The depths of political money laundering
Published 9:07 am Wednesday, October 18, 2017
The 9/11 terrorists laundered money through the U.S. financial system to pay for the death and destruction they unleashed.
Since 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, the investment and banking industries have cracked down on money laundering. Banks and broker-dealers have instituted strict policies to prevent terrorists, drug cartels and criminals of all stripes from using our financial system to sanitize or conceal their money.
There’s another kind of money-laundering occurring daily in Washington, D.C., however, that no one seems to care about—political money laundering.
In Tom Schoenberg’s June 2017 story in Bloomberg, he details the government “slush fund” set up by the Justice Department from settlement funds paid by Bank of America and Citigroup for their roles in the securitization and sale of toxic mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis.
As part of the settlement, BofA and Citi were required to pay hundreds of millions to leftist political groups favored by the Obama Justice Department, including La Raza, National Urban League, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, and NeighborWorks America.
Instead of the money going to victims of toxic mortgages or into government coffers, the leftist deep-state bureaucrats in the U.S. Justice Department directed the money extorted from the shareholders of banks to political groups they favored.
Think about that for a moment. The federal government takes money from shareholders of a publicly held corporation and gives it to special interest leftist groups. If you want to understand how the Justice Department can be so blatantly political, read J. Christian Adams 2011 book, “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department,” wherein he describes the army of left-wing zealots appointed by President Obama who are now permanent Justice embeds with civil service protection, making them almost impossible to fire.
Of course, the purest example of political money laundering is the never-ending public employee union scheme with the Democrat party. Congressmen, state legislators, and local alderman “negotiate” with union representatives and agree to generous salary and benefits paid from taxpayer money. Governments withhold the public employee union dues from the employees’ paychecks and remit it to the union. Come election time, the unions make political contributions almost exclusively to Democrats.
And how about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approving the sale of over 20 percent of the United States’ uranium deposits to a Russian government-controlled company in exchange for huge donations to the Clinton Foundation?
The Clintons’ scheme is spelled out in chilling detail in Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich” and in articles in the New York Times.
Just like money laundering schemes by terrorists and drug cartels, the money in the Clinton uranium deal was placed, structured, and layered.
According to the Schweizer and the New York Times articles, Bill Clinton in 2005 accompanied Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra on Giustra’s private jet to Kazakhstan, where they wined and dined the Kazakh president/dictator, who allowed Giustra’s startup, UrAsia Energy Ltd. to acquire an interest in three Kazakh uranium mines. In 2007 UrAsia merged with Uranium One, a South African mining company, and proceeded to buy significant uranium assets in the U.S.
In 2009, the first year of Obama’s presidency, Rosatom, the Russian government-controlled uranium company, acquired Uranium One. One of Putin’s kleptocrats now owns 20 percent of U.S. uranium deposits. Frank Giustra reportedly pocketed $3.1 billion in the layered transaction.
Because uranium is a “strategic asset,” the deal could not be concluded without Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s approval. So, HRC signed off on it.
Why did the Clintons do all of this for Canadian billionaire Frank Giustra?
According to the Times and Schweizer, Giustra gave $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation and pledged another $100 million.
HRC’s latest finger-pointing book “What Happened” should include a chapter titled “The Clinton Foundation—How Bill and I Mastered the Art of Political Money Laundering.”
I don’t think it does.
Michael Henry is a former attorney, prosecutor, politician, investment advisor, and novelist living in Oxford, MS. He may be contacted at mhenryauthor@gmail.com.