New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker thinks it’s wrong for President Trump to ask the Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton’s Uranium One scandal. He thinks it’s okay to let bygones be bygones, as long as they are committed by Democrats.
Look at the quotes he included in his latest piece “Trump shatters longstanding norms by pressing for Clinton investigation.”
From Karen Dunn, one of the Obama White House lawyers and a Clinton adviser: “This is exactly what he said he would do: use taxpayer resources to pursue political rivals.” From former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon: “It is another thing entirely to try to weaponize the Justice Department in order to actually carry it out.”
Trump Shatters Longstanding Norms by Pressing for Clinton Investigation | Peter Baker, New York Times
The request alone was enough to trigger a political backlash, as critics of Mr. Trump quickly decried what they called “banana republic” politics of retribution, akin to autocratic backwater nations where election losers are jailed by winners. The issue will almost certainly energize what was already shaping up to be a contentious hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning, when Mr. Sessions is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.
He buried the lede of the substance of the Justice Department’s review many paragraphs down. In July, Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote a letter to the Justice Department asking them to look further into Uranium One (Baker doesn’t mention the timing here, only Trump’s tweets about it). In late September, the Judiciary Committee again requested the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel to investigate Uranium One, since that investigation appears “to be outside the scope of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.”
Finally, Baker closed the case all by himself.
Donors related to Uranium One and another company it acquired contributed millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton received $500,000 from a Russian bank for a speech. But there is no evidence that Mrs. Clinton participated in the government approval of the deal, and her aides have noted that other agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, signed off on it as well. The company’s actual share of American uranium production has been 2 percent; the real benefit for Russia was securing far greater supplies of uranium from Kazakhstan.
Nothing to see here. Move along, because “there is no evidence.” That doesn’t mean “no evidence has been found,” or “investigators have turned up no evidence.” Baker is asserting that no evidence exists, therefore, no investigation is necessary.
Thank you to the New York Times for closing the case.
With Democrats in office, it’s okay for the Justice Department to help craft deals to funnel settlement slush fund money to liberal causes and away from conservatives. It’s okay for then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch to meet with Bill Clinton in a hush-hush private-plane on the tarmac confab just days before then-FBI Director James Comey recommended no prosecution for Hillary. It’s okay for the Obama White House to exert political pressure to end the Clinton email investigation before the election. It’s okay for the FBI to continue investigating Donald Trump’s Russia connections, paying the same operative used by Fusion GPS to compile the “Trump dossier,” and use secret FISA wiretaps against targets.
It’s okay for those FISA warrants and investigations to become the foundation of Robert Mueller’s cases against George Pappadopoulos, Carter Page and Robert Manafort. It’s okay for Mueller to strong-arm those indicted individuals (convicted, in Pappadopoulos’ case) in order to move further into President Trump’s inner circle. It’s okay to use Wikileaks-obtained documents to force release of White House communications, against the advice of White House counsel Don McGahn, to further the Russia investigation.
And it’s okay with the New York Times to continue the Trump-Russia collusion investigation despite the fact that no evidence of collusion has turned up yet (at least not leaked to the public yet, and we know if it existed, it would be leaked).
But when it comes to things that Hillary did and got away with (so far), it’s called “weaponizing” the Justice Department to revisit those things when the House Judiciary Committee has requested it.
It’s so nice to let bygones be bygones, when you’re an unabashed liberal pretending to be impartial.
Further reading
Goodlatte & Judiciary Republicans Renew Call for Second Special Counsel to Address Issues Outside the Scope of Mueller’s Investigation | U.S. House of Representatives
Recently, we wrote to you to request responses to those and other unanswered questions pertaining to the Clinton investigation. However, as the most recent Comey revelations make clear, ignoring this problem will not make it go away. Director, did you make the decision not to recommend criminal charges relating to classified information before or after Hillary Clinton was interviewed by the FBI on July the 2nd?
Jeff Sessions considers investigating Hillary Clinton, others involved in Uranium One deal
Update: President Trump Tweeted a teaser last night. Some are betting on it being and announcement about the investigation. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/930320191699017730 https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/930330913094885376 https://twitter.com/libbybakalar/status/930329180599861249 Original Story Reports out of DC indicate Attorney General Jeff Sessions is weighing the options for investigating the Obama-era Uranium One deal that gave a Russian-owned company partial control over our nuclear energy…
