CNN’s Clinton Cash ‘Fact-Check’ Ends in Embarrassment for Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel

CNN Money’s “fact-checkers” Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel ended up with egg on their faces on Wednesday after they rated as “false” a well-established and proven Clinton Cash fact involving Hillary Clinton’s State Dept. approving the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium to the Russian government, as nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Under the guise of “fact-checking” Donald Trump’s Wednesday speech, Alesci and Frankel purported to verify whether “Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America’s uranium holdings to Russia while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

Alesci (pictured, right) and Frankel (left) rate the claim as “false” and allege “there’s no hard evidence of a quid pro quo.” The CNN Money “reporters” also conceded that “CNN several times has asked the Clinton Foundation to confirm whether the nine investors who benefited from the deal also contributed to the foundation, but the foundation has yet to respond.”

Why Alesci and Frankel couldn’t confirm the $145 million in Clinton Foundation donations for themselves is curious. Indeed, in a 4,000-word front page story written over a year ago, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Jo Becker and Mike McIntire verified the Clinton Cash uranium revelation in stunning detail, including charts and graphs laying out the flow of millions of dollars from the nine investors in the uranium deal who flowed $145 million to Hillary’s family foundation. Since Alesci and Frankel appear unable to perform basic journalistic research, here are the names and amounts they are still waiting on the Clinton Foundation to get back to them on:

• Frank Giustra, Canadian mining magnate who created a company that later merged with UraniumOne, gave $31.3 million and a pledge for $100 million to the Clinton Foundation
• Frank Holmes, a shareholder in the deal who donated between $250,000 and $500,000 (the Clinton Foundation doesn’t report exact amounts, only in ranges) and is a Clinton Foundation adviser
• Neil Woodyer, Frank Giustra’s colleague who founded Endeavor Financial and pledged $500,000 as well as promises of “ongoing financial support”
• Robert Disbrow, a Haywood Securities broker, the firm that provided “$58 million in capital to float shares of UrAsia’s private placement,” gave the Clinton’s family foundation between $1 and $5 million, according to Clinton Cash
• Paul Reynolds, a Canaccord Capital Inc., executive who donated between $1 million and $5 million. “The UrAsia deal was the largest in Canaccord’s history,” reports Schweizer
• Robert Cross, a major shareholder who serves as UrAsia Energy Director who pledged portions of his future income to the Clinton Foundation
• Egizio Blanchini, “the Capital Markets vice chair and Global cohead of BMO’s Global Metals and Mining group, had also been an underwriter on the mining deals. BMO paid $600,000 for two tables at the CGS-GI’s March 2008 benefit”
• Sergei Kurzin, the Russian rainmaker involved in the Kazakhstan uranium deal and a shareholder in UrAsia Energy, also pledged $1 million to the Foundation
• Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer committed $2.35 million

Alesci and Frankel claim there’s “no hard evidence of a quid pro quo.” Naturally, they fail to note that the legal standard for conflicts of interest and corruption do not require a quid pro quo. Nor do they note that Hillary Clinton deleted and destroyed over 30,000 emails housed on her secret server—the obvious location of any so-called “smoking guns.”

Still, the CNN Money “fact-checkers” correctly note that “the State Department was one of several agencies that needed to sign off on the transaction.” Indeed, the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS) has nine members, one of which is the State Dept. Yet through willful ignorance or an unusual lack of journalistic curiosity, Alesci and Frankel didn’t think to ask the obvious: which of the eight other agency heads needed to approve the deal were receiving $145 million to their family’s charity at the time of such a pivotal decision? And did Hillary Clinton’s State Department report the glaring conflict of interest before granting its approval of handing over 20 percent of American uranium to Putin’s Russia? Why didn’t Hillary Clinton recuse her agency from voting, knowing that her charity was receiving $145 million from nine investors in the deal?

Those questions apparently did not occur to Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel.

Also, in addition to the $145 million being funneled to the Clinton Foundation before the CFIUS approval, why was a Kremlin-backed bank bankrolling a $500,000 speech in Moscow for Bill Clinton while his wife led the Russian reset? As even the progressive New Yorker magazine put it, “But there is a bigger question: Why was Bill Clinton taking any money from a bank linked to the Kremlin while his wife was Secretary of State?” Shockingly, CNN Money fact-checkers Alesci and Frankel make no mention of the Kremlin-backed $500,000 Clinton speaking payment.

Nor did CNN’s crack “fact-checkers” mention that the Clinton Foundation received $2.35 million in hidden, undisclosed donations from Ian Telfer, the former head of the Russian government’s uranium company—another fact that multiple liberal news outlets have confirmed.

Indeed, as Bloomberg, Washington Post, New Yorker, ABC News, New York Times, and myriad other Establishment media have all confirmed, Clinton Cash’s most explosive revelations are accurate.

Apparently, CNN’s Cristina Alesci and Laurie Frankel are among the last to know.