Show Notes
The Government Accountability Institute (GAI) has conducted many investigations over the years, but we recently learned that GAI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s involvement with the takeover of an American uranium mining company by Russia so terrified her presidential campaign managers in 2016 that they decided to solicit and pay for the “Steele Dossier,” with its lurid, unsubstantiated claims that Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, was subject to blackmail threats by Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
On the most recent episode of The Drill Down, Peter and Eric discuss this in light of the recent charges filed against former president Donald Trump.
The revelations about how Hillary as Secretary of State allowed the Russian state-owned uranium mining company Rosatom to acquire an American mining company called Uranium One were published in 2015 as part of GAI president Peter Schweizer’s bestselling book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”
The Clinton campaign freaked out, and Trump-Russia! was the result.
“This is really interesting because we had no real knowledge of this at the time,” Peter says. “We looked at the amount of money that the Clintons were collecting from overseas and, in particular, we focused on the ties to Russia and this Russian uranium deal involving Uranium One. This got a lot of media attention. What we didn’t know until recently was the panic that this set up within the Clinton campaign itself. We now know this because of a recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review written by a former New York Times reporter named Jeff Gerth.”
In his thorough review of media activity during the 2016 campaign, Gerth writes: “Three days before Trump’s presidential announcement, Hillary Clinton entered the race, and it was she, not Trump, who began her campaign facing scrutiny over Russia ties. Weeks earlier, the [New York] Times had collaborated with the conservative author of a best-selling book” – Schweizer – “to explore various Clinton-Russia links, including a lucrative speech in Moscow by Bill Clinton, Russia-related donations to the Clinton family foundation, and Russia-friendly initiatives by the Obama administration while Hillary was secretary of state. The Times itself said it had an “exclusive agreement” with the author to “pursue the story lines found in the book” through “its own reporting.”
“An internal Clinton campaign poll, shared within the campaign the day of Trump’s announcement, showed that the Russia entanglements exposed in the book and the Times were the most worrisome “Clinton negative message,” according to campaign records.”
The Clinton campaign hid the Steele Dossier payments as fees for “legal advice” to one of the campaign’s law firms, with the help of the Democratic National Committee. The Federal Election Commission, which polices campaign spending by candidates and political committees, found that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the DNC made total payments of slightly more than $1 million to the opposition research firm FusionGPS through its law firm, labeling it as “legal and compliance consulting” when in fact, it was for research related to the Steele Dossier. The Clinton campaign ended up paying a small fine of $8,000, and the DNC paid $105,000 in fines for this violation of election law. No one was charged with a crime or went to jail.
“Yeah,” Peter says of the GAI team, “I mean, this is one of the hall of honor mentions for GAI. Because of our work, the Clinton campaign ended up paying a fine to the Federal Election Commission. I never thought that would happen,” he says.
This is all newly relevant because, as everyone knows, former president Trump was just charged on 34 felony counts of campaign finance law violations stemming from his payments of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair with Trump back in 2006. New York City attorney general Alvin Bragg brought these charges based on the same information that had been reviewed and previously declined for prosecution by the New York State Attorney General, the US Justice Department, and the Federal Election Commission that saw fit to fine the Clinton campaign over the accounting declarations hiding the source of the Steele Dossier’s funding.
But what of the Clinton campaign’s strategy of trying to accuse their opponent of the same thing they themselves were being accused of?
Eric says, “it’s sort of a brilliant tactic. Pick what you’re being accused of, and immediately accuse your opponent of the same thing – even if there’s not really any evidence – then just create the evidence.”
“We have these different standards for different people, and we see how the criminal justice system is being abused to try to settle political scores,” Peter says. “We’ve talked about political corruption for a decade. We’ve exposed it as it relates to the Clintons, the Bidens, to Mitch McConnell and others. We have never ever in this podcast or in our books called for actual prosecution. What we have always asked for is a thorough investigation so people can understand what’s happened, because we’re not lawyers. We don’t know all the details. What we’re seeing on the Left with this prosecutor in New York is the weaponization of the criminal justice system. They are actually running for office by making campaign promises that “I will charge this person with a crime if you elect me.”
Peter closes by saying, “We try not to do overt opinion on this podcast. We obviously give our opinions but at GAI our research is driven by facts, and sometimes you wonder if that gets lost in the noise. We are focused on the truth. It’s a testament to our team and it’s a testament to our listeners because you know that facts and research and information matter and in my mind it’s what should matter most.”
