All of these are essentially summary reports and minor extensions of claims made in a book (
Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich) by Peter Schweizer who among a variety of other things is an editor at Breitbart. I think that whether or not we agree or disagree with the material published at Breitbart, reasonable people can agree that Breitbart is not an unbiased purveyor of information. So, already our critical thinking sense should be on a bit of an alert.
Further reading of a variety of highly detailed articles (
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/u...m-company.html) indicates that Secretary Clinton never actually sat on any of the State Dept. panels that approved the Uranium One deals. The individual who did has made repeated statements that Clinton never really dealt with the deal. This should further make us uneasy about the straight line connections of some sort of quid pro quo. Although, admittedly, anyone subordinate to Sec. Clinton can not be automatically assumed to have complete autonomy.
Finally, none of this really matters because the company doesn't have an export license -- so none of the uranium can actually be moved.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170129...010/10-211.pdf
"Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported."
This should be a critical blow to the cash for influence argument. Now it is entirely possible that the Russian company simply wants to make oodles of cash in the uranium markets. That alone has serious implications that need to be examined and put to the question. But the Breitbart style arguments that Russia now exerts direct control and authority over 20% of the US uranium reserves is not supported by the actual publicly available information. They can't move the stuff, legally, if they wanted to. I also suspect, but admittedly don't know, that it would likely be extremely difficult to illegally smuggle uranium out of Canada. Canada is not an overly friendly country to Russia and Uranium is a highly regulated material. This isn't some former Soviet satellite where the Russians can just muck about with impunity.
Finally, to round out our discussion of critical thinking -- one needs to consider the other side of the coin. If we assume that Sec. Clinton is guilty of all of the shady financial and influence issues that have been leveled at her and the Clinton foundation and we then argue that these are criminal or at least offenses that disqualify her from holding high elected office -- then we must turn the same standards around on the other side.
Multiple Constitutional experts have flatly stated that Trump and his family are in gross violation of several aspects of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Further, despite repeated claims that Trump has divested himself of authority and financial involvement in his company(s?) and passed them to his sons - repeated evidence has indicated that this is not the case. In fact, it appears that the only offered public evidence that this happened was a series of manila folders containing blank sheets of paper!
Additionally, there is strong evidence that foreign leaders, governments, business, and other non-UW actors are funneling business and donations to the Trump brand around the world in an attempt to curry favor with the administration. Now, that has not yet been viewed as any sort of "pay for play" but it appears to walk the same line and be attempting to thread the same dangerous needle that the Clinton Foundation has been.
Long story short, the evidence for the uranium claims does not totally hold up under any reasonable scrutiny. Even if we assume it does, the same standards applied to Trump find him in similar violations and miss-dealings.
What is good for the goose is good for the gander? But I am assuming that if you have even read any of this, you have simply been shaking your head and muttering "stupid foolish liberal" and congratulating yourself on how you are able to see the truth while my vision is clouded by my liberal-ness and blind hatred for Trump. Which is wide of my point.
My only point is that if the Clinton Foundation pisses you off, how does Trump INC not also piss you off?