Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily is still clinging to the discredited Uranium One scandal. Bob Unruh writes in a Feb. 26 WND article:
Members of several congressional committees have been told by an FBI informant that the Russians “bragged” that the Clintons’ influence in the Obama administration would ensure approval of the Uranium One deal, according to the informant’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing.
Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the sale of 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves in 2010 to a Russian state-owned company at a time when interested parties were donating hundreds of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton also was paid $500,000 by a bank tied to the Kremlin for a speech.
The FBI informant, William Campbell, said in his statement to Congress, which was obtained by the Hill, that he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide specifically because it was in position to influence Hillary Clinton.
Dick Morris, a longtime Bill Clinton adviser, writes in a commentary Monday that the Russians sought the Uranium One deal “very aggressively.”
He says Campbell told Congress that in the years before the deal came up before the Committee of Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), of which Hillary Clinton was a member, Russia deployed 10 spies in the United States with a single mission: to get close to Hillary Clinton to get her to approve the Uranium One deal.
CFIUS — a multi-agency board that includes the State Department, the Defense Department and the Justice Department — has the power to block deals that threaten national security.
We've already noted that according to Democratic congressmen who are part of the investigation, the Justice Department considers Campbell to be unreliable. But it appears Campbell can't back up anything regarding purported Russian influnece on Clinton for the Uranium One deal:
In February, staff from three panels — the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Intelligence Committee — interviewed William Douglas Campbell, a confidential informant to the FBI during its investigation and prosecution of former Russian official Vadim Mikerin.
[...]
During the interview, Democratic staff say, Campbell was unable to point to anything to support his claims that the review process had been improperly influenced “other than the fact that the [Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS)] allowed the deal to go through.”
“When asked whether he had any evidence that Russian influence on the Clintons affected CFIUS’s review of the Uranium One deal, Mr. Campbell stated that ‘that was outside my pay grade’ and that the topic was ‘not my bailiwick,’ ” according to Democrats.
He told investigators that he “looked on Google to see what CFIUS was about” after the deal was approved in 2010.
Asked if he had any evidence to support DeSantis’s claim that the $500,000 speaking fee paid to Clinton was part of a “quid pro quo,” Campbell said he did not recall any individual ever mentioning the fee.
During his testimony, Campbell also said he was told by Russian nuclear executives that Moscow had hired the American lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to influence the Clintons and U.S. policy and that they expected the firm to provide in-kind support for the Clintons’ Global Initiative.
He said he believed that APCO sought “meetings at Commerce” and other “federal agencies” — but according to Democrats claimed not to know if any of those alleged efforts “ever came to fruition.”
Campbell “conceded that he was unaware of anything APCO had done or whether any specific meetings had occurred, and he did not explain the basis for his believe that APCO sought those meetings,” Democrats wrote.
Of c ourse, don't expect WND to stop flogging this dead horse anytime soon.
