Uranium One. A question about ownership changes and payment arrangements. You and I surely do not know whether wrongful quid pro quo existed. Questioning it all is valid.

[UPDATE: In retrospect, this post needs an initial context, that being Strib carrying an NYT item: "Trump wanted to order Justice Department to prosecute James Comey, Hillary Clinton -- Donald McGahn, then the White House counsel, rejected the president's request, according to two people familiar with the conversation in the spring." Story: By Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman New York Times - November 21, 2018 — 5:23am; which item seems to minimize substance and suggest a Nixonian motive to Trump; with the balance of the post suggesting there is more substance to things than the Strib/NYT item acknowledges, and that an investigation might be merited and could prove fruitful.]


Websearch. News, CNN reporting carried, The Hill, and Reuters.

Background: Earlier NYT report. Wikipedia, here, here, and here.

Most intriguing, The Hill item, "FBI’s 37 secret pages of memos about Russia, Clintons and Uranium One," bearing the disclaimer:

By John Solomon, opinion contributor — 10/01/18 05:45 PM EDT The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill

We publish, not our responsibility, seems overly lawyerly, but also a declaration of the perception of a mine field being involved.

Smoke?

Fire?

We can only guess. "37 secret pages" as a headline lead suggests itself as the opinion of whoever publishes such a headline.

One Wikipedia sentence:

On June 29, 2010 Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin and which was promoting Uranium One stock, paid Bill Clinton $500,000 for a speech in Moscow shortly after the Rosatom acquisition of Uranium One was announced.[14][15]

[footnoted text, linking omitted]
14. Becker, Jo; McIntire, Mike (April 23, 2015). "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal". The New York Times.

15. Campbell, Colin; Engel, Pamela (April 23, 2015). "The Clinton Foundation received millions from investors as Putin took over 20% of US uranium deposits". Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved August 31, 2016.

Amid any speculation, half a mil is half a mil; and that seems a fact hard to dispute. But that's only one sentence, a public one, so what's in the secret 37? Why secret? What happened? The question seems bigger than the Saudi Consulate killing in Turkey; in going more toward U.S. politician trustworthiness rather than government policy; although those two dimensions do overlap, each instance.

The obvious websearch - obama russian russia speaking fees -- returns different lead items than an equally obvious websearch = obama russian speaking fees -- give it a try with any other search engine.

What is interesting is since leaving the White House, Obama gets mention (without any Russian speaking fees showing in the search return list) here, here and here; four hundred grand being four hundred grand; and I'd not pay it for Obama but Wall Street allegedly did. Wall Street where nobody went into the slammer for what happened, Sept. 2008 - Lehman Brothers, onward.

____________UPDATE____________
Free Republic republishing has a comment thread, including one reader's list:

Here is a list of 11 questionable items forming a chain of events:

1. September of 2005: Canadian Frank Giustra visits Kazakhstan with Bill Clinton. Days later, his company UrAsia wins a major uranium deal with the country.

2. 2006: Giustra donates $31 million to the Clinton Foundation.

3. February 2007: UrAsia merges with Uranium One and expands into the U.S..

4. June 2008: Russian atomic agency Rosatom begins talks to acquire Uranium One.

5. 2008 to 2010: Uranium One and UrAsia investors donate $8.65 million to Clinton Foundation.

6. June 2009: Rosatom acquires 17% of Uranium One.

7. 2010 to 2011: Millions more donated by Uranium One investors to Clinton Foundation.

8. June 2010: Rosatom requests Committee on Foreign Investment (of which the State Department is a member and its approval is needed) to approve a majority ownership in Uranium One, PROMISING NOT TO PURCHASE 100% of it, NOR TAKE IT PRIVATE.

9. June 2010: Bill Clinton receives $500,000 to speak at a conference held by the Russian investment bank involved in the Rosatom transactions.

10. October 2010: Committee APPROVES Rosatom's request to ACQUIRE A MAJORITY SHARE in Uranium One.

11. January 2013: Rosatom PURCHASES REMAINDER of Uranium One and takes it PRIVATE!.

[bolding in original] NOTE: Nothing in that list was fact checked, nor second sourced. Interested readers may try that exercise.


FURTHER: FBI, "The Vault."
https://vault.fbi.gov/

This "Valult" search. This item. Readers can go from there.

FURTHER: Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge, dated Oct. 2 (the day after The Hill published per opening paragraph of this post).

RT, posted/edited days after The Hill item.

All I know is what I read on the web. That's knowing what's said. Not necessarily what's true.

End of post.

ACTUALLY, ONE MORE: NBC, Dec. 21, 2017.

End of post.