” He told the Wall Street Journal that he’d pledged the money in 2008, before the sale was on the table. Telfer also said that he’d never talked about uranium with Hillary Clinton. After the story came out, Giustra issued an angry statement, calling it baseless speculation and “an attempt to tear down Secretary Clinton and her presidential campaign.”

OKNancy

(41,832 posts)

2. The problem with posting 4 day old article is, that it has been debunked

Reply to cali (Original post)

Mon Apr 27, 2015, 08:10 AM

Apr 2015

Of all the slams against the FOundation, this one was the easiest to prove false.

Two links:

Giustra's statement:

A book that has not yet been published has caused the New York Times to publish a wildly speculative, innuendo-laced article about the Clinton Foundation and my role in contributing money to it. There is not one shred of evidence to back up the Times‘ conclusions. This is not about me, but rather an attempt to tear down Secretary Clinton and her presidential campaign. If this is what passes for investigative journalism in the United States, it is very sad.
The facts do not comport with the story in the New York Times. The reporter, Jo Becker, wrote a similar piece in 2008, which was eventually debunked by Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/2009/01/12/giustra-clinton-kazakhstan-pf-ii-in_rl_0912croesus_inl.html
I began working on financing the purchase of mining stakes from a private Kazakh company in early 2005. The purchase was concluded in late 2005.
In late 2005, I went to Kazakhstan to finish the negotiations of the sale. Bill Clinton flew to Almaty a few days after I arrived in the country on another person’s plane, not on my plane, as the Times reported. Bill Clinton had nothing to do with the purchase of private mining stakes by a Canadian company.
I sold all of my stakes in the uranium company – Uranium One – in the fall of 2007, after it merged with another company. I would note that those were sold at least 18 months before Hillary Clinton became the Secretary of State. No one was speculating at that time that she would become the Secretary of State.
Other media outlets have insinuated that I influenced the decision by the U.S. to sign a free trade agreement with Colombia. At one point, I was an investor in Pacific Rubiales, a Colombian energy company. I sold my shares in Pacific Rubiales several years before the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which, I will note, was approved by several U.S. agencies and the White House. To theorize that I had anything to do with that is sheer conjecture.
I hope that the U.S. media can start to focus on the real challenges of the world and U.S. society. Focus on poverty, homelessness, infrastructure, health care, education, or fractious world politics. You are a great country. Don’t ruin it by letting those with political agendas take over your newspapers and your airwaves.
I am extremely proud of the work that we have done at the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership. Thousands of people, all over the world, have been helped by this initiative. I plan to continue that work long after the harsh glare of this week’s media stories has faded.
Read more at http://www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/04/24/mining-mogul-frank-giustra-hammers-new-york-times-over-uranium-one-story#74Q1W0rUJbrGTCyt.99

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https://medium.com/@brianefallon/clinton-cash-nyt-fail-to-prove-connection-between-clinton-russian-purchase-of-uranium-assets-797a71cb40b0

justiceischeap

(14,040 posts)

3. Or MediaMatters

Reply to OKNancy (Reply #2)

Mon Apr 27, 2015, 08:13 AM

Apr 2015

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/04/24/nbc-news-just-admitted-the-ny-times-story-based/203412

But the April 24 First Read column on NBCNews.com admits, "upon reflection, that Times article doesn't hold up that well 24 hours after its publication."

Indeed, a series of facts supports NBC's conclusion and unravels the innuendo in the Times piece:

• Ian Telfer, who was Uranium One's chairman at the time it was being taken over by Rosatom, did donate money to the Clinton Foundation. However, he told the Financial Post that he committed those funds to the Foundation in 2008, "before Uranium One had any negotiations with the Russians, and the donations he has made since then were part of that initial pledge." Hillary Clinton also did not become secretary of state until 2009.

• Frank Giustra, a Canadian businessman who the Times noted also donated to the Clinton Foundation and who owned the predecessor to Uranium One before its sale to the Russians, sold his personal stake in the company in 2007. The proposed sale of Uranium One occurred in 2010. Giustra himself released a statement criticizing the Times' reporting, calling it "wildly speculative, innuendo-laced," and inaccurate, and noting that contrary to the Times' claim that Bill Clinton had flown with him to conclude a stage in the Uranium deal, "Bill Clinton had nothing to do with" that purchase.

• The State Department only had one vote on the nine-member Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) that approved the deal. Other agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Energy, Commerce, and Justice, also weighed in.

• The chairman of the CFIUS is the Treasury secretary, not secretary of state.

• Rosatom had to get approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is an independent agency outside of the secretary of state's influence.

• Utah's local nuclear regulator also had to sign off on the deal, as it involved mills in the state.

• Former assistant secretary of state Jose Fernandez, who was the State Department's principal representative on CFIUS, said, "Secretary Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter."

On edit:
Further searching has revealed a LOT of right-wing publications ignoring the same facts the NYT's did (and apparently the NewYorker--owned by the same company that owns the NYT) but not much else.