billyerock1991
Gold Member
- Apr 24, 2012
- 7,106
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there's more if you're going to call it a fact in one sentence here are the rest of the facts
The ad claims that Hillary Clinton âeven handed over American uranium rights to the Russians,â citing an April 2015 New York Times story. But the story doesnât say that. And the idea that Clinton could have âhanded overâ uranium rights, even if she wanted to, isnât supported by the facts.
Clintonâs role, and the link to the Clinton Foundation, first became an issue a year and a half ago, when news organizations received advance copies of the book âClinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,â by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at a conservative think tank. On April 23, 2015, the New York Times wrote about the uranium issue, saying the paper had âbuilt uponâ Schweizerâs information.
The story doesnât find evidence of a pay-to-play scandal or say that Clinton was responsible for the uranium deal. The Times details how the Clinton Foundation had received millions in donations from investors in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company that sold a controlling stake in 2010 to Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, in a deal that had to be approved by the U.S. government. Uranium One had mining stakes in the Western United States, amounting to one-fifth of the uranium production capacity in the U.S., the Times reported.
The donations from those with ties to Uranium One werenât publicly disclosed by the Clinton Foundation, even though then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an agreement with the White House that the foundation would disclose all contributors. Days after the Times story, the foundation acknowledged that it âmade mistakes,â saying it had disclosed donations from a Canadian charity, for instance, but not the donors to that charity who were associated with the uranium company.
The Times wrote that the circumstances raised âethical challengesâ:
New York Times, April 23, 2015: Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundationâs donors.
A few days after the Times story, Schweizer made the false claim on âFox News Sundayâ that Clinton, as secretary of state, had âveto powerâ and âcould have stoppedâ the sale. We found that only the president had that power.
As we explained in our story at the time, Clinton was one of nine government officials to make up the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which is required by law to investigate all U.S. transactions that involve a company owned or controlled by a foreign government. Committee members include the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, the attorney general, and representatives from two White House offices â the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The committee canât actually stop a sale from going through â it can only approve a sale. The president is the only one who can stop a sale, if the committee or any one member ârecommends suspension or prohibition of the transaction,â according to guidelines issued by the Treasury Department in December 2008 after the department adopted its final rule a month earlier.
So, Clinton could have objected â as could the eight other voting members â but that objection alone wouldnât have stopped the sale of the stake of Uranium One to Rosatom. âOnly the President has the authority to suspend or prohibit a covered transaction,â the federal guidelines say.
And the president would need to have âcredible evidence,â the guidelines say, that the âforeign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair the national security.â In 2010, when the deal was finalized, âthe geopolitical backdrop was far different from todayâs,â the Times notes, as the U.S. wanted to âresetâ relations with Russia.
We donât know much about the approval of the deal from the Committee on Foreign Investments, which goes by the acronym CFIUS. There are âstrong confidentiality requirementsâ prohibiting disclosure of information filed with the committee, and it doesnât disclose the results of its review, the Treasury Department says on its website. But we should have known if even one of the voting members objected to the Uranium One deal. âWhen a transaction is referred to the President, however, the decision of the President is announced publicly,â Treasury says.
Itâs unclear whether Clinton herself was involved in the CFIUS approval. According to the Times, Jose Fernandez, a former assistant secretary of state, represented the department on the committee. He told the Times: âMrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.â
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also had to approve â and did â the transfer of two uranium recovery licenses in Wyoming from Uranium One to the Russian company.
As the Times wrote, there are certainly ethical considerations when a former president is accepting foundation donations from people who have a stake in a business deal and his spouse sits on a committee that approves such deals. But Hillary Clinton wasnât responsible for âhand[ing] over American uranium rights to the Russians,â as the Trump ad claims. The Uranium One deal passed muster with nine members of the foreign investments committee, the president and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Other âPay-to-Playâ Claims
The Trump ad makes other weak claims in an attempt to support its âpay-to-playâ theme.
It says Clinton âcut deals for donors,â citing a Wall Street Journal article on Clinton, who, in 2009, worked on an agreement for the Swiss-based UBS, which was facing an IRS lawsuit to get the identities of Americans with secret bank accounts.
The Journal reported in the July 31, 2015, story that Clinton âwas summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpartâ to discuss the case, which, if it proceeded, would leave UBS to either â[v]iolate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.â
Clinton, who wanted to discuss other diplomatic matters, including a Swiss energy companyâs alleged involvement in providing nuclear technology to Iran, worked out a tentative deal for UBS with the Swiss foreign minister. The company ended up settling with the Justice Department and gave information on about 4,450 accounts out of 52,000 total.
Whatâs the connection to the Clinton Foundation? The Journal reported that UBS donations to the foundation grew â from $60,000 through 2008, before the settlement, to $600,000 through end of 2014. UBS denied any connection between the donations and the IRS case. UBS also paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for a series of panel discussions, held along with former President George W. Bush, in cities across the United States. The Journal reported that spokesmen for Bush and UBS wouldnât say how much Bush received.
âThere is no evidence of any link between Mrs. Clintonâs involvement in the case and the bankâs donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton,â the Journal wrote. But the connections raise questions.
Stu Gibson, a lawyer for the Justice Department on the UBS case, told the Journal: âIt raises questions that need to be addressed, or should be addressed. ⌠Maybe thereâs nothing to it. Maybe there is something to it.â
We asked the Trump campaign if it had any other evidence that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, âcut deals for [foundation] donors,â and we havenât received a response.
The ad cites even thinner evidence for its claim that Clinton âsold out American workers.â The citation is for a May 2015 CBS News article on Clinton earning millions for her paid speeches, after she left office, including at least 10 to groups that have lobbied on trade issues.
Weâre not sure how giving a speech to groups concerned about trade amounts to selling out American workers, particularly when âthese companies have lobbied on a variety of issues,â as the CBS article says. The list of companies to which Clinton gave speeches includes General Electric, Xerox, eBay, Corning Inc., technology companies and the Institute of Scrap Recycling.
Finally, the ad claims Clinton âexploited Haitians in need,â citing a National Review article, which is an excerpt of a book by Dinesh DâSouza called âHillaryâs America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.â The excerpt cites several examples of Clinton Foundation-backed Haiti projects, after the 2010 earthquake in the country, that didnât live up to expectations. Some involved the hiring of companies owned by foundation donors.
DâSouza concludes: âI wouldnât go so far as to say the Clintons donât care about Haiti. Yet it seems clear that Haitian welfare is not their priority. Their priority is, well, themselves. The Clintons seem to believe in Haitian reconstruction and Haitian investment as long as these projects match their own private economic interests.â
Bill Clinton was deeply involved in Haiti relief efforts. He served as the United Nations special envoy to Haiti when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and, after the earthquake, teamed up with former President George H.W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. He was also co-chairman with then-Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. The Clinton Foundation says it has raised more than $30 million for the country since 2010.
The verdict on the results of those aid efforts has been mixed. In January, a group of Haitians protested outside the Clinton Foundation offices in New York, saying Haiti hadnât seen any benefit from earthquake aid money. The Washington Post reported in March 2015 on both successes of Clinton-backed projects, such as farming and an entrepreneurship center, and failures, such as an industrial park that hasnât lived up to its billing in terms of job creation.
Itâs difficult to fact-check this claim in the ad. Some Haitians, as evidenced by the record of some projects in Haiti and the January protest, would agree that Clinton-backed relief efforts didnât do enough to help the poor. Others, particularly those who benefited from successful projects, would disagree. Regardless, is that evidence of a âpay-to-playâ scheme?
Schweizer, the author of âClinton Cash,â devoted a chapter in his book to Haiti, but even he acknowledged that âcorruption of the kind I have described in this book is very difficult to prove.â Indeed, circumstances that raise questions are one thing, an actual quid pro quo is another. And this Trump ad falls far short of proving anything beyond the fact that the Clintons made a lot of money on speaking fees and book contracts after they left office.
The adâs support doesnât back up the claims that Clinton âcut deals for donorsâ or âsold out American workers.â And itâs simply false to claim she âhanded over American uranium rights to the Russians.â
The ad claims that Hillary Clinton âeven handed over American uranium rights to the Russians,â citing an April 2015 New York Times story. But the story doesnât say that. And the idea that Clinton could have âhanded overâ uranium rights, even if she wanted to, isnât supported by the facts.
Clintonâs role, and the link to the Clinton Foundation, first became an issue a year and a half ago, when news organizations received advance copies of the book âClinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,â by Peter Schweizer, a former fellow at a conservative think tank. On April 23, 2015, the New York Times wrote about the uranium issue, saying the paper had âbuilt uponâ Schweizerâs information.
The story doesnât find evidence of a pay-to-play scandal or say that Clinton was responsible for the uranium deal. The Times details how the Clinton Foundation had received millions in donations from investors in Uranium One, a Canadian-based company that sold a controlling stake in 2010 to Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy agency, in a deal that had to be approved by the U.S. government. Uranium One had mining stakes in the Western United States, amounting to one-fifth of the uranium production capacity in the U.S., the Times reported.
The donations from those with ties to Uranium One werenât publicly disclosed by the Clinton Foundation, even though then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an agreement with the White House that the foundation would disclose all contributors. Days after the Times story, the foundation acknowledged that it âmade mistakes,â saying it had disclosed donations from a Canadian charity, for instance, but not the donors to that charity who were associated with the uranium company.
The Times wrote that the circumstances raised âethical challengesâ:
New York Times, April 23, 2015: Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown. But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundationâs donors.
A few days after the Times story, Schweizer made the false claim on âFox News Sundayâ that Clinton, as secretary of state, had âveto powerâ and âcould have stoppedâ the sale. We found that only the president had that power.
As we explained in our story at the time, Clinton was one of nine government officials to make up the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States, which is required by law to investigate all U.S. transactions that involve a company owned or controlled by a foreign government. Committee members include the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, the attorney general, and representatives from two White House offices â the United States Trade Representative and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The committee canât actually stop a sale from going through â it can only approve a sale. The president is the only one who can stop a sale, if the committee or any one member ârecommends suspension or prohibition of the transaction,â according to guidelines issued by the Treasury Department in December 2008 after the department adopted its final rule a month earlier.
So, Clinton could have objected â as could the eight other voting members â but that objection alone wouldnât have stopped the sale of the stake of Uranium One to Rosatom. âOnly the President has the authority to suspend or prohibit a covered transaction,â the federal guidelines say.
And the president would need to have âcredible evidence,â the guidelines say, that the âforeign interest exercising control might take action that threatens to impair the national security.â In 2010, when the deal was finalized, âthe geopolitical backdrop was far different from todayâs,â the Times notes, as the U.S. wanted to âresetâ relations with Russia.
We donât know much about the approval of the deal from the Committee on Foreign Investments, which goes by the acronym CFIUS. There are âstrong confidentiality requirementsâ prohibiting disclosure of information filed with the committee, and it doesnât disclose the results of its review, the Treasury Department says on its website. But we should have known if even one of the voting members objected to the Uranium One deal. âWhen a transaction is referred to the President, however, the decision of the President is announced publicly,â Treasury says.
Itâs unclear whether Clinton herself was involved in the CFIUS approval. According to the Times, Jose Fernandez, a former assistant secretary of state, represented the department on the committee. He told the Times: âMrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.â
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also had to approve â and did â the transfer of two uranium recovery licenses in Wyoming from Uranium One to the Russian company.
As the Times wrote, there are certainly ethical considerations when a former president is accepting foundation donations from people who have a stake in a business deal and his spouse sits on a committee that approves such deals. But Hillary Clinton wasnât responsible for âhand[ing] over American uranium rights to the Russians,â as the Trump ad claims. The Uranium One deal passed muster with nine members of the foreign investments committee, the president and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Other âPay-to-Playâ Claims
The Trump ad makes other weak claims in an attempt to support its âpay-to-playâ theme.
It says Clinton âcut deals for donors,â citing a Wall Street Journal article on Clinton, who, in 2009, worked on an agreement for the Swiss-based UBS, which was facing an IRS lawsuit to get the identities of Americans with secret bank accounts.
The Journal reported in the July 31, 2015, story that Clinton âwas summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpartâ to discuss the case, which, if it proceeded, would leave UBS to either â[v]iolate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court.â
Clinton, who wanted to discuss other diplomatic matters, including a Swiss energy companyâs alleged involvement in providing nuclear technology to Iran, worked out a tentative deal for UBS with the Swiss foreign minister. The company ended up settling with the Justice Department and gave information on about 4,450 accounts out of 52,000 total.
Whatâs the connection to the Clinton Foundation? The Journal reported that UBS donations to the foundation grew â from $60,000 through 2008, before the settlement, to $600,000 through end of 2014. UBS denied any connection between the donations and the IRS case. UBS also paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for a series of panel discussions, held along with former President George W. Bush, in cities across the United States. The Journal reported that spokesmen for Bush and UBS wouldnât say how much Bush received.
âThere is no evidence of any link between Mrs. Clintonâs involvement in the case and the bankâs donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton,â the Journal wrote. But the connections raise questions.
Stu Gibson, a lawyer for the Justice Department on the UBS case, told the Journal: âIt raises questions that need to be addressed, or should be addressed. ⌠Maybe thereâs nothing to it. Maybe there is something to it.â
We asked the Trump campaign if it had any other evidence that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, âcut deals for [foundation] donors,â and we havenât received a response.
The ad cites even thinner evidence for its claim that Clinton âsold out American workers.â The citation is for a May 2015 CBS News article on Clinton earning millions for her paid speeches, after she left office, including at least 10 to groups that have lobbied on trade issues.
Weâre not sure how giving a speech to groups concerned about trade amounts to selling out American workers, particularly when âthese companies have lobbied on a variety of issues,â as the CBS article says. The list of companies to which Clinton gave speeches includes General Electric, Xerox, eBay, Corning Inc., technology companies and the Institute of Scrap Recycling.
Finally, the ad claims Clinton âexploited Haitians in need,â citing a National Review article, which is an excerpt of a book by Dinesh DâSouza called âHillaryâs America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.â The excerpt cites several examples of Clinton Foundation-backed Haiti projects, after the 2010 earthquake in the country, that didnât live up to expectations. Some involved the hiring of companies owned by foundation donors.
DâSouza concludes: âI wouldnât go so far as to say the Clintons donât care about Haiti. Yet it seems clear that Haitian welfare is not their priority. Their priority is, well, themselves. The Clintons seem to believe in Haitian reconstruction and Haitian investment as long as these projects match their own private economic interests.â
Bill Clinton was deeply involved in Haiti relief efforts. He served as the United Nations special envoy to Haiti when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, and, after the earthquake, teamed up with former President George H.W. Bush to form the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. He was also co-chairman with then-Haiti Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. The Clinton Foundation says it has raised more than $30 million for the country since 2010.
The verdict on the results of those aid efforts has been mixed. In January, a group of Haitians protested outside the Clinton Foundation offices in New York, saying Haiti hadnât seen any benefit from earthquake aid money. The Washington Post reported in March 2015 on both successes of Clinton-backed projects, such as farming and an entrepreneurship center, and failures, such as an industrial park that hasnât lived up to its billing in terms of job creation.
Itâs difficult to fact-check this claim in the ad. Some Haitians, as evidenced by the record of some projects in Haiti and the January protest, would agree that Clinton-backed relief efforts didnât do enough to help the poor. Others, particularly those who benefited from successful projects, would disagree. Regardless, is that evidence of a âpay-to-playâ scheme?
Schweizer, the author of âClinton Cash,â devoted a chapter in his book to Haiti, but even he acknowledged that âcorruption of the kind I have described in this book is very difficult to prove.â Indeed, circumstances that raise questions are one thing, an actual quid pro quo is another. And this Trump ad falls far short of proving anything beyond the fact that the Clintons made a lot of money on speaking fees and book contracts after they left office.
The adâs support doesnât back up the claims that Clinton âcut deals for donorsâ or âsold out American workers.â And itâs simply false to claim she âhanded over American uranium rights to the Russians.â
Keep cutting and pasting propaganda, punk.
