Trump demands more scrutiny of Democrats
“Facts are pouring out,” but histories of dossier, uranium deal are complicated
WASHINGTON» On Sunday morning, President Donald Trump expressed frustration that his campaign is under investigation over possible ties to Russia’s plot to influence the 2016 election but that his former opponent Hillary Clinton is not facing the same level of scrutiny.
In four tweets sent over 24 minutes, Trump wrote: “Never seen such Republican ANGER & UNITY as I have concerning the lack of investigation on Clinton made Fake Dossier (now $12,000,000?), the Uranium to Russia deal, the 33,000 plus deleted Emails, the Comey fix and so much more. Instead they look at phony Trump/ Russia, ‘collusion,’ which doesn’t exist. The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”
The tweets came as CNN has continued to report that on Friday a federal grand jury in Washington approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller III, citing “sources briefed on the matter.” The charges are sealed, and it’s unclear who could be charged and for what.
The history of the dossier Trump referenced is a complicated one.
The “dossier” is a collection of 17 memos concerning Trump and Russia written by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, between June 20 and Dec. 13,
2016. Steele produced his memos under a contract with Fusion GPS, a strategic intelligence firm run by former journalists.
The memos are written as raw intelligence, based on interviews Steele had with unidentified Russian sources (identified, for instance, as “Kremlin insider”), some of whom he paid for information. Raw intelligence is essentially highgrade gossip, without the expectation it would be made public unless it is further verified.
The memos, among other things, allege the Russian government had been seeking to split the Western alliance by cultivating and supporting Trump and gathering compromising information — “kompromat” — on him to blackmail him. The memos, among other allegations, claim the Russian government fed the Trump campaign “valuable intelligence” on Clinton.
The dossier mirrors a separate conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government intervened in the U.S. election to bolster Trump and harm Clinton, such as through hacking the Democratic National Committee and distributing materials to WikiLeaks to publish at key moments. As the official declassified report stated:
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to un- dermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Presidentelect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin intensely disliked Clinton because he was convinced that when she was secretary of state she had promoted anti-Putin, pro-democracy efforts in his country. The FBI considered the information gathered by Steele to be of sufficient importance that it considered paying him for his research, although it later dropped the idea.
The DNC and Clinton campaign were revealed as the “Democratic donors” who paid Fusion GPS for Steele’s research. (Technically, Perkins Coie, the law firm of Marc Elias, an attorney representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, funded the research.)
Separately, a “Republican donor” who had earlier hired Fusion GPS for information on Trump was revealed to be the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website.
The Trump White House has tried to use the connection between the dossier and Clinton to claim that this shows that rather than Trump colluding with Russia, Clinton colluded with Russia. (The theory appears to be that because Steele was getting information from Russian officials in part with funds provided by the Clinton campaign, the Russians were helping Clinton.) But that ignores the fact that DNC emails — as well as the email account of the Clinton campaign chairman — were hacked and then published by WikiLeaks as part of the pro-Trump Russian operation identified by U.S. intelligence agencies.
Steele started producing his memos in June 2016, about the same time that intelligence agencies began investigating possible ties between Russia and people close to Trump. The connection between Steele’s research and official government investigations is murky, but for some Republicans it raises questions about whether the official probe begun in the Obama administration was influenced by information gathered by someone being paid by Democrats.
When it comes to the “Uranium to Russia deal” that Trump referenced in his tweet, House and Senate Republican leaders have announced two investigations into decisions made during the Obama administration, when Clinton was secretary of state, involving a uranium deal that increased Russia’s share of the U.S. nuclear market.
In 2010, Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, acquired a controlling stake in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company that had mining licenses for about 20 percent of U.S. uranium extraction capacity. The agreement was approved by the Obama administration when Clinton was secretary of state.
Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier and a major contributor to the Clinton Foundation, had sold a company, UrAsia, to Uranium One in 2007. Individuals related to Uranium One and UrAsia, including Giustra, donated to the Clinton Foundation, totaling about $145 million. Meanwhile, in 2010, Bill Clinton received $500,000 from a Russian bank to give a speech at a conference in Moscow.
Trump, during the campaign, tossed all of these separate facts together to falsely claim that Clinton “gave 20 percent of our uranium — gave Russia for a big payment.” But numerous fact checks have found no evidence for this claim. The original suggestion of wrongdoing was first raised in a book underwritten by an organization headed by Stephen Bannon, a key adviser to Trump.
Whenever news about the Russia investigation heats up, the Trump White House cites the uranium deal to muddy the waters and suggest that Russia had gained something from Clinton in exchange for money. Trump himself has claimed the case is “Watergate, modern age.”
But there is no evidence Clinton even was informed about this deal.