Selective leftist outrage

"After my election, I have more flexibility."--Barack Obama to Russian President Medvedev on 'hot mic'

It's almost laughable how the left sounds the alarm over an alleged relationship of the Trump administration with the Russians. 

They point out how Paul Manafort was an adviser to the Ukrainian president, a pro-Russian and how Carter Page, another Trump adviser, was involved in energy deals with Russian companies. And how Jeff Sessions actually spoke to a Russian official while on the Senate Armed Services Committee--even though it's a normal part of his job.

And of course, there's Michael Flynn and the speech he gave in Moscow as a private citizen . . . and so on.

As Peter Schweizer said, in an article for Fox News, it's important to examine these relationships, but "Still, those pushing the narrative of troubling ties to Russia lose all credibility by wholly ignoring the far deeper and more troubling relationships the Clintons and their closest aides have maintained with Russian government officials for years, including while they were in public office."

But the big difference here is that the Clinton deals involved enormous favors that benefitted Russian interests and involved hundreds of millions of dollars.

Like the speech Bill Clinton gave in Moscow in 2010 and received half a million dollars. Renaissance Capital, a Moscow firm paid the fee--a firm with close ties to Russian intelligence, and they admit it proudly.

No Russian donor was too embedded in Russian concerns to refuse. Schweizer mentions the following: 

Victor Vekselberg: a Putin confidant and head of Renova Group

Andrey Vavilov: a former Russian government official and Chairman of SuperOx, a research company that was part of "nuclear Cluster" at a government research facility

Elena Buturina: wife of a former Mayor of Moscow. She appeared to donate to the Clintons via JSC Inteco which she controls

And of course we have the 2010 Uranium One deal in which the Clinton Foundation received $145 million in "donations" from a Canadian uranium company that was sold to the Russian government. In order to seal the deal, several U.S. federal agencies needed to approve it, including Hillary's State Department. The Russians ended up with 20 percent of America's uranium which went to Rosatom, an entity that controls Russia's nuclear arsenal.

The fact that some of the Clinton Foundation donations were not disclosed by the Clintons should trouble all of us. President Obama required the Foundation to disclose all contributions as a condition of Hillary Clinton becoming Secretary of State, but she didn't. It was the Canadian tax records that uncovered the deal.

Then there's one of Hillary's closest aides, John Podesta who actually went into business with the Russian government while a Hillary Clinton adviser as Secretary of State.

Podesta was on the executive board of an energy company called Joule Unlimited. The Russian government invested a billion rubles (about $35 million) in the company. The money came from an investment fund called Rusnano, a fund started in 2007 by Putin and described as "Putin's Child" by Russian Education and Science Minister Andrei Fursenko.

Rusnano investments could also have military applications and it would be surprising if it didn't.

When Podesta went to the White House in 2014, where he served as counselor to Obama, he did not disclose his board membership in one of the Joule entities on his financial disclosure form. 

But the hypocritical left isn't concerned about what appears to be an actual intimate relationship with the Russians because it had nothing to do with Donald Trump.


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