Russia Collusion: In one of his Thursday evening tweets, President Trump complained once again about the "Fake Media," this time for not covering a fresh scandal involving an Obama-era uranium deal with Russia. Does Trump have a legitimate beef? You be the judge.
By any objective measure, the story that The Hill broke on Tuesday was shocking. According to documents unearthed by the news outlet, in 2009 the FBI had uncovered evidence of a sweeping, illegal Russian scheme to boost Vladimir Putin's atomic energy business, which included bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering.
The FBI had also obtained an eyewitness account that Russian nuclear officials "had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit (the Clinton Foundation)."
That's eye-opening in and of itself. But the findings are even more alarming when you understand the context. While the FBI was learning about these illegal Russian activities, Russia's state-owned nuclear company Rosatom was trying to acquire mining rights to 20% of the uranium in the United States through its purchase of Canadian-based Uranium One.
To do so, however, they needed to get approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Sitting on that committee were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder. In 2010, the committee unanimously approved the sale of Uranium One to the Russian nuclear company.
In other words, while top Obama administration officials were deciding whether to hand over control of one-fifth of the nation's uranium supplies to Russia, the FBI had piles of evidence that officials at Rosatom were flagrantly violating U.S. laws and possibly compromising national security. The FBI also had evidence that officials had directed millions of dollars to Hillary Clinton's family charity, creating a clear conflict of interest.
But as the Hill notes, none of this information was made public before the Obama administration approved the sale.
Even more intriguing, key people at the FBI at the time of the Uranium One deal are now spearheading the special counsel probe into allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to swing the November election.
Needless to say, this raises a lot of important questions. Did the FBI keep the Committee on Foreign Investment in the dark about its findings? If so, why? Did Clinton, or Holder, or anyone else involved in the sale's approval know about this investigation? Why did the FBI wait until after Hillary had stepped down from State before taking action on the case? What role did those donations to Hillary's charity — as well as lucrative speaking fees to Bill — play in all this?
Keep in mind, too, that neither The Hill, nor the key reporter on this story, John Solomon, can be dismissed as conservatives with an ax to grind. The Hill has a sterling reputation for fairness in Washington. And Solomon's career includes stints as assistant Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press and as a national investigative correspondent for the Washington Post.
Yet despite all this, the mainstream press has completely ignored this story.
As of Friday, we couldn't find a single mention of it on the websites of ABC News, NBC News, CBS News or CNN or USA Today. MSNBC devoted a few minutes to the story on air on Thursday.
The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post ran a perfunctory AP story that was focused not on The Hill's revelations, but on Trump's tweet about the lack of media coverage. The AP story contained a one paragraph summary of The Hill's new findings.
The Washington Post ran a separate piece, but it was aimed at dismissing the significance of what The Hill had uncovered, while complaining that conservatives were "jumping waaay ahead of the facts."
That complaint is amusing coming from the Washington Post, which has repeatedly jumped waaay ahead of the facts, to the point of repeatedly getting them wrong, on the wafer-thin Trump-Russia "collusion" story.
But, OK, let's concede that there's still a lot we don't know about this story.
How does that explain the utter and complete lack of interest on the part of the mainstream press in getting those facts? It's not as if they don't have the resources and passion to pursue complex scandals that involve top political officials. You'd think some of that talent could be spared to determine whether the Obama administration ignored evidence of criminal activity in order to hand Russia a major strategic asset.
Instead, we're reading commentaries about why the press is right not to cover this because there "is lots of smoke, but not a bit of fire." That hasn't stopped the press from falling all over itself in pursuit of a puff of smoke — which has yet to materialize — on the Trump-colluding-with-Russia story. Isn't it the job of reporters to dig out the facts, rather than ignore a story until all the facts are in?
0 comentarios:
Post a Comment