Citing investigative reporting by the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) and advance reporting by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group, Rep. Louie Gohmert is calling for a congressional investigation into the connection between Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, John Podesta, and Russia.
Podesta sat on the board of the Putin-connected energy company alongside Russian officials who received $35 million from a Putin-linked Russian government fund, Breitbart News reported last August, as revealed in a 56-page GAI report titled “From Russia with Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism.”
Now Gohmert, the Texas Republican firebrand who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, says Podesta’s role in the Russia-funded firm “certainly needs to be reviewed to see if there really is something nefarious going on with these activities.”
Podesta also sat on the executive board of an energy company, Joule Unlimited, which also received millions from a Putin-connected Russian government fund. The longtime Democratic operative owned “75,000 common shares” in Joule, which Podesta had transferred to a holding company called Leonidio LLC.
According to the GAI report, “Two months after Podesta joined the board, Vladimir Putin’s Rusnano announced that it would invest up to one billion rubles into Joule Unlimited, which amounts to $35 million. That represents one-fifth of the entire amount of investment dollars Joule collected from 2007 to 2013.”
Furthermore, Joule board members also included senior Russian officials.
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.
A federal lawsuit, The Daily Caller reports, cites Podesta’s role in funneling billions in devalued Russian currency into U.S.-based tech companies:
An ongoing federal lawsuit, Neas Ltd, v. Rusnano, which is now before the U.S. District Court for Northern California, suggests Podesta and others at Joule may have unwittingly assisted Rusnano in a scheme hatched to move billions of weak rubles into valuable U.S. dollars by parking them as “investments” in high-tech companies in Boston and in Silicon Valley.
Gohmert’s call for a federal probe into Podesta’s Russian ties comes amid a partisan push to link President Donald Trump and his aides to Russian influence-peddling and collusion during the presidential campaign.
However, evidence of collusion to advance Putin’s Russia started years before Trump announced his presidential bid.
As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton spearheaded U.S. involvement in a Russian government technology initiative called Skolkovo. The Russian government’s stated goal for Skolkovo, touted as “innovation city,” was to be the Russian equivalent of America’s Silicon Valley. Skolkovo housed more than 30,000 workers in state-of-the-art facilities under Kremlin control.
Despite the FBI and the U.S. Army’s warning that Putin could use Skolkovo to accelerate its military technological capabilities, Hillary Clinton’s State Department and her campaign manager developed alarming relationships with Kremlin-controlled entities.
Read The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group’s report here.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @jeromeehudson.
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