On his way to Dallas today, U.S. President Donald Trump held an impromptu press conference on the South Lawn of the White House where he weighed in on revelations about the Uranium One controversy as well as the lurid Russian dossier that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.
Trump declared that the sale of 20 percent of U.S. uranium to the Russian-controlled company was “underhanded,” and that it is a “modern-age” or modern-day equivalent to Watergate, the scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974.
According to reporting by The Hill and other news outlets, the Obama administration during the time Hillary Clinton headed the State Department gave the green light to the uranium sale even though the FBI had a racketeering investigation underway.
“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] 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. “
Axio s reports that Uranium One officials donated $2 million-plus to the Clinton Foundation in the 2009-2013 time frame, transactions that were not publicly disclosed at the time. Bill Clinton also received $500,000 to give a speech in Moscow in June 2010, right around the time the federal government approved the uranium sale to the Russian firm. “The money came from a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin.”
The feds classifies uranium as a “strategic asset with implications for national security,” and as such, the sale required a sign-off by several government agencies including the State Department under Clinton.
The Obama administration reportedly imposed a gag order on a confidential informant in the case. In an update from The Daily Caller , the Justice Department is releasing the FBI undercover informant from the confidentiality agreement, which will enable him to testify before Congress.
Clinton critics have long alleged that foreign countries and multinational corporations made huge cash contributions to the Clinton family foundation in exchange for favorable treatment by the U.S. government when Hillary Clinton was America’s top diplomat. There are seemingly new developments in this controversy by the minute, and Congress is now investigating.
Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2017
With regard to the “dirty dossier” supposedly containing compromising material about him that was published by BuzzFeed , Trump called it a “disgrace” and “a very sad commentary about the state of politics.” He also chided Hillary Clinton and the Democrats for denying all this time that they paid Fusion GPS to produce the anti-Trump research, which has mostly been discredited. He claimed that they’re only admitting it because it is now subject to a court case.
The Washington Post was first to report that the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped pay for the information or disinformation that led to the dossier — with a price tag of about $9 million — and similar to the Uranium One scenario, new details continue to unfold. Fusion GPS executives last week invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in refusing to answer questions on Capitol Hill about the dossier, and the company is fighting in court against a congressional subpoena for its bank records that would reveal the identity of the client who commissioned the dossier, which was compiled by an ex-British intelligence official with Russian connections that the Post identified as Christopher Steele. An unidentified Republican — presumably on behalf of one of Trump’s rivals during the presidential primary season — initially funded the initial opposition research (but not the work of the former British spy) but apparently dropped out after Trump won the GOP nomination.
The opposition research, which Trump describes as a “fake dossier,” apparently prompted the investigation of alleged Russian collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin regime, and thus calls into question the underlying narrative that led to the probes. “The finding also raises the possibility that the dossier is what led the Obama White House to snoop on members of Trump’s team, and leak the ‘unmasked’ names to the anti-Trump media in a bid to help Clinton,” the New York Post claimed about a development that “flips the collusion script on its head.”
“Clinton campaign & DNC paid for research that led to the anti-Trump Fake News Dossier. The victim here is the President.” @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2017
In the impromptu press conference (see video embedded below), President Trump also insisted that despite his feuds with two senators, the Republican Party is unified, and that mainstream media is putting out fake stories about the lack of solidarity in the GOP caucus.
According to CNN, the FBI reimbursed some of Steele’s expenses, and the Post claims that “the FBI agreed to pay Steele to continue gathering intelligence about Trump and Russia, but the bureau pulled out of the arrangement after Steele was publicly identified in news reports.”
“The Steele dossier was a Clinton/DNC-funded operation supported by the FBI and influenced heavily by Russian operatives in the Kremlin,” The Federalist concluded .
In an interview with FNC’s Tucker Carlson, author/pundit Mark Steyn quipped that “everyone is colluding with Russia, except Trump.”
[Featured Image by Andrew Harnik/AP Images]