The Corruption Trail to Russia Leads to Top Democrat Insider, Clinton Lobbyist

Every day, the liberal mainstream media tries to tie the Trump administration to Russian contacts. As we’ve learned, there’s been nothing to expose, and President Trump’s White House is clean.

But now, those same reporters are ignoring the details of who the Russians are really tied to: the Democrat Party. And that includes mega-lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman John Podesta.

As it turns out, Podesta received $170,000 from a Russian bank to lobby the Obama administration to end sanctions against it, on top of millions in fees from Russian and foreign governments during the 2016 presidential campaign:

Democrat super-lobbyist Tony Podesta was paid $170,000 over a six-month period last year to represent Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, seeking to end one of the Obama administration’s economic sanctions against that country, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

Podesta, founder and chairman of the Podesta Group, is listed as a key lobbyist on behalf of Sberbank, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms. His firm received more than $24 million in fees in 2016, much of it coming from foreign governments, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Podesta is the brother of John Podesta, who was the national campaign chairman for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s losing 2016 campaign for the presidency. Former President Barack Obama imposed the sanctions following the Russian seizure of the Crimean region of Ukraine in 2014.

The lobbying campaign targeted Congress and the executive branch, with Podesta and other lobbyists arranging at least two meetings between Sberbank officers and Department of State officials, according to Elena Teplitskaya, Sberbank’s board chairman, who spoke to House aides in August.

Forbes adds more details, exposing just how closely tied this top Democrat insider is to Russia:

The media’s focus on Trump’s Russian connections ignores the much more extensive and lucrative business relationships of top Democrats with Kremlin-associated oligarchs and companies. Thanks to the Panama Papers, we know that the Podesta Group (founded by John Podesta’s brother, Tony) lobbied for Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank. “Sberbank is the Kremlin, they don’t do anything major without Putin’s go-ahead, and they don’t tell him ‘no’ either,” explained a retired senior U.S. intelligence official. According to a Reuters report, Tony Podesta was “among the high-profile lobbyists registered to represent organizations backing Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich.” Among these was the European Center, which paid Podesta $900,000 for his lobbying.

That’s not all: The busy Podesta Group also represented Uranium One, a uranium company acquired by the Russian government which received approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department to mine for uranium in the U.S. and gave Russia twenty percent control of US uranium. The New York Times reported Uranium One’s chairman, Frank Guistra, made significant donations to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 for one speech from a Russian investment bank that has “links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.” Notably, Frank Giustra, the Clinton Foundation’s largest and most controversial donor, does not appear anywhere in Clinton’s “non-private” emails. It is possible that the emails of such key donors were automatically scrubbed to protect the Clinton Foundation.

This is liberal media bias at it’s worst. This is a top Hillary Clinton-insider openly lobbying on behalf of Russia with major results for his clients, and yet this isn’t a scandal.

The media should be ashamed for not digging into just what Russia was lobbying for and how much access they paid for during the Obama administration.

What do you think about this top Democrat insider’s ties to Russia? Please leave us a comment (below) and tell us.

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