As President Trump sent the press out of the Oval Office, he stopped and dropped a bomb about the ‘Real’ Russia story
Trump had finished the press conference and sent away the reporters. The pool cameras were exiting the Oval Office when Trump began to respond vigorously to another question. The cameras spun around and caught Trump eviscerating a question on a Russia Uranium deal approved by the Obama administration.
President Trump told exiting reporters, “I think that’s your Russia story. That’s your real Russia story.” Trump continued and dropped an unexpected bomb on the dumbfounded gaggle of reporters:
“Not a story where they talk about collusion, and there was none, it was a hoax. Your real Russia story is uranium, and how they got all of that uranium. Vast percentage of what we have. That is, to me, one of the big stories of the decade, not just now, of the decade. The problem is that the mainstream media does not want to cover that story because that affects people that they protect. So they don’t like covering that story. But the big story is uranium and how Russia got 20 percent of our uranium, and frankly, it’s a disgrace. It’s a disgrace. And it’s a disgrace that the fake news won’t cover it. It’s so sad.
Thank you very much, everybody.”
The room was stunned. Watch the moment here:
Trump on uranium: "That's your real Russia story, not a story where they talk about collusion and there was none" https://t.co/MQm7DP3jPC
FBI KEPT RUSSIAN BRIBERY PLOT UNDER WRAPS BEFORE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION APPROVED NUCLEAR DEAL WITH MOSCOW
he Obama administration signed a controversial nuclear deal with Moscow despite prior FBI findings that Russian officials were bribing their way into the U.S. atomic energy industry, according to government documents just published by The Hill.
A confidential U.S. witness deployed by the FBI infiltrated Russia’s nuclear industry and made secret recordings, collected financial records and intercepted emails dating back to 2009 that showed that Moscow engaged in bribery and kickbacks with an American uranium trucking company, documents show.
But the Obama administration insisted no evidence existed of Russian interference and that there were no national security concerns for committee members to go against the deal in 2010.
The deal that boosted Vladimir Putin’s nuclear footprint in the U.S. took place in October 2010 when the State Department and the Committee on Foreign Investment unanimously agreed to a partial sale of Uranium One, a Canadian mining company, to the major Russian nuclear company Rosatom, effectively sending more than 20 percent of the U.S.’s uranium to Moscow.
In 2011, the Obama administration gave the green light for Rosatom’s Tenex subsidiary to sell uranium to American nuclear power plants. Before the deal, Tenex could only sell reprocessed uranium from dismantled Soviet nuclear firearms to power plants in the U.S.
Russian exortion threats and kickbacks brought legitimate national security concerns, “And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” a souce who insisted on anonymity out of fear of retribution told The Hill.
Then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein — who was appointed by President George W. Bush and reappointed by President Barack Obama, and is now President Donald Trump’s deputy attorney general — and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who serves as deputy FBI director under Trump, supervised the investigation, documents show.
FBI agents also gathered documents and a witness account that Russian officials routed millions of dollars to ex-President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on a committee that gave a nod to the dealings with Moscow.
Like the Obama administration, the Clintons said there was no evidence to prompt them to go the other way on the Uranium One deal.
The Department of Justice investigated the Russian plot for close to four years, keeping the information under wraps while the Obama administration approved the deal instead of bringing immediate charges.
Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!
The Obama administration funneled billions of dollars to activist organizations through a Department of Justice slush fund scheme, according to congressional investigators.
“It’s clear partisan politics played a role in the illicit actions that were made,” Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, told Fox News. “The DOJ is the last place this should have occurred.”
Findings spearheaded by the House Judiciary Committee point to a process shrouded in secrecy whereby monies were distributed to a labyrinth of nonprofit organizations involved with grass-roots activism.
“Advocates for big government and progressive power are using the Justice Department to extort money from corporations,” Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton told Fox News. “It’s a shakedown. It’s corrupt, pure and simple.”
“The underlying problem with the slush funds is we don’t know exactly where the money is going,” Ted Frank, director of The Competitive Enterprise Institute Center for Class Action Fairness, told Fox News. “Using enforcement authority to go after corporate defendants, DOJ bureaucrats are taking billions away from taxpayers to fund their pet projects overriding congressional preferences.”
Republicans talk often about using the “power of the purse” to rein in a lawless Obama administration. If they mean it, they ought to use their year-end spending bill to stop a textbook case of outrageous executive overreach.
This scandal comes courtesy of the Justice Department, which for 16 months has engaged in a scheme to undermine Congress’s spending authority by independently transferring dollars to President Obama’s political allies. The department is in the process of funneling more than half-a-billion dollars to liberal activist groups, at least some of which will actively support Democrats in the coming election.
It works likes this: The Justice Department prosecutes cases against supposed corporate bad actors. Those companies agree to settlements that include financial penalties. Then Justice mandates that at least some of that penalty money be paid in the form of “donations” to nonprofits that supposedly aid consumers and bolster neighborhoods.
The Justice Department maintains a list of government-approved nonprofit beneficiaries. And surprise, surprise: Many of them are liberal activist groups. The National Council of La Raza. The National Urban League. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition. NeighborWorks America (which awards grants to left-leaning community organization groups, and has been compared with Acorn).
This strategy kicked off with the $13 billion J.P. Morgan settlement in late 2013, though in that case the bank was simply offered credit for donations to nonprofits. That changed with the Citigroup and Bank of America settlements, which outright required $150 million in donations. The BofA agreement contains a provision that potentially tees up nonprofit groups for another $490 million. Several smaller settlements follow the same mold.
To further induce companies to go the donation route, Justice considers these handouts to be worth “double credit” against penalty obligations. So while direct forms of victim relief are still counted dollar-for-dollar, a $500,000 donation by BofA to La Raza takes at least $1 million off the company’s bill.
The purpose of financial penalties is to punish, and to provide restitution to real victims. The Justice Department would make the case that this money is flowing to groups that aid the targets of supposed banking abuse, such as homeowners. But that assumes the work these groups do is targeted at actual victims—which it isn’t. It assumes that the work these groups do in housing is nonpartisan—which it isn’t. And it ignores that money is fungible. Every dollar banks donate to the housing arms of the Urban League or La Raza is a dollar those groups can free up to wage an assault on voter ID laws, or to help out Democrats.
This is the Obama administration riding roughshod over the most basic of congressional powers—those of spending and oversight. Adding to the insult, Justice is routing money back to programs that congressional Republicans deliberately stripped of funds. In 2011 Republicans eliminated the Housing Department’s $88 million for “housing counseling” programs, which spread around money to groups like La Raza. Congress subsequently restored only $45 million, and has maintained that level. These bank settlements pour some $30 million into housing counseling groups, thereby essentially restoring all the funding.
It’s also a classic Obama end run around the law. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who has spent a year investigating and pushing back against Justice’s slush fund, has noted that the Miscellaneous Receipts Act requires money received by the government from any source to be deposited in the Treasury. Directing banks to give money to third parties is a slippery way of evading that statute.
He’s also noted that Justice’s own internal guidelines discourage donations to third parties, precisely because of the risk it “can create actual or perceived conflicts of interest and/or other ethical issues.” No kidding. Mr. Goodlatte has discovered that some of the activist groups that stood to benefit from these transfers were involved in getting the requirements put into the settlements. He’s called on Justice to end the practice, and the department’s response has been to double down.
Which is why Mr. Goodlatte crafted a one-sentence amendment to the annual appropriations bill for Justice, one that strips the department of money if it continues with its slush-fund ruse. His amendment passed easily on a voice vote this summer.
Yet Justice has aggressive Democratic defenders in the Senate, who strongly oppose including the provision in the final, year-end omnibus. And some Senate Republicans seem willing to oblige them. Which is nuts.
The GOP is currently wrangling with Democrats over which policy riders to include in that final bill, and that’s well and good. But the Goodlatte amendment is so germane as to be obvious. It goes to the heart of the question at hand—spending—and to Congress’s right to control the national purse. If Republicans are interested in containing a president who routinely ignores the rules, here’s a place to stand.
