, with Uranium One, then a South African mining company. Because Giustra was Canadian, Uranium One was moved to Canada and later obtained uranium mining right in the United States.
The Kazakhstan deal was extremely lucrative for Giustra. He and others, such as Ian Telfer, who according to The New York Times served as Uranium One’s chairman, donated substantial amounts to the Clinton Foundation. In an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News, Schweizer says, “As this deal was coming for approval in 2010, the Clinton Foundation received [donations] from nine shareholders in this uranium company that was sold to the Russians. None of them all of a sudden decided they were going to donate large amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation, more than $145 million. And by the way, a lot of those donations were never declared publicly by the Clintons, they were hidden.”
Hillary, also caught in major conflicts of interest with national security implications, should have recused herself from CIFUS and voting on the Uranium One agreement.
Schweizer’s obvious implication is that the donations were a quid pro quo or pay-to-play kickback to the Clintons for Bill’s help in cinching the Kazakh deal for Giustra and promoting Russia’s purchase of Uranium One.
But it didn’t end there. The Hill reports that in 2010 Bill Clinton, who had petitioned the State Department to conduct meetings with oligarchs in the Russian nuclear industry, met instead with Vladimir Putin himself. Fox News reports that a bank, Renaissance Capital, paid Clinton $500,000—twice his usual fee—to give a speech in Moscow. According to Bloomberg, the speech occurred after Rosatom made known its interest in Uranium One, and that Renaissance Capital actively promoted Uranium One to potential investors.
It also had an ownership stake in the company. Clinton’s $500,000 speech delivered to a bank with a vested interest in Uranium One, his desire to talk to Russian nuclear oligarchs, and meeting with Putin certainly suggest he played a key role in making the Uranium One deal happen. If that can be proven, a number of laws have been broken, and Hillary, also caught in major conflicts of interest with national security implications, should have recused herself from CIFUS and voting on the Uranium One agreement.
The investigations into this deal, the Clinton Foundation, and the FBI’s handling of Hillary Clinton’s email case are about to be front and center in Washington. Much of what happens next will come from Campbell. His appearance before Congress could prove toxic not only to the Clintons, but the Obama administration as well.
James H. Hyde is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He has been a journalist since 1983, and covers politics, national security (threats to the U.S. electric grid), and terrorism. He won a Jesse H. Neal Award in 1986, has served as managing editor of three magazines, written two syndicated columns, authored one book and is working on a series of others. Follow James on Twitter @jameshhyde and Facebook james.h.hyde1.
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