The major developing stories this week have been so scantily and poorly covered in the mainstream press that you may want an easy primer. To fully understand it you have to look at alternative media, because just as Harvey Weinstein counted on complicit enablers -- his colleagues, victims and the press -- Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller and a cast of characters, including a press determined to cover for them have hidden what occurred. It’s taken some time, to be sure, but the evidence of their wrongdoing is becoming harder and harder to hide. Stalling and misdirection are their last redoubt.

WHO:

Here are some of the principal figures:

Robert Mueller. Former head of the FBI and now special counsel purportedly investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians to win the election.

Andrew McCabe, appointed by former president Obama, was Assistant FBI Director in charge of investigating charges by the FBI’s own underground informant to the effect that the Russians, engaged in bribery to obtain uranium supplies in the U.S. His wife received nearly half a million dollars from Hillary Clinton buddy Terry McAuliffe for her 2015 Virginia state senate campaign which he had not disclosed to the Department nor sought clearance for from its ethics office. Presently he is the deputy attorney director of the FBI and is himself under investigation by the Justice department inspector general respecting this contribution.

The unnamed FBI undercover informant, represented by criminal attorney Victoria Toensing, was witness to the scheming, kickbacks and corruption in the Russian effort to obtain 20% of U.S. uranium supplies held by Canadian-based Uranium One. He reported to his bosses at the FBI -- which is to say McCabe and Mueller -- prior to the October 2010 approval of the sale to Uranium One. He says Lynch has threatened him with criminal prosecution if he reveals what he knows to Congress. Senator Grassley has asked present Attorney General Jeff Sessions to waive the nondisclosure agreement -- which appears in any event to be untoward and unconstitutional -- so he can tell the Senate Judiciary Committee what he knows.

CFIUS (The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US) is the interagency organization which is supposed to review such transactions to be sure they did not jeopardize national security. If it determines such sales will harm national security, they are supposed to block them.

The U.S. Intelligence Community – through the Director of National Intelligence – serves as ex officio member and is required to provide an intelligence assessment to CFIUS for review.

The Secretary of Labor was also added as an ex officio member.

In total, CFIUS is comprised of nine agencies, two ex officio representatives and other members as appointed by the U.S. President representing major departments and agencies within the U.S. federal executive branch. In addition to Treasury, the U.S. Departments of Energy, Commerce, State, Homeland Security, Justice, Trade, Science and Technology Policy and Defense are represented.  

Author Jim Rickards claims that James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, disbanded the CFIUS advisory for the intel community just before the Uranium One deal was approved.   

The Chairman of Uranium One is on the Clinton Foundation Board and a close friend of the Clintons, and as the deal was being considered by approval by CFIUS, nine members of Uranium One contributed more than $145 million to the Clinton Foundation, long exposed as a Clinton family piggy bank. Yellow cake from these uranium mines “has gone to some unknown destination” since the sale was approved.

Loretta Lynch, Obama’s Attorney General, reportedly threatened the informant that he’d be subject to criminal prosecution if he revealed to Congress what he’d find out.

Hillary Clinton, former first lady and most recently failed candidate for President, was Secretary of State when the Uranium Sale was approved by the CFIUS.

Mystery witness claims millions of dollars in Russian nuclear funds went to “an entity” assisting the Clinton Foundation.

Bill Clinton, former president and husband of Hillary Clinton and recipient of a $500,000 dollar speaking fee for a speech in Russia from Renaissance Capital (a Russian finance corporation) prior to the approval of the sale to Uranium One.

Rod Rosenstein, former U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, presently Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice overseeing the Mueller investigation into claims that the Russians colluded with the Trump campaign (2005-2017).

Andrew Weisman, presently a member of Mueller’s team, and former prosecutor of the Russian briber Vadim Mikerin and the American Trucking executive whom Vadim worked with and through. (the latter pleaded guilty June 2015, but the court record shows he has not yet been sentenced.)

He pursued those convictions under Rosenstein’s supervision.

Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining mogul, with whom the Clintons had a long relationship, sought and obtained uranium in Kazakhstan (UrAsia Energy). Uranium One bought his company, and the Russians were sniffing around about how Giustra had obtained the Kazakhstan deal.

Rosatom, a Russian government corporation, which bought into Uranium One, but needed U.S. approval to obtain Uranium One, because the latter held 20% of U.S. uranium supplies.

Ian Teifer, Chair of Uranium One (since 2007 when it merged with Ur Asia) and other individuals contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation from 2009-2013, which were not disclosed publicly as she had pledged to do.

There are actually three Russian Collusion Stories – two, involving Hillary and present and past FBI and DOJ officials, have merit. The third, the subject of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, is nonsensical.

1. Hillary and the Uranium One deal

What is Being Charged About the Clinton’s Role in the Uranium One Sale?

Daniel Greenfield explains:

The same year that Hillary brought over her ‘Reset Button’, the FBI was investigating a top Rosatom figure in America for racketeering, extortion, bribery and money laundering. The investigation was supervised by the controversial current Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe who has his own financial ties to the Clintons. The investigation dragged out for five years. Just enough time for the Rosatom deal to be approved. When the charges were brought in ’14, the Russians had gotten it all…

Holder’s DOJ, like Hillary’s State, signed off on the Rosatom-Uranium One deal despite the ongoing investigation. Holder and his associates at the DOJ kept the investigation under their hats. The trails leading to the Clintons were closed off…

“Victim 1”, the FBI’s confidential witness in the case, was an American businessman who was making payments to a Rosatom figure. He knew firsthand about the Russian efforts to influence Bill and Hillary, and through them, the Obama administration, but wasn’t allowed to talk about it. Instead Obama’s DOJ threatened him with criminal charges if he revealed what he knew. And what he knew included comments by FBI agents about political pressure from the DOJ during the Uranium One-Rosatom approval process.

Meanwhile, during the approval process, Bill Clinton was getting paid $500,000 by a Russian bank with Russian government ties, even as his wife had the power to block a deal by Rosatom. While Clinton and Obama cronies are scurrying around to tie Trump to Russia, their own bosses were giving a Russian state corporation whose branches included the nuclear weapons complex access to our nuclear materials.

[snip]

Not only did Obama and his people at the DOJ and FBI turn a blind eye to Russian nuclear malfeasance in America, but they covered up evidence tying that malfeasance to the Clintons, and then threatened an informant to protect that cover-up. Democracy really does die in darkness. Just ask the media.

The Hill takes up the narrative:

At the same time the Russians were paying Clinton half a million dollars to speak and topping up the Clinton Foundation coffers to the hilt, Bill Clinton sought permission in May 2010 to meet with Arkady Dvorovich, one of the highest-ranking members of the Russian government to sit on Rosatom’s Board, and then when approval dragged on, he met directly with Vladimir Putin. [snip] Inside the Clintons' inner circle, there also was a debate in 2010.

A close associate of Bill Clinton who was directly involved in the Moscow trip and spoke on condition of anonymity, described to The Hill the circumstances surrounding how Bill Clinton landed a $500,000 speaking gig in Russia and then came up with the list of Russians he wanted to meet.

The friend said Hillary Clinton had just returned in late March 2010 from an official trip to Moscow where she met with both Putin and Medvedev. The president’s speaker’s bureau had just received an offer from Renaissance Capital to pay the former president $500,000 for a single speech in Russia.

Documents show Bill Clinton’s personal lawyer on April 5, 2010, sent a conflict of interest review to the State Department asking for permission to give the speech in late June, and it was approved two days later.

The Clinton friend said the former president’s office then began assembling a list of requests to meet with Russian business and government executives whom he could meet on the trip. One of the goals of the trip was to try to help a Clinton family relative “grow investments in their business with Russian oligarchs and other businesses,” the friend told The Hill.

“It was one of the untold stories of the Russia trip. People have focused on Uranium One and the speaking fees, but opening up a business spigot for the family business was one only us insiders knew about,” the friend said.

But that is not the end of the story. Without revealing anything about the Rosatom-Uranium One background of bribery and corruption, Rosenstein-McCabe supervised the investigation and two people, including Russian Vadim Mikerin, were prosecuted. 

Although the FBI and DOJ knew of the corruption involved in getting the Uranium One deal approved before the CFIUS approved the deal, no charges were brought until 2014, and neither the public, the intelligence community, nor the Congress were informed of the cases until after a plea was entered with little fanfare by the defendants.

Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency’s cap.

But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.

The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.

By that time, the criminal cases against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering for a scheme that officials admitted stretched from 2004 to 2014. And though agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing they collected since at least 2009, federal prosecutors only cited in the plea agreement a handful of transactions that occurred in 2011 and 2012, well after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s approval.

The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill.

The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.

The Second Hillary-Russian scandal (The Ghost Story)

So here are the key facts: the FBI found that Russian intelligence had targeted Hillary Clinton before and during her time as secretary of state. Clinton’s spokespersons denied that this was so. Clinton opposed the Magnitsky sanctions on officials tied to Putin. After her husband received his half-million dollars… Clinton moved with unusual speed to whisk the ring of 10 Russian spies out of the country and back to Moscow. She had the lopsided swap take place over a long summer weekend, before the FBI was finished with the spies, and before the spies could stand trial. While the FBI was separately investigating Russians involved with buying Uranium One, she approved the sale of American uranium to Russia’s nuclear weapons agency. Principals in the sale then plowed $145 million into her family foundation and projects.

Several questions come to mind. Precisely what did the FBI know about Russia’s spy service targeting Hillary Clinton and her inner circle? Why did Clinton deny through spokespersons that she had been a Russian target? Why did she work so feverishly to get the spies out of the United States and back to Russia? Why has the FBI leadership not been more vocal in touting one of its greatest counterintelligence successes ever? And why did nobody in the FBI leadership raise this issue during the 2016 Russian election meddling controversy?

Once again, the person who should have been and certainly was most knowledgeable about the details of this scandal is Robert Mueller, then head of the FBI and now special counsel pursuing the dead end assertion that Russia colluded with Trump.

Russia and Trump

The overwhelming evidence suggests that Hillary and Bill, consumed with greed, colluded with the Russians, handed them the right to one-fifth of U.S. uranium reserves in exchange for cash for themselves and their slush fund foundation. When she lost, she projected her conduct onto everyone else, including Trump. It is beyond doubt -- because it has been admitted by James Comey, the head of the FBI -- that he began his investigation into her charges based on the GPS-Fusion “Dossier” which even its author Christopher Steele asserts was “raw intelligence,” not verified and not verifiable.

This week Steele refused a Congressional demand that he testify as to who paid him and who were his sources.

Fusion is known as a ruthless firm that excels in smear jobs, but few have noticed the operation it’s conducting against the lawmakers investigating it. The false accusations against Mr. Nunes -- that he’s acting unethically and extralegally, that he’s sabotaging the Russia probe -- are classic.

This is a firm that in 2012 was paid to dig through the divorce records of a Mitt Romney donor. It’s a firm that human-rights activist Thor Halvorssen testified was hired to spread malicious rumors about him. It’s a firm that financier Bill Browder testified worked to delegitimize his efforts to get justice for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer beaten to death in a Russian prison.

It’s the firm behind the infamous “dossier” accusing Donald Trump of not just unbecoming behavior but also colluding with Russia. Republicans are investigating whether the Fusion dossier was influenced by Russians, and whether American law enforcement relied on that disinformation for its own probe.

But Fusion’s secret weapon in its latest operation is the Democratic Party, whose most powerful members have made protecting Fusion’s secrets their highest priority.

 As Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) notes: “The obvious inference is that Fusion’s secrets are their secrets, and they’re devastating.” Underscoring Reynolds’ point,GPS is  even trying an unlikely gambit -- seeking judicial blocking of Congressional access to its bank records.

Molly Hemingway eviscerates the journalists who claimed to be shocked about GPS-Fusion, itself a collection of former journalists. She quotes them and shreds them for their purported ignorance, and remarks, not without warrant,

I mentioned earlier the Washington Post and New York Times had anonymously sourced stories alleging that the FBI tried to pay one of the dossier’s authors but ultimately did not. Well, CNN has anonymous sources that say the FBI did give him money for his work. “FBI reimbursed some expenses of dossier author,” CNN reported in March. To quote Jake Sherman: The FBI is in the U.S. government.

So let’s go back to that tweet. We have reports at CNN of the FBI paying expenses for the dossier, and trying to pay him even more, according to the Post and Times. We have Fusion GPS already claiming that Democratic supporters of Clinton paid for it. And we have New York Times and various other reports that Russians paid Fusion GPS for allegedly unrelated work, though no evidence that those funds were not used on the dossier. So who paid for it? Russia? The FBI? The Democrats? Or all? Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to know? If only we had some means of finding out the answers to these questions!

While the fever swamps of the left are still playing on the credulity of their readers, there’s still no evidentiary basis for claiming any of the Russian propaganda efforts on Facebook, or Google, or You Tube influenced the election in Trump’s favor. More likely a “woke” citizenry fed up with Hillary’s greed, corruption, lies, and incompetence and able to communicate directly with each other through the internet did it all by themselves.

Correction: Andrew McCabe's current title is deputy director of the FBI, not deputy attorney general.