Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News, highlighted the evidence of Russia-related political corruption connected to Bill and Hillary Clinton and John Podesta while reflecting on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian political interference involving President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Schweizer joined Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight for an interview with hosts Rebecca Mansour and Joel Pollak.
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Schweizer said, “The very thing that they are accusing Donald Trump of having done, which Mueller has come back and said there’s no evidence for — not that there’s a little evidence or a small amount of evidence; there’s no evidence — is the very sort of behavior that you could look at the Clinton relationships in Russia — the commercial ties, the financial ties, the favors done — and raise those very same questions.”
Schweizer added, “In the case of the Clintons and the Clinton world, they have long, deep, abiding ties with Putin’s Russia. On the Uranium One deal, this is basically a company that was formed back in 2005 when Bill Clinton helped a Canadian named Frank Giustra obtain uranium rights in Kazakhstan in 2005.”
Schweizer continued, “There’s been really no investigation of the Clinton world, where you have all of these financial transactions and political favors being done. It’s quite an astonishing contrast between the two.”
“Mainstream media news outlets,” observed Schweizer, refuse to inquire about relationships between the Russian government and the Podesta and Clinton families.
Schweizer explained how the Clinton Foundation received money from Russian sources who directly benefited from a State Department initiative led by Hillary Clinton to enhance Russia’s technological capacities — including military applications — via its Skolkovo Innovation Center.
“Another [event] that goes to the heart of this issue with Russia … is an initiative that Hillary Clinton had while she was secretary of state called Skolkovo,” stated Schweizer. “Skolkovo was an initiative by the Hillary Clinton State Department to help the Russians during the Russian Reset — so this is 2009 through basically 2011 and 2012 — develop their own Silicon Valley.”
Schweizer went on, “Now, what could go wrong with an idea like that? Essentially what they did was, they lined up Western tech companies to help the Russian government develop its technological capabilities. Some of the members of Skolkovo became donors to the Clinton Foundation and the Russians took Skolkovo.”
Schweizer continued, “This is of course all happening while her foundation is getting money from Russian-linked companies that wanted the Uranium One deal to go through — that Skolkovo ends up enhancing the Russian military, and that was the conclusion of the U.S. Army and the military who did reports [saying] Skolkovo helped the Russian military develop its hypersonic cruise missile. That’s their words, not mine.”
Schweizer concluded, “Yet again, here you have another area in which team Clinton [is not investigated]. “There’s a transference of funds, some of the Skolkovo participants on the Russian side are giving money to the Clinton Foundation, and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state is carrying out initiatives that are beneficial to the Russian military, and nobody asks a question about it. Nobody challenges her about it. She is somehow the adult in the room that is going to handle Russian policy and is going to be so much better at it than anybody else.”
“It’s always hard to know why political leaders make certain decisions,” stated Schweizer. “In the case of the Clintons, we know that they were getting paid and we know that they were taking favorable actions for these foreign entities. … I don’t know why the Justice Department under Donald Trump didn’t seem to investigate these matters related to the Clintons.”
Combating foreign-funded political corruption must be prioritized by the Trump administration, advised Schweizer. “This is vital to pursue, not so much because it’s Hillary and Bill Clinton, but because it cuts to the heart of the problems we have in Washington, DC,” he said. “And that is the fact that the permanent political class — this includes Republicans and Democrats — are cashing in big time with foreign entities. We are long past the day when we should be worrying just about pharmaceutical companies or oil companies or labor unions manipulating our politicians.”
Schweizer explained how the Clintons innovated and set new precedents for the monetization of political influence.
“The game in town, now, is foreign money, because there’s a lot more of it,” remarked Schweizer. “What the Clintons basically did was set up a system that said, ‘We are going to get paid while we are in political office.’ Think about this. The idea, 20 years ago, that you could be the secretary of state — America’s lead diplomat [and] strategist on foreign policy — and your husband could be getting paychecks from foreign governments for speeches, and be paid speaking fees that are multiple times more than he was getting before you became secretary of state, and that you family foundation — which had your name on it until you took it off the day before you became secretary of state — could be taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign governments at the same time you’re America’s chief diplomat is mind-boggling. And yet that’s what the Clintons did.”
Schweizer lamented what he described as partisan and political favoritism afforded to Democrats by the federal government’s investigative bodies.
“[With] Hillary Clinton, you didn’t have some anonymously-sourced dossier that nobody would independently verify that launched a thousand ships to investigate the president,” Schweizer compared. “You had a secretary of state and her husband who were taking donations from individuals and foreign governments, they were hiding those donations, they signed an agreement with President Obama saying they were going to disclose all of them, they were actively hiding them from public scrutiny, and they were making decisions that benefited the people that were paying them money. That’s legions more evidence than you had in the Trump case, and yet one gets investigated and on does not.”
“There needs to be a standard in looking looking at a problem or issue,” declared Schweizer. “So if you’re concerned about Russian meddling in American politics and that there’s some kind of collusion or favoritism going on, why are you only interested in one person doing it? Why do you not say, ‘We’re concerned about Russian influence at the highest levels of American politics’?”
Schweizer closed, “My larger point is, why are you only interested in contacts, possible collaboration or collusion, or transactions involving one political figure and administration, and not another? If the problem is a problem, it should be an equal problem whether the person has a D or R after their name.”
Breitbart News Tonight broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot channel 125 weeknights from 9:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern or 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. Pacific.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter @rkraychik.
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