"Hi John! Oh my...is that a pencil in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
Posted on 08/27/2017 7:16:28 AM PDT by TigerClaws
Lawmakers failed to seize on an alarming development in the Russia collusion story last week, one that should spark serious and immediate congressional inquiry.
But it didn’t involve President Trump or his administration.
During a heated Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief John Podesta made a series of misleading statements when questioned about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Russian government while Clinton served as secretary of state.
On Jan. 18, 2011, a small green-energy company named Joule Unlimited announced Podesta’s appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joule’s board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council.
Bartiromo asked Podesta why he failed to disclose his role in Joule as required by law when he entered the White House in January 2014 to serve as counselor to President Barack Obama.
“Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” Podesta shot back.
But according to his own financial disclosure form, Podesta only listed two of the three entities that made up Joule Unlimited, failing to disclose his presence on the board of the Dutch-registered Stichting Joule Global Foundation.
When Bartiromo pressed Podesta on the whereabouts of his 75,000 shares of Joule stock, Podesta resorted to Clintonesque semantics: “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!”
Notice the rhetorical sleight of tongue there: Joule is based in Massachusetts, not Russia, making Podesta’s statement technically true. Podesta added: “And by the way, I divested before I went into the White House.”
Yet again, it’s not that simple. WikiLeaks documents reveal that when he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clinton’s campaign. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.
But nothing to see here, Podesta insisted.
“I was on the board of an American company that did business here and only here,” he said. “The Russian company had a small investment in that company. We can go round and around the tree.”
Was Joule’s business “here and only here” in America as Podesta claimed? Not according to Joule’s own CEO and president, Bill Sims. While thanking Putin’s Rusnano, Sims said the investment would help support “the development of our global presence” and “complements the company’s expansion plans in Europe, the Middle East, and Mexico.” Moreover, Stichting Joule is itself an overseas entity. Indeed, Rusnano’s investment in Joule was in part to develop a manufacturing facility in Russia.
And what about Podesta’s contention that Putin’s investment fund represented a “small investment” in Joule? In 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date.
That meant the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.
There’s also this inconvenient fact: In 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group — which is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta.
In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule. No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.
Are US officials investigating the matter? We don’t know. When Bartiromo asked Podesta whether his closed-door session in front of the House Intelligence Committee included questions about his Russian ties and Joule, Podesta punted: “I have already told you that I was asked not to talk about specific questions, and I said I would respect that.”
After the slippery answers Podesta delivered during his explosive Fox Business interview, US officials have more reasons than ever to demand answers about John Podesta, Joule Unlimited and Putin’s Rusnano investment fund. If they weren’t investigating Podesta before, they should be now.
http://nypost.com/2017/07/05/uncovering-the-russia-ties-of-hillarys-campaign-chief/
Predictable behavior, the RATs always blame the GOP for crimes they themselves have committed and know they will be called on.
Embattled ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort failed to disclose his extensive lobbying efforts
Which pales in comparison to:
last week we uncover that the Podesta Group, run by John Podesta's brother Tony, retroactively filed DOJ disclosures for ‘pro- lobbying.
New disclosures-revealed dozens of previously unreported interactions the firm made with influential government offices, including Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the office of former Vice President Joe Biden while lobbying on behalf of the center.
>>Hmm… Something Smells Fishy<<
RATS: "HEY!...Everybody does it."
He should be fired and indicted immediately.
(maybe that's the plan)
Clinton ally Tony Podesta (John's brother) filed a voluminous document admitting its work for the pro-Russia European Centre for a Modern Ukraine may have principally benefited a foreign government.
Podesta's new disclosures revealed dozens of previously unreported interactions the firm made with influential government offices, including Hillary Clinton's State Department and the office of former Vice President Joe Biden, while lobbying on behalf of the center.
Odd how Chuck Toss and Chris Matthews have dropped the ‘Russia Russia Russia’ stuff... LOL...
Democrats OWN parts of the FBI and almost all of the press so 'yeah for all practical purposes they can 'unbreak' the law'...
In the extensive report on the massive Russian-backed operation to hack American political and government severs—including a successful hack of the Democratic National Committee's server—the paper reveals that then-President Barack Obama had been "briefed regularly" on Russia's effort to target servers at the State Department, the White House, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Here's the Times: Mr. Obama was briefed regularly on all this, but he made a decision that many in the White House now regret: OBAMA did not name Russians publicly, or issue sanctions.
There was always a reason: fear of escalating a cyberwar, and concern that the United States needed Russia's cooperation in negotiations over Syria. "We'd have all these circular meetings," one senior State Department official said, "in which everyone agreed you had to push back at the Russians and push back hard. But it didn't happen."
So the Russians escalated again — breaking into systems not just for espionage, but to publish or broadcast what they found, known as "doxing" in the cyberworld.
It was a brazen change in tactics, moving the Russians from espionage to influence operations. In February, 2014 they broadcast an intercepted phone call between Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state who handles Russian affairs and has a contentious relationship with Mr. Putin, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the United States ambassador to Ukraine. Ms. Nuland was heard describing a little-known American effort to broker a deal in Ukraine, then in political turmoil. stop (Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
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CONCLUSION Too bad the Royal Idiot is too stupid to realize what a jerk he looks like. Obama is the fall guy here......the janitor mopping up the mess of Hillary's decrepit campaign.
The leaks indicted the nasty Democrat apparat. That's the thing they're fuming about---being outed as jerks and creeps.
The shamed Dems take on a Sisyphian task to restore credibility----but its not going to work.
The Podesta in the “Podesta Group” is Tony .
He should be fired and indicted immediately.
Well, the story is that it was only a small sample he had delivered to them that was allegedly smuggled out of Russia by some terrorist group, or Russian mafia group? (Russian mafia is often one and the same with the KGB/FSB-filled Putin government)
In any case, when it comes to all of these untrustworthy players, you'd be a fool to just take their word for it. I haven't actually looked deeply enough into it to know for sure what the deal was. But I'd bet, when I do, I'll find plenty of stuff that they didn't tell us.
Oh my. Isn’t this worth further FBI investigation?
Me thinks so.
Tony and John both founded the group....then John got the top govt jobs that facilitated the lobbying group’s vast income.
The lobbying group’s newly filed forms indicate email contact w/ Hillary’s State Dept and w/ VP Joe Biden.
The left ha no credibility all they try to do is blame others diversion from facts is their game.
"Hi John! Oh my...is that a pencil in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
I'm guessing, if anybody goes down from the Podesta Group, it wont be john.
at least add tony to the pictures and the conversation
LOL.......
Nah...
FMCDH(BITS)
ITEM--A leaked Jan. 3, 2014 document shows that Podesta transferred more than 25,000 of 75,000 shares of Joule Technologies---a Russian-connected firm---to Leonidio Holdings LLC......listed w/ an address at his daughter's Megan Rouse’s Shannon Court home in Dublin, California.
Megan Rouse operates Megan Rouse Financial Planning from that same address. The inference is to money laundering, perhaps tax evasion. Suggests that Megan Rouse's father, John Podesta, hid stocks connected to Russia.
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NOTE: Conspiring w/ a family member to hide income, launder illicit money, and evade taxes is a known scam---uncovered by the IRS in the UBS investigation.
IRS REFERENCE Offshore Tax-Avoidance and IRS Compliance Efforts
The IRS continues to uncover abusive tax-avoidance schemes involving offshore activity pertaining to Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) investigation.
SOURCE---https://www.irs.gov/uac/offshore-tax-avoidance-and-irs-compliance-efforts
==========================================
John Podesta has been close to political power for years, effortlessly getting numerous top level, high-powered govt jobs, and lobbying gigs.
ITEM--Seems Podesta got rich trading on insider info......gettig powerful positions, lucrative lobbying referrals, and other gifts, like valuable stock in Russian-connected energy company (verified to date).
===========================================
<><> Podesta chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
<><> Podesta is 2016 Hillary Clinton's campaign Chair.
<><> Podesta was President Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff 1998-2001.
<><> Podesta owns the Podesta Group with his brother Tony, a major lobbying firm (has a website).
<><> Podesta is Chair of the Center for American Progress, a Washington DC-based think tank.
<><> Podesta headed Obama’s transition team in fall 2008.
<><> Podesta once served as Counselor to Obama.
<><> Podesta once worked at Hillary's State Dept.
<><> Podesta serves as the Clinton Foundation decision-maker.
<><> Podesta has been tapped for Hillary's COS, if elected.
<><> Podesta founded Progressive Media w/ CNN, HuffPo, MediaMatters, WaPo, Dem SPAC’s, etc.
<><> The podesta Lobbying Group received $900,000 in 2011/12 from the "European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-based organization sympathetic to Viktor Yanukovych and his political party".
<><> The Podesta Brothers Lobbying Group represent (as of 2016) the interests of Russia's largest financial institution Sberbank of Russia, which controls approximately 30 percent of Russian banking assets.
<><> The Podesta Brothers Lobbying Group carries out public relations work for the government of Azerbaijan (once a part of the USSR) for a monthly fee of USD 60,000 plus expenses.
Oh boy. Don’t bring this up with any liberals unless you are ready for an immediate melt down. Seen two already just today.
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