Oregon shootout rooted in Clinton uranium trade?

Investigation ties Hillary's Russian deal to rancher-fed standoff

Cheryl Chumley

Published: 01/29/2016 at 12:07 PM

An investigative reporter has suggested the Oregon standoff between ranchers and feds, that left one protester dead, could be tied to a Hillary Clinton deal with Russia over uranium mining production.

Call it a conspiracy theory – or not. But a curious investigative reporter, Jon Rappoport, posted an interesting angle to the Oregon standoff between protesting ranchers and feds that left one of the former dead, with this headline: “The Clintons: Is the Oregon standoff really about uranium?”

That article was, in fact, a followup to a previous story he wrote that was titled, “The Clintons: How Putin grabbed a fifth of all U.S. uranium.” And in the most recent, he simply looked at the information he presented in the first – how a deal approved under Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state transferred 20 percent of U.S. uranium production to Russia – and tied it to the geographical location of a proposed uranium mine in Oregon.

Coincidentally, the mine development was proposed for the same general area of the widely reported standoff between protesters and federal and police forces, Rappoport wrote.

First, a refresher on the Clinton-Russia deal, as Rappoport wrote: “On April 23, 2015, the NY Times ran a story under the headline, ‘Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.’

The bare bones of the story: a Canadian company called Uranium One controls a great deal of uranium production in the U.S. It was sold to Russia (meaning Putin and his minions). So Putin now controls 20 percent of U.S. uranium production. From the Times: ‘…the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.'”

The New York Times story goes on to report how leaders of the Canadian mining industry made several charitable donations to the various “endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family,” including a total of $31.3 million from mining financier Frank Giustra, and then sold the Russians a company later dubbed Uranium One. As the New York Times pointed, the sale of Uranium One to Putin required State Department approval, because uranium is considered a strategic asset – and then-Secretary Clinton gave it.

As Rappoport summarized: “The U.S. State Dept. had to sign off on the deal giving Putin control over U.S. uranium. Hillary headed up the State Dept. Much money from Canadian mining executives, who obviously wanted the deal to go through, found its way into the Clinton Foundation. The Foundation concealed these donations.”

Now fast-forward to today’s Oregon standoff and fatal shooting.

In his just-posted piece, Rappoport wrote: “Is uranium at the heart of the … standoff? That’s the question I’m asking. It isn’t a flippant question. I realize there are many other issue swirling around this event … This article isn’t meant to take apart those matters.”

What he does point to, however, is a U.S. Bureau of Land Management notation that’s titled, “Uranium on BLM-Administered Lands in OR/WA,” that talks about a May 2012 presentation from Oregon Energy LLC to develop a uranium oxide mine, in concert with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, in “southern Malheur County in southeastern Oregon,” Rappoport wrote.

The much-publicized standoff between Oregonian residents and law enforcement has taken place by the Mahleur National Wildlife Refuge.

Rappopport went on: “What does this have to do with Hillary and Bill Clinton? … The short version is: there’s a case to be made that they, through Uranium One and the Clinton Foundation, facilitated the sale of Uranium One to Putin and the Russians. And if so, and if this area of Oregon is projected to be part of that uranium mining deal, then we are looking at a stunning ‘coincidence’: the U.S. federal government is coming down hard on a group of protesters who are occupying, for their own reasons, a very valuable piece of territory that goes far beyond the issue of private cattle grazing on government land.”