Hillary Clinton is right: We must get to the bottom of Russian influence buying, especially hers

Not since Eliot Spitzer, aka Client Number Nine, zealously prosecuted sex traders has someone so purposefully and hypocritically marched towards their own political execution.

Hillary Clinton has brought hellfire down upon her own head by demanding a thorough and intensive investigation into purported Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

She is right, Americans should be appalled at the idea that Vladimir Putin and his thuggish operatives might gain a foothold in our body politic. She is right again that Moscow has aggressively tried to subvert our democracy.

These stories have circulated for some time; now there is proof. The Hill has reported that beginning in 2009 “the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

Documents show that the FBI sat on the investigation for four years, “essentially leaving the American public and Congress in the dark about Russian nuclear corruption on U.S. soil during a period when the Obama administration made two major decisions benefiting Putin’s commercial nuclear ambitions.”

One such decision concerned the 2010 sale of Uranium One, a company that owned 20 percent of American uranium reserves, to Russia’s Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom.  While the deal awaited a green light from CFIUS, an inter-agency group including Hillary’s State Department responsible for reviewing such transactions, her husband Bill was paid $500,000 for a single speech to Renaissance Capital, a Kremlin-connected bank, with which he had no prior relationship. Bill Clinton also earned a meeting with Vladimir Putin.

In addition, Moscow-related entities ponied up millions in donations to a Clinton charity.

The Uranium One story first came to light in Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book “Clinton Cash,” which reviewed many situations in which Bill and Hillary Clinton appear to have traded their influence for speaking fees paid to Bill or donations to the Clinton Foundation. Encouraged by Schweizer’s reporting, The Wall Street Journal researched the allegations; the Journal concluded “…that at least 60 companies that lobbied the State Department during [Clinton’s] tenure donated a total of more than $26 million to the Clinton Foundation.”

Schweizer charged that Hillary agreed to the purchase of Uranium One by Russia’s state nuclear agency in exchange for $2.35 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation. (The National Review recently put the figure received at $145 million.) The payments were not revealed on the Clinton Foundation website, despite an agreement with the Obama administration to do so signed by the Secretary of State. Instead, the funds flowed through a Canadian offshoot, the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative, and therefore escaped notice.

Meanwhile, investigators have also discovered that the bogus and discredited dossier that sparked several investigations into suspected collusion between Donald Trump and Russia was funded by the Clinton campaign. “Opposition research” as it is called, is not illegal. But, the revelation that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid GPS Fusion to assemble the salacious anti-Trump file, which was apparently shared with the FBI and ultimately used as a rationale for spying on Trump campaign workers and even the president himself, is alarming. Political apparatchiks should not be working hand-in-hand with our intel organizations; those are police state tactics.

The Uranium One sale is not new, but the newly exposed information about the early FBI probe into Moscow’s influence-buying and the Clintons has brought the story back into the headlines.

Hillary Clinton has brought the story center stage as well. Had she not written her whiny 400-page fable “What Happened,” accusing the Russians of undermining her all-but-certain victory, it is possible that her ties to Moscow would have continued to be ignored by the mainstream media.

Similarly, if Eliot Spitzer had not aggressively prosecuted prostitution rings, his participation in one might have escaped notice. How could he have been so stupid? Is it because powerful people simply think they are above the law? Or are they blinded to their own hypocrisy?

How could Hillary have been so stupid? Is it so important to blame her election loss on sexism, James Comey, the unfair media (yes, she really thinks they did her in!), fake news and, most important, Trump’s dalliance with the Kremlin, that she didn’t even consider where the search would go?

Democrats must be frantic. Hillary Clinton continues to suck up all the oxygen in the room, and not in a good way. Her book tour and endless interviews, her vow to “keep going,” has kept her in the spotlight. With her help, we journey back through her long history of dissembling and diversion, and to other times that Clinton has fended off scandalous revelations. Before the emergence of Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress, Clinton said the allegations about Bill’s philandering were part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Now, she is less poetically calling the shocking tale of Russia-linked pay-to-play “baloney” and as I write this probably drafting a memo on how her campaign funded the Trump dossier without her knowledge.

The good news is that these stories remind Americans why they elected Donald Trump. Even as the GOP is rocked with divisions and the president engages in ill-considered and disagreeable contretemps with too many adversaries, those who voted for him can pat themselves on the back. At least, they can say, we didn’t elect Hillary. And they would be right.

Published on Foxnews.com