The Donald Trump presidential campaign is demanding that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta come clean about the details surrounding his membership on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which received millions from a Putin-connected Russian government fund and the “75,000 common shares” Podesta owned and had transferred to a holding company called Leonidio LLC.
“The disclosure that Clinton Chair John Podesta transferred his shares in Putin-backed Joule Unlimited to an anonymous holding company when he joined the Obama Administration is extremely concerning,” Donald Trump Senior Communications Advisor Jason Miller said in a statement.
Podesta had failed to fully disclose his position on Joule Unlimited’s board of directors and include it in his federal financial disclosures, as required by law, before he became President Obama’s senior adviser in January 2014.
“Because the holding company is completely anonymous, we do not know whether or not he still has deep financial ties to Vladimir Putin and his regime,” Miller wrote. “As such, Mr. Podesta needs to either reveal who is behind the holding company or he must resign from the Clinton campaign immediately.”
The WikiLeaks hacks uncovered an email exchange under the subject “Podesta Outstanding Docs for Joule.” In the email exchange, Eryn Sepp, who was an assistant to Podesta at the Center for American Progress, forwarded a message to Podesta from Mark C. Solakian, who was Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Joule Unlimited Technologies, Inc.
“It is my understanding that John transferred the resulting 75,000 common shares from the option exercise to the Leonidio LLC.,” Slovakian wrote in a January 2014 email, referencing the Delaware-based holding company. “As such, we would need to edit the Transfer of Share Agreement to reflect the transfer of 75,000 common shares to the LLC.”
Podesta’s membership on the board of directors of Joule Unlimited was first revealed in research from Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer.
In the GAI report, tilted, “From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism,” it is revealed that Podesta joined the Joule Unlimited board in June 2011.
Podesta has not commented on the revelations linking him to Putin and Russia-connected companies. But the longtime Democratic operative has publicly claimed that Russian spies hacked his email to influence the presidential election.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson
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