‘Uranium One’ Informant to Speak to Congress

The U.S. Department of Justice will lift a gag order on an informant in a case that ties Hillary Clinton to the Kremlin over a controversial uranium deal.

The order means the person can talk to Congress about the U.S.-based energy company Tenex, a subsidiary of the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom. The informant had been hired to work as a lobbyist for Tenex, and began feeding the FBI information that became the basis for a racketeering investigation. That investigation ended quietly, with a plea deal, while the company was allowed to acquire a Canadian company that owns 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves.

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This week, two House committees kicked off investigations into the deal, which was reviewed and approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), is also investigating, and Grassley has called for a special counsel to be appointed to determine what happened, and what crimes may have been committed.

Ian Prior, Justice Department spokesman, released a statement late Wednesday.

“The Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” Prior wrote in a statement emailed to LifeZette.

Uranium One was the name of a Canadian company with uranium mines in the United States that was bought by Tenex, a subsidiary of the Russian government-owned company Rosatom. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked with nine federal agencies in 2010 to approve the deal, according to Fox News. The deal was completed, according to reports, shortly after her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was paid $500,000 for a speech he gave in Moscow. The man who headed Uranium One when it was bought by the Russians — Frank Guistra — is one of 11 members of the board of the Clinton Foundation.

The deal put about 20 percent of U.S uranium into the hands of the Russian company.

Through the years, the deal endured criticism and controversy, which stepped up during the 2016 presidential election. But of late, three congressional committees have decided to investigate the deals after The Hill, a Washington, D.C.-based newspaper, reported Russian officials were involved in bribery and kickbacks going back to 2009.

The Hill reported on October 17 that “Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money-laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

The Hill cited government documents and interviews.

Members of Congress are curious as to how the uranium deal was approved given such practices, according to Fox News.

Hillary Clinton recently said any suggestion of wrongdoing by her is “baloney.”

Victoria Toensing, a Washington attorney who represents the informant, told Fox Business Network on Monday that her client can “tell what all the Russians were talking about during the time that all these bribery payments were made.”

(photo credit, homepage image: Hillary Clinton, cut out, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore; photo credit, article image: Hillary Clinton, cut out, CC BY-SA 2.0, by Gage Skidmore)