A federal court is being asked to order release of all documents concerning former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s involvement in clearing a massive deal that helped one of her financial benefactors and substantial U.S. uranium resources in Russian control.
Judicial Watch, the non-profit government watchdog, said Tuesday it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of the Treasury in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking:
- All records of email communications between the Office of Foreign Assets Control and any “clintonemail.com” address, including but not limited to hrod17@clintonemail.com and hdr22@clintonemail.com;
- All records of email communications between the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and any “clintonemail.com” address, including but not limited to hrodl7@clintonemail.com and hdr22(@,cli:ntonemail.com; and,
- All records of email communications between the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury and any “clintonemail.com” address, including but not limited to hrod17@clintonemail.com andhdr22@clintonemail.com.
The lawsuit was filed after the government failed to respond to a May 29, 2015, FOIA request from Judicial Watch for the documents. The litigation was filed Oct. 21, 2015, but only made public Tuesday.
Judicial Watch received a letter Tuesday shortly after announcing the lawsuit from the OFAC claiming it conducted “a fulsome search” of its records and found none covered by the non-profit’s request. The OFAC also claims it has a substantial backlog of FOIA requests that “has adversely affected its response time.”
The 2010 deal that prompted the Judicial Watch request was first described by Peter Schweizer in his book “Clinton Cash.” Uranium One, a Canadian company that owned a major share of U.S. uranium resources, was acquired by ARMZ, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom.
Judicial Watch wants documents concerning the process by which the deal was approved by U.S government officials, including Democratic presidential candidate.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported Uranium One’s chairman made four separate contributions totally $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. The contributions were disclosed publicly, contrary to Clinton’s promise to President Barack Obama and Congress prior to her confirmation in 2009.
“And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, [President] Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock,” the Times reports.
“At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company’s assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show,” the Times says.
Judicial Watch said in announcing the suit that “the documents from Treasury should shed light on the apparent conflict of interest between then-Secretary of State Clinton and the Clinton Foundation regarding the expedited approval process.”
Uranium is a national security asset and the government’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) must approve any foreign transaction of such assets. Clinton was a member of CFIUS at the time of the Uranium One deal.
“In 2010, Jose W. Fernandez represented the State Department on the CFIUS board, and the documents sought by Judicial Watch lawsuit should clarify whether Clinton failed to disclose to Fernandez that several executives at Uranium One made millions of dollars in contributions to the Clinton Foundation immediately before and after CFIUS reviewed and approved the ARMZ-Uranium One deal,” Judicial Watch says.
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