Every other day it seems, we’ve heard about President Trump’s alleged relationship with Russia — without so much as an irrefutable scrap of proof being offered. But now, there now seems to be more than a little information coming out in the press about the Podesta brothers’ relationship with America’s former Cold War foe.
The Podesta brothers — John and Tony, both Democratic Party titans of policy and fundraising, founded lobbying firm the Podesta Group in 1988, which Tony ran for decades while John served as Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton in his second term and as special counsel to President Barack Obama, in the same role that Kellyanne Conway currently serves in for President Trump.
Looking back, it was kind of convenient for one brother to be running a lobbying firm while the other worked for the president, wasn’t it? One tends to think that Tony was able to gather a lot of clients in the years that his brother was involved with the Clinton and Obama administrations.
And equally big money likely came in when John quit to go become the campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton — who just about everyone in Washington assumed was going to be the next U.S. president.
It’s likely that at this point dollars really started to flow because there was an anticipation that Hillary — who was known to be ridiculously corrupt — would be in a position to give Podesta Group clients whatever they wanted immediately after her inauguration.
In fact, by hiring the Podesta Group prior to the election, there could be no direct “pay-for-play” money trail of influence — only big bets placed on an outcome that seemed all but assured.
Except that it wasn’t. Famously, the election was “stolen” by President Trump, and the Democrats were at a loss as to what went wrong.
But rather than talk about Podesta Group clients that weren’t able to eventually get what they wanted, let’s talk about one that was able to get everything it wanted and then some. As President Trump alluded to in a recent tweet, in 2016, the Podesta Group had taken on a Russian bank called Sberbank — part of Russia’s largest financial concern — as a major client.
For Sberbank, this wasn’t simply a retainer of a random Washington lobbying firm; the stated goals of Sberbank were very clear from the beginning: the bank desperately needed sanctions lifted that had been applied to Russian companies by President Obama in the wake of Russia’s annexing of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.
In fact, not only did Sberbank hire the Podesta Group for its lobbying needs, it and another bank, VTB Capital — Russia’s second-largest financial institution — spent more than $700,000 in total on coordinated lobbying efforts to have exceptions to the sanctions made for them — efforts that were ultimately successful.
Sberbank gave the Podesta Group $170,000 in just six months for its actions. “The Democrats are sitting there trying to convince us that the Russians are trying to throw the election to Donald Trump,” stated a congressional aide familiar with the matter.
“And then they’re with us here in the House and meeting directly with the Obama administration behind closed doors on the issue of sanctions. The hypocrisy could not be any richer.”
It should be said that joining the lobbying effort was David Adams, a self-described “trusted advisor” of Hillary Clinton. Another lobbyist involved in the Podesta Group’s efforts was Stephen Rademaker, a former official in the State Department under President George W. Bush. These people, along with both Podesta brothers, helped Sberbank and its subsidiary companies — SB International in Luxembourg, SBGB Cyprus Ltd. in Cyprus and Troika Dialog Group in the Cayman Islands — to meet with officials in the State Department under the Obama administration and get exceptions to the sanctions effected.
It should be further noted that subsidiary Troika Dialog is related to Klein, Ltd., an organization that gave tens of millions to environmental groups opposing low-cost fracking in the United States, which has severely hurt the Russian oil industry.
But the Podesta Group’s associations with Sberbank actually go back further than the matter of sanctions, to the days of the deal consummated by Bill Clinton’s friend Frank Giustra to sell uranium deposits in the western U.S. to the Russian state nuclear agency — deposits that could ultimately be used in nuclear weapons if properly enriched.
In fact, as you may be aware, the uranium nuclear deal was a scandal unto itself, which Hillary Clinton — while serving as President Obama’s Secretary of State — got approved, outrageously allowing the Russian government to buy 20 percent of the U.S.’s uranium supply.
Which lobbying group represented Frank Giustra’s company prior to the sale? Surprise — it was none other than the Podesta brothers’ eponymous firm.
And the Podesta Group isn’t the only lobbying organization tied to Democrats that Sberbank hired. Another Democrat-affiliated shop, The Madison Group, got even more money — $330,000 to be exact. Not that the Podesta Group is hurting for funds.
For clients, it has many totalitarian, Muslim and Communist regimes as customers, such as the states of Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Iraq, Myanmar, Vietnam, Egypt, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates. In 2016, the Podesta Group took in $24 million, with the bulk of this income coming from foreign governments, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization.
For its part, the Podesta Group attempted to spin the recent accusations of the media and President Trump. “Fake news. An attempt to distract,” railed David Marin, a managing principal for the Podesta Group. “Our work for Sberbank USA was never about getting sanctions lifted. It was simply about helping to clarify to what extent our client, the U.S. subsidiary, was subject to sanctions. We confirmed they were not.”
Of course, left unsaid is that $170,000 is a lot of money for just “confirming” whether your actions are in compliance with a law.
However, the disclosure reports the Podesta Group is required to file with the Senate are much more revealing. Such reports state that the work the company did involved “clarifying scope of sanctions imposed by Executive Order 13660, assessing possible ways to address sanctions relief and monitoring relevant developments applicable to such matters.”
In an appearance on Fox News, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was quick to point out the chicanery, calling Tony Podesta “a registered agent for a Russian bank. [This lobbying business] involves all the different things that Peter Schweizer wrote about in his book ‘Clinton Cash.’ And it’s ironic that all of the real evidence of real money and real influence-buying by the Russians relates to the Democrats.”
And so, it appears once again that President Trump was correct in his assessments, even if they didn’t spell out the exact details of the entire business.
Based on the above information, it may be high time to open an investigation into Clinton’s and Obama’s collusion with the Russians, rather than Trump’s. After all, it seems that at least in these cases, more hard evidence is readily available for public and media consumption.
