• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing January 23, 2023
Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’ January 23, 2023
Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom January 23, 2023
IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia January 23, 2023
BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels January 17, 2023
Next
Prev

The True North Connection to Hilary Clinton’s Uranium Non-Scandal

November 5, 2017
Reading time: 3 minutes

Damien Connor/YouTube

Damien Connor/YouTube

 

Donald Trump wants the FBI to drop its investigation of possible collusion between his election campaign and the Russian government, to focus instead on what he calls the “real scandal” of Hillary Clinton taking a Russian bribe to give that country a fifth of America’s uranium via a Canadian front company. The CBC and other outlets have debugged the charges to provide a more accurate account of events.

“We had Hillary Clinton give Russia 20% of the uranium in our country,” Trump told an audience in February. “You know what uranium is, right? It’s this thing called nuclear weapons. And other things. Like lots of things are done with uranium. Including some bad things.”

  • Concise headlines. Original content. Timely news and views from a select group of opinion leaders. Special extras.
  • Everything you need, nothing you don’t.
  • The Weekender: The climate news you need.
New!
Subscribe

Recently, pressed on his own campaign’s Russian connection, Trump has revived the allegation, tweeting in late October: “Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn’t want to follow!”

Trump’s cheerleaders in right-wing media have take up the allegation. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson “questioned whether it was wise to ‘give’ Russia 20% ‘of our uranium supplies.’” His colleague Sean Hannity raged that “America’s national security was sold out” in one of the “biggest scandals in American history. People will need to go to jail.”

Unpacked, the Hilary Clinton/‘Uranium One scandal’ (2.3 million Google hits in 0.46 seconds) amounts to the allegation that the former Democratic presidential candidate and secretary of state accepted Russian bribes, sometimes reported as high as US$145 million, to hand over a fifth of the United States’ store of uranium to Russia via a Canadian company, Uranium One.

The facts, as CBC News, Vice, and Vox establish them, are quite different, and thoroughly distorted in the Trump/Hannity telling.

In 2010, Russia’s nuclear authority Rosatom purchased a 51% stake in Toronto-based Uranium One—mainly for its resource holdings in Kazakhstan and in Canada. The same company owns a low-grade uranium mine in the United States whose output could in theory be raised to 20% of America’s total production, but which according to Vice has not been at that level for years.

The trumped-up allegations hang this mine and its theoretical output.

Because the Rosatom acquisition entailed that U.S. mine property, it came under a national security review by an inter-agency committee on which both the FBI and the State Department—then run respectively by now-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and Clinton—were represented (in neither case by those individuals). The committee allowed the acquisition.

The Russian agency’s purchase did not in fact “give” it automatic access to uranium from its new U.S. mine. That would have needed another review and an export permit from U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It is true that at least two individuals associated with Uranium One—Frank Giustra and Ian Telford—donated to the Clinton Foundation—more than US$30 million in Giustra’s case. But both men are extremely well known and respected in Canadian resource finance circles, and unlikely conduits at best for Russian bribes. Moreover, CBC notes, Giustra sold his stake in Uranium One in 2007, three years before the Russia deal. Telfer, who was chair of Uranium One at the time of the Rosatom acquisition, donated a relatively paltry C$2.35 million to the Clintons’ charitable foundation in several contributions.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, a well-paid fixture on the international speaking circuit, also received $500,000 from “a Russian investment bank that had links to the Kremlin and was promoting Uranium One stock,” for an appearance and a speech in Moscow, CBC notes.

However, suggesting that her husband’s speaking fee and those donations motivated Clinton to influence a low-level decision from which the alleged beneficiary gained nothing—much less the apocryphal one-fifth of America’s uranium—is “complete B.S.,” Texas-based uranium resource consultant Michael Campbell told CBC.

“There wasn’t anything about quid-pro[-quo]. This business about the Clintons getting money for speeches, that was so different. The timing was so separate you could see there was no relationship.”

That has not stopped Trump and his allies from demanding that Mueller step down as special prosecutor for his “role” in the affair, or that Clinton face yet another Congressional investigation for the alleged “scandal”.



in Energy Politics, Nuclear, United States

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

RL0919/wikimedia commons
Finance & Investment

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter
Ending Emissions

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
263
Rachel Notley/Facebook
Jobs & Training

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
252

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

RL0919/wikimedia commons

Danske Bank Quits New Fossil Fuel Financing

January 23, 2023
2.1k
@tongbingxue/Twitter

Extreme Warming Ahead Even as Worst-Case Scenarios Grow ‘Obsolete’

January 23, 2023
263
Rachel Notley/Facebook

Notley Scorches Federal Just Transition Bill as Fossil CEO Calls for Oilsands Boom

January 23, 2023
252
Weirton, WV by Jon Dawson/flickr

IRON OXIDE: New Battery Brings Long-Duration Storage to Grids, 750 Jobs to West Virginia

January 23, 2023
492
James Vincent Wardhaugh/flickr

Canada Sidelines Ontario’s Ring of Fire, Approves Separate Mining Project

December 4, 2022
376
TALL ORDER -- A field of “Freedom” giant miscanthus on Mississippi State University’s South Farm towers over research agronomist Brian Baldwin. Baldwin’s 12-year study of grassy feedstocks indicates the plant is a viable resource for biofuel production. (Photo by MSU Ag Communications/Scott Corey)

Bamboo-like Crop Could Cut U.S. Midwest Warming by 1°C

May 4, 2022
958

Recent Posts

United Nations

Salvage of $20B ‘Floating Time Bomb’ Delayed by Rising Cost of Oil Tankers

January 27, 2023
5
EcoAnalytics

Albertans Want a Just Transition, Despite Premier’s Grumbling

January 23, 2023
187
Sergio Boscaino/flickr

Dubai Mulls Quitting C40 Cities Over ‘Costly’ Climate Target

January 24, 2023
84
hangela/pixabay

New UK Coal Mine Faces Two Legal Challenges

January 24, 2023
43

Gas Stoves Enter U.S. Climate Culture War, Become ‘Bellwether’ for Industry

January 22, 2023
72
Jeff Hitchcock/flickr.

BREAKING: GFANZ Banks, Investors Pour Hundreds of Billions into Fossil Fuels

January 23, 2023
493
Next Post
sundem / Pixabay

Biggest Fossils Plan Higher Spending to Keep Adding Unburnable Reserves

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}