Obama-Biden-Clinton nuclear giveaway to Russia a decade ago comes back to bite America

"The U.S. nuclear energy sector’s dependence on Russian uranium created during a failed Obama-era reset with Moscow is coming back to bite Americans as the Kremlin moves to block future exports of the vital fuel.

Putin’s new restrictions on uranium exports to the U.S., announced last week, come as the country’s war in Ukraine continues to heighten tensions with the United States and the West. His announcement created an immediate impact, as uranium prices soared and worries grew that American utilities might have trouble meeting electric demand next year.
It's the latest fallout from a series of foreign policy decisions crafted by Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton that inexplicably strengthened Putin's ability to wage economic warfare with energy supplies such as natural gas and uranium.
“[The] United States used to produce its own nuclear materials for bombs and then for nuclear energy, and it was the Clinton administration they made this deal with the Russians way back in the 90s to purchase all of this down blended material from, you know, the decommission nuclear warheads from Russia,” Seamus Bruner, co-author of the book, told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Monday. “That got us addicted to Russia's supply,” he said, explaining that it led to a cratering of domestic supply.
Two deals, which took place during Obama’s vaunted "Russian Reset" that began in 2009, cemented the United States’ dependence on Russia nuclear fuel, Bruner said.
“[The] Obama administration certainly wasn't friendly. They made the famous deals with Russia, the [123 Agreement]; everybody remembers the uranium one deal, which was about nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons,” Bruner said.
“And so now we're in this tough spot. Now we do have domestic producers, who are, you know, producing uranium for our energy needs, but there are no way, there's no way they're going to catch up.”
As part of the flurry of diplomacy between the former Cold War rivals, the Obama administration penned the new 123 Agreement with the Kremlin, which was designed to increase cooperation on civil nuclear energy and further commercial opportunities between the two economies. The administration also signed new arms control and technology cooperation agreements as part of the diplomatic push.
The deal led to billions of dollars in contracts for U.S. utilities to buy Russian uranium to power their nuclear reactors.
Around the same time the agreements were taking shape, however, Putin’s state-controlled nuclear company, Rosatom, was making moves to corner the global supply.
The Russian company’s efforts to acquire a Canadian company, Uranium One, became a scandal for the Obama administration because it saw the virtual elimination of U.S. domestic production of uranium and raised corruption concerns about some of its chief officials.
“The the Uranium One deal was about shuttering our domestic mines, we had all of these uranium mines across…the Rocky Mountains…and closer towards the west, Midwest, that shut down the domestic production there, which was a boon to Putin, who had purchased, in addition to the mines in the United States, a bunch of mines in Kazakhstan,” Bruner said.
“And those are where he's able to pull out a ton of uranium and enrich it for civilian purposes, ostensibly, and and then sell it back to us at a premium.”
Before the Russian takeover, Uranium One was a Canadian company that mined Uranium around the world, with assets in Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Its facilities in Wyoming, Utah, and other states accounted for approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity at the time, necessitating a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to approve an acquisition by the Russia state-backed company.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on that committee and had a prominent role in shaping the administration’s foreign policy. The acquisition became a scandal that plagued her 2016 presidential campaign after investigative author Peter Schweizer and his Government Accountability Institute found nine Uranium One shareholders funneled $145 million into the Clinton Foundation before the deal was set to be considered.
The acquisition was subsequently approved, though Clinton’s team has repeatedly denied that the secretary had a major role in approving the sale.
Both Congress and President Biden, who had a front row seat to the reset, at least appeared to recognize the danger caused by the past missteps, but could do little to wean the U.S. off Russia’s supply before now.
Shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Congress passed and Biden signed the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act ostensibly to free the U.S. nuclear industry from dependence on Russia. Yet, the law only requires an end to U.S. imports of nuclear fuel from Russia completely by 2028, providing a waiver system in the intervening years.
“It was a terrible decision to make us dependent on on imports of uranium from Russia,” former Trump National Security Council Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast.
Fleitz said the waiver system established by the law revealed how underdeveloped the United States’ domestic uranium production is, something Putin eagerly exploited last week.
“But utilities could ask for waivers, with the understanding it will take a long time for us to establish domestic sources of your reactor grade uranium,” Fleitz said. “The Russians knew that, and they're going to cut this off, and our reactors will have no where to go to get uranium.” Just the News

Lame-duck Biden ramps up sanctions on Israelis — and eases up on terrorists

"As he heads for the exit, President Biden is easing sanctions on Hamas and Hezbollah — while sanctioning Jews in Israel.
Under pressure from Israel-bashing critics, including scores of congressional Democrats, a president who stood firmly behind Israel after the Oct. 7 massacre seems to have lost his moral compass.

And just as President Barack Obama in his last months in office allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution slamming Israel, Biden may use sanctions to further turn the screws on the Jewish state in his lame-duck stretch.
In 2022, the Treasury Department determined that the Foundation for Global Political Exchange, a US-based non-profit, would violate sanctions laws by inviting Hamas and Hezbollah to a conference it was planning in Beirut.
Last week, the Biden administration did an about-face and gave the group a green light for the meeting.
Yet at the same time, the Biden administration has created the first sanctions program designed to target citizens of a major US ally.
The real purpose of Biden’s order was to punish Israeli Jews.
Usually, sanctions target those responsible for severe wrongdoing, such as terrorist financing, nuclear proliferation and large-scale human rights abuses.
The new sanctions break this mold by targeting Israeli Jews in the West Bank accused of property crimes and vandalism, or of simply associating with the wrong people." NYP

Comeback of the Century: Historic Victory for Fmr Potus Democracy Restored 45 47 Blowout: Wins National Popular Vote

"If there was a single turning point, it was the assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. Rising from the stage with blood smeared on his head and face, Trump raised his fist and demanded that his shocked followers “Fight, fight, fight.”

Any doubts about his heart were dispelled in that perilous moment, and millions of Americans followed his lead across the finish line.
Yet it must be said that Trump’s victory is even greater than the results indicate. For not only did he defeat Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and the Democratic machine, he also beat the media. They lied about him, demonized everything he said and saw devious motives in everything he did. They called him a Nazi, Hitler, a dictator — there were no rules in their filthy game.
They even cheered on the unprecedented attempts to prosecute and imprison Trump, all while echoing the scurrilous left’s talking point that he was a threat to democracy.
Meanwhile, the nature and details of Trump’s victory are so sensational that it will become a legend and tale for the ages." NYP

Biden camp suggests president quickly endorsed Kamala Harris to defy Barack Obama

 "There’s buzz swirling within the Biden camp that the president’s swift endorsement of Kamala Harris was his revenge on prominent

party leaders — including Barack Obama — who pressured him to bow out of the race against his will, sources told The Post.
Joe Biden, who said he was dropping out “in defense of democracy” during his public address Wednesday, had been told by Obama to allow delegates at next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago to decide a new candidate, a source close to the Biden family claimed.
“It was Joe’s big f–k you,” the source said. “Joe said, ‘If I’m out, then I am endorsing her.'”
Talk among insiders is that Biden saw this as a final way to assert some control over his ouster." 

NYP

Venezuela’s Maduro Sends Devastating Message to Biden in English: ‘I You Want I Want I You to Want I Do Want’

"Venezuela’s socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro attempted to issue a message in English to U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss the upcoming expiration of Biden’s generous oil and gas sanctions relief package to his regime.

The dictator’s latest attempt to speak English prompted the laughter of the audience of his weekly television show Con Maduro Más (“With Maduro Plus”), leading to his video going viral on social media platforms.
Maduro — who, prior to becoming Venezuela’s socialist dictator, was his predecessor Hugo Chávez’s foreign minister — has developed a reputation for poor proficiency of the English language. The dictator has issued several “English”-language messages and threats to former Presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama during their respective administrations.
“I tell the negotiators to tell President Biden the following message,” Maduro said in Spanish, before attempting English: “I you want I want, I you to want I do want.”
Maduro was apparently attempting to invite Biden to a bilateral dialogue. “If you want to, I want to. If you don’t want to, I don’t want to. That’s the end of it,” he clarified, eliciting the applause of his show’s audience." Breitbart

Biden’s Backstabbing Dents Israeli Morale

"President Joe Biden might have thought he was only talking to a small group of wealthy donors. But his disparaging comments, published about Israel and the Israeli government have dented national morale — and cheered Israel’s enemies.
Biden claimed, without evidence, that Israel practices “indiscriminate bombing”; that Israel is losing support around the world; and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fail unless he boots democratically-elected right-wing parties out of his cabinet.

Two factors made Biden’s comments even worse.
One was that he was speaking to an ostensibly pro-Israel group of donors, led by Lee Rosenberg, a former chair of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Rosenberg was tapped for the job during the Obama years, when it was hoped that he could use his shared Chicago ties with Barack Obama to moderate some of Obama’s left-wing policies. That hope was dashed as Obama grew hostile to Israel, and began cozying up to the Iranian regime.
The other factor is that Israel has been absorbing a series of bad-news stories lately, most of all about the deaths of hostages in Hamas custody, and about the deaths of elite soldiers who are fighting in Gaza to free them.
At 115 casualties since the invasion, Israel has suffered fewer losses than expected. But each fallen soldier is mourned deeply by the entire nation, especially in a small country, and especially when so many of those doing the fighting are reservists, away from their jobs, spouses and children.
Israel is also shocked — at a level that doesn’t always come through in the headlines — at being abandoned by the universities of the West." Breitbart

Citibank, Biden Family & Ukraine War

"During the Obama Administration, when the Euromaidan coup was orchestrated (Feb.
2014), Joe Biden was in charge of the Ukraine portfolio and he was a "superhawk" in that role. Mearsheimer did not elaborate much on this point, but he did note that Ukraine’s president Zelensky turned much more aggressive toward Russia and Ukraine’s breakaway regions practically from the day Joe Biden entered the White House. Recall, Zelensky was elected in 2019 by a 70% majority of Ukrainian people in the west and in the east of the country because he promised to make making peace with Russia and to respect the rights of ethnic Russians.

Most observers will recall Biden’s performance at the Council of Foreign Relations where he boasted about forcing President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s public prosecutor Viktor Shokin by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to his government. But Biden’s role was much more extensive than that. On the day of the Euromaidan Coup in February 2014, the same day when President Barack Obama was discussing with Vladimir Putin how to diffuse the crisis, Biden called President Viktor Yanukovich and pressured him to withdraw his security forces from Kiev and from all the government buildings. Yanukovich, who had just signed a deal with opposition, conceding to all of their demands, walked straight into Biden’s perfidious trap and within hours of ordering his security forces to withdraw, armed neo-Nazi groups stormed the government buildigns, presidential palace and Yanukovich’s private residence. Yanukovich had to flee the country to save his life.

Along with Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, Biden also played the key role in coercing the Kiev Junta to launch its brutal “anti-terorist operation” in April 2014 which resulted in massacres of hundreds of civilians in Odessa, Mariupol, Slaviansk, Kramatorsk and other towns across Ukraine’s southern and eastern districts. The regime was urged by its western handlers to consolidate control of these regions as they accounted for the bulk of Ukraine’s economic output.

Barely ten days after the massacre of the regime’s opponents – all unarmed civilians – Joe Biden’s son Hunter was nominated as a director of Burisma, Ukraine’s energy giant that was owned by one of the planners of the Odessa massacre, oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskiy who ordered his private Dniepr-1 Battalion to help carry it out. Indeed, the corruption moneys earned in Ukraine by the Biden family was literally drenched in the blood of innocents.

So, where’s Citigroup in all this?

The pressure to consolidate control over south and east of Ukraine originated from the banking circles. On Thursday, May 1, 2014, just one day before the massacres in Kharkov, Slavyansk and Odessa, CNBC ran the headline: “IMF warns Ukraine on bailout if it loses east.” The article reported that, “‘This is something of a leap of faith for the IMF and is politically driven by key IMF shareholders to support the [Junta prime minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk ‘kamikaze’ administration in its reform efforts...’”

IMF’s shareholders consist of the American and European financial oligarchy, the same club that controls Citigroup and other global systematically important banks (GSIBs). However, Citigroup may have had the greatest appetite for a piece of Ukrainian action which began with the 2014 Euromaidan coup, planned and organized by a cabal of western officials including a group of Neocons within the Obama administration. There’s some evidence suggesting that Obama himself wasn’t in the loop, but was dragged along with the project by a group of conspirators consisting of individuals like John Kerry, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Victoria Nuland.

Collateral is the essential ingredient powering the creation of credit by western financial institutions, primarily the GSIB’s (Global Systemically Important Banks). They stand the most to gain if western powers prevail, and the most to lose if they’re defeated. Adverse developments in Ukraine could push the sector back into a bear market and the banks that are overexposed to Ukraine could exacerbate the financial crisis, force central banks to more bank bailouts with open-ended QE, and reignite another cycle of high inflation." ZH

Russia Bans Barack Obama From Entering Country

"Russia has implemented a travel restriction by banning the entry of 500 US nationals,
including former President Barack Obama. The ban on Obama’s entry into Russia can be interpreted as a symbolic action, reflecting Russia’s disapproval of certain policies pursued during his presidency, as well as Biden’s." TP

Saudis Decided to Cut Oil Production After Biden Fist-Bump Summit

"Most reports citing White House insiders indicated that the objective of the Biden visit wasto convince Saudi leaders to increase oil supplies in order to lower prices. Biden has significantly damaged relations with Riyadh since taking over the presidency, almost immediately deteriorating the relationship by making one of his first acts in office delisting the Iran-backed Houthi insurgency in Yemen as a terrorist organization. Biden has also alienated Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations with repeated, and failed, attempts to restore former President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, which resulted in windfall profits for the rogue Islamist government pouring into terrorist groups such as the Houthis and members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Saudi impatience with the Biden administration came to a climax last week when the Saudi-led OPEC oil cartel and Russia agreed to a 2-million-barrel-a-day cut in oil production, likely to result in far higher gasoline and other oil fuel prices in the United States immediately before the midterm elections.... the OPEC+ production cut followed desperate pleas from the Biden White House to delay any production cuts for another month, which would result in price hikes occurring after the midterm elections.

MBS himself has lost patience with Biden and was “angered” by his attitude during the Riyadh visit in July – so much so that he lowered a proposed increase in oil production in August after Biden urged the country to encourage OPEC to pump more oil.... Prince Mohammed, who was upset that Mr. Biden went public with his private comments to the Saudi royal over Mr. Khashoggi’s death,” the Wall Street Journal reported, “which prompted Saudi officials to publicly contradict Mr. Biden’s characterization of their interaction.” Breitbart

Deadly Clashes In Tripoli May Signal Imminent Libyan Civil War

"Though Libya has been a disaster ever since Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama teamed up with NATO to facilitate regime change in 2011, the last two years have been relatively calm. That calm ended as combatants fired small arms, heavy machine guns, mortars and other heavy weapons. Explosions occurred in various sectors of Tripoli -- the country's capital -- and smoke drifted across the skyline.  

Two groups are contending for rule over Libya : The Government of National Unity (GNU), which is led by Abdulhamid al-Dbeibah, and a rival group led by Fathi Bashagha, the former interior minister. Bashagha has the support of Libya 's eastern parliament, which is based in Tobruk. In essence, this is a battle of two rival prime ministers and two rival governments...... fighting broke out when a convoy of Bashagha-backing militia was challenged by GNU forces. ... militia forces seemed to be closing in on the city from three directions. A witness says one of the convoys was 300 vehicles strong, but had turned back toward its Misrata base.........In Tripoli, the house of the commander of the an-Nawasi group, Mustafa Kaddoura, who supports Fathi Bashagha, was blown up. " ZH

Ukraine Biolab Update: Russia Implicates Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, Obama, Soros, Clintons, Bidens, Rockefellers

"Specifically, the Russian MOD claims the U.S. and other NATO nations have been
engaged in illegal military-biological projects within Ukraine.

The U.S. Defense Department’s Biological Threat Reduction Program has provided funding to biolabs in Ukraine since then-Senator Barack Obama struck a deal back in 2005.

In a suspicious move, the US Embassy in Ukraine deleted documents related to the biolabs from its website when the story gained international attention.

The Russian government previously linked Hunter Biden, George Soros, the Pentagon & CDC to the biolabs, claiming, “The main objective of this project was to carry out a molecular analysis of particularly dangerous infections endemic to Ukraine.”

 “It should be noted that the ideologues of US military-biological activities in Ukraine are the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Russia’s latest briefing stated. “Thus, through the US executive branch, a legislative framework for funding military biomedical research directly from the federal budget was formed. Funds were raised under state guarantees from NGOs controlled by the Democratic Party leadership, including the investment funds of the Clintons, Rockefellers, Soros and Biden.”... “The scheme involves major pharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck and the US military-affiliated company Gilead. U.S. experts are working to test new medicines that circumvent international safety standards. As a result, Western companies are seriously reducing the cost of research programmes and gaining a significant competitive advantage.”

According to Russia, one benefit of this widespread conspiracy is that “leaders of the Democratic Party” can use it to “generate additional campaign finance and hide its distribution.” IW

Uranium, oil and technology: How Russia got stronger as Bidens and Clintons got richer

"Putin's spoils were measured in billions of dollars in uranium contracts with U.S. utilities, expanded oil imports and transfers of sensitive technologies.

The American dynasties counted their victories in millions of dollars in donations to the Clinton Foundation, speech fees to Bill Clinton, and lucrative board seats and consulting deals for Hunter Biden.

The appeasement policy began in February 2009. Russia had invaded its neighbor and former client state, Georgia, six months earlier. The lame-duck George W. Bush administration planned to put missile defense structures in Eastern Europe to deter Russian aggression against its neighbors. 

But one of the Obama-Biden administration's first foreign policy maneuvers was to cancel that plan via a "secret letter" to Putin's placeholder, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Why? U.S. leaders apparently wanted to make deals with Russia, and giant missile silos in Putin's backyard were a nonstarter for Moscow.

But the canceled missile defense in Eastern Europe was only the beginning in a long line of concessions to Russia that not only emboldened Putin, but advanced Russian military capabilities in ways that are now having deadly consequences for Ukrainian civilians (think hypersonic missiles) while threatening the global economy.

 

By 2010, the Obama-Biden-Clinton Russian reset was in full swing. The administration put forth a mutual nuclear disarmament treaty known as "New START," which, while noble in its declared intentions, risked weakening a compliant partner such as the United States while strengthening a Russia not constrained by the rules.

Another deal that Obama, Biden, and Clinton gave the Russians was called the "123 Agreement," which allowed state-owned Russian entities like nuclear behemoth Rosatom to sell nuclear materials directly to U.S. utility companies.

This deal continues to pay huge dividends to the Obama Foundation's top donor, Chicago-based Exelon Corporation. And President Biden has allowed that deal to survive even during the Ukraine war, exempting nuclear fuel sales to U.S. utilities from his recent sanctions targeting Russian energy imports.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-driven 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, and other so-called denuclearization efforts with Libya and North Korea, effectively sent hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium to Russia for enrichment — a huge cash and energy windfall for Putin.

On top of these nuclear handouts, the Obama-Biden-Clinton team gave Russia one of the biggest prizes of all: Uranium One.

Before the Russian takeover, Uranium One was a Canadian company that mined Uranium around the world. It had assets on at least three continents — Eurasia, Africa, and North America. Its assets in Wyoming, Utah, and other states constituted approximately 20% of U.S. uranium capacity and meant that the Obama-Biden Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) would have to sign off on the deal. They could have said no, but the deal was approved.

Investors in the deal had funneled $145 million into Secretary Clinton's family foundation. Its approval helped to give Russia a near-monopoly on global uranium production.

After investigative reporter and author Peter Schweizer broke the Uranium One story in 2015, a State Department under secretary, Jose Fernandez, took the blame. Fernandez later landed a "very rewarding" position at the Clinton-connected Center for American Progress. Fernandez has now come back through the revolving door and is a top official in the Biden State Department.

But Clinton's State Department was not the only Obama-Biden department that extended an advantage to Putin. 

Eric Holder's Department of Justice swept Russian crimes under the rug — not wanting to disrupt the Russian reset. So, the Russian spy ring known as the "Illegals Program," which had penetrated the highest levels of American politics and finance, just went away. Biden said he did not want to create "a flap."

 

Perhaps the worst of all the Obama-Biden-Clinton giveaways to Putin was known as the Skolkovo initiative. Skolkovo, in suburban Moscow, was the site of Russia's attempt to create its own Silicon Valley. The Clinton State Department heavily promoted the effort. As it happens, Clinton's Big Tech donors comprised 17 of the 28 American partners in Skolkovo.

In reality, Skolkovo was a cyber-warfare tech hub and a thinly-veiled cover for corporate espionage and military build-up. 

A 2012 U.S. Army report put it this way: "Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage — with the additional distinction that it can achieve such a transfer on a much larger scale and more efficiently … [Skolkovo] has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project — the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine."

So Obama, Biden, and Clinton helped Russia secure innovative technology and weaponry — including hypersonic missiles — that are now, according to the U.S. Air Force, more advanced than America's similar weapons. The Russian missiles have now allegedly been used in the assault on Ukraine.

 

But Obama, Clinton, and Biden got a lot. As just one example, before Obama even left office in 2017, he set up the Obama Foundation. One of his very first donors was Exelon Corporation, which had received billions in cheap Russian nuclear fuel sales thanks to the 123 Agreement. Exelon, which was known as "the President's Utility" pledged a staggering $10 million to Obama's foundation before he was even out of office.

Biden's family and its partners got hooked up with the former mayor of Moscow's family, who sent at least $3.5 million to a company cofounded by Hunter Biden. Thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop, we know that the Russian oligarch behind that $3.5 million may have invested upwards of $200 million in other Biden-linked entities and that Joe Biden personally benefited from his son's business dealings. And this is all before Biden was named Obama's point man in Ukraine.

As mentioned, the Clinton Foundation got the $145 million in donations from Uranium One investors. On top of that, the Clintons got $500,000 in the form of a "speaking fee" from a Kremlin-backed bank for Bill Clinton's 2010 speech in Moscow. They also got Skolkovo-linked donations from now-sanctioned Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, directly, and indirectly from his varied interests." JN