WikiLeaks: Former State Dept. Official Coordinated with Team Clinton on Uranium One Scandal Pushback

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One month before former State Department official Jose Fernandez defended then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to sign off on the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium to Russia, Fernandez told John Podesta that he was eager to “do all I can to support Secretary Clinton,” according to purported emails uncovered by WikiLeaks.

On March 30, 2015 — weeks before the explosive book Clinton Cash was released, and nearly a month before the New York Times published a 4,000 word story detailing the Uranium One transaction that multiple donors to the Clinton Foundation made millions from — Jose Fernandez wrote an email to Podesta in hopes that the pair could meet.

On April 17, Fernandez writes to Podesta, again, thanking him for their meeting and said, “I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton, and would welcome your advice and help in steering me to the right persons in the campaign.”

As it turns out, Fernandez’s “support” came less than a week later.

On April 22, the day before the New York Times ran its Uranium One story, Time Magazine online published a story quoting Fernandez as calling Clinton Cash’s reporting “absurd conspiracy theories,” adding, “Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.”

What’s more, on April 23, following the publication of Times reporter Jo Becker’s groundbreaking Uranium One-Clinton Foundation exposé, the Clinton campaign responded to Becker’s story in a blog post on Medium, citing Fernandez’s quote from the day before as the centerpiece of their pushback.

Brian Fallon, national press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, wrote:

The essential fact is that Hillary Clinton was not involved in the State Department’s review of the sale to the Russians. While it is true that the State Department sits on the multi-agency, inter-governmental panel that reviews deals like this one, Hillary Clinton herself did not participate in the review or direct the Department to take any position on the sale of Uranium One. This is consistent with past practice; historically, matters pertaining to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (C.F.I.U.S.) do not rise to the Secretary’s level. Rather, it is the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs who serves as the State Department’s principal representative to C.F.I.U.S. The individual who held that post in 2010 was Jose Fernandez, and he has personally attested that then-Secretary Clinton never interfered with him, saying “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.”

The coordination between Fernandez, the Clinton campaign, and its chairman John Podesta is undeniable.

Sure Fernandez, as Fallon wrote, “personally attested” that Clinton “never interfered” with his decision to sign off on the uranium deal. But he made that claim after professing his commitment to do everything in his power to “support Secretary Clinton.”

What’s also undeniable is that while Clinton’s State Department was one of eight agencies to review and sign off on the uranium deal — then-Secretary of State Clinton herself was the only agency head whose family foundation received $145 million in donations from multiple people connected to the sale, as reported by the New York Times.

Not to mention Bill Clinton, who received a $500,000 speaking fee for a speech in Moscow paid for by a Russian government-connected bank.

“And, in one case, a Russian investment bank connected to the deals paid money to Bill Clinton personally, through a half-million-dollar speaker’s fee,” reports the New Yorker.

To date, no one in the Clinton campaign has ever denied the fact the Clinton-brokered sale of 20% of U.S. uranium to the Russian government ended up benefitting people who donated millions to her family foundation.

Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

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