Clinton’s State Department: A

RICO Enterprise
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

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October 29, 2016 8:00 AM
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Clinton is sworn in as secretary of state, February 2, 2009. (Reuters photo: Jonathan

Ernst)She
appears to have used her official powers to do favors
for major Clinton Foundation donors.
F elony mishandling of classified information, including our nation’s

most closely guarded intelligence secrets; the misappropriation and

destruction of tens of thousands of government records — these are serious
criminal offenses. To this point, the Justice Department and FBI have found
creative ways not to charge Hillary Clinton for them. Whether this will remain
the case has yet to be seen. As we go to press, the stunning news has broken
that the FBI’s investigation is being reopened. It appears, based on early
reports, that in the course of examining communications devices in a separate
“sexting” investigation of disgraced former congressman Anthony Weiner, the
bureau stumbled on relevant e-mails — no doubt connected to Huma Abedin,
Mr. Weiner’s wife and, more significantly, Mrs. Clinton’s closest confidant.
According to the New York Times, the FBI has seized at least one electronic
device belonging to Ms. Abedin as well. New e-mails, never before reviewed by
the FBI, have been recovered.

The news is still emerging, and there will be many questions — particularly if
it turns out that the bureau failed to obtain Ms. Abedin’s communications
devices earlier in the investigation, a seemingly obvious step. As we await
answers, we can only observe that, whatever the FBI has found, it was
significant enough for director James Comey to sense the need to notify
Congress, despite knowing what a bombshell this would be just days before
the presidential election.

One thing, however, is already clear. Whatever the relevance of the new e-
mails to the probe of Clinton’s classified-information transgressions and
attempt to destroy thousands of emails, these offenses may pale in comparison
with Hillary Clinton’s most audacious violations of law: Crimes that should
still be under investigation; crimes that will, in fitting Watergate parlance, be a
cancer on the presidency if she manages to win on November 8.

Mrs. Clinton appears to have converted the office of secretary of state into a
racketeering enterprise. This would be a violation of the RICO law — the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1971 (codified in the
U.S. penal code at sections 1961 et seq.).

Hillary and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, operated the Clinton
Foundation. Ostensibly a charity, the foundation was a de facto fraud scheme
to monetize Hillary’s power as secretary of state (among other aspects of the
Clintons’ political influence). The scheme involved (a) the exchange of political
favors, access, and influence for millions of dollars in donations; (b) the
circumvention of campaign-finance laws that prohibit political donations by
foreign sources; (c) a vehicle for Mrs. Clinton to shield her State Department
e-mail communications from public and congressional scrutiny while she and
her husband exploited the fundraising potential of her position; and (d) a
means for Clinton insiders to receive private-sector compensation and explore
lucrative employment opportunities while drawing taxpayer-funded
government salaries.

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While the foundation did perform some charitable work, this camouflaged the
fact that contributions were substantially diverted to pay lavish salaries and
underwrite luxury travel for Clinton insiders. Contributions skyrocketed to
$126 million in 2009, the year Mrs. Clinton arrived at Foggy Bottom.
Breathtaking sums were “donated” by high-rollers and foreign governments
that had crucial business before the State Department. Along with those
staggering donations came a spike in speaking opportunities and fees for Bill
Clinton. Of course, disproportionate payments and gifts to a spouse are
common ways of bribing public officials — which is why, for example, high-
ranking government officeholders must reveal their spouses’ income and other
asset information on their financial-disclosure forms.

While there are other egregious transactions, the most notorious corruption
episode of Secretary Clinton’s tenure involves the State Department’s approval
of a deal that surrendered fully one-fifth of the United States’ uranium-mining
capacity to Vladimir Putin’s anti-American thugocracy in Russia.

The story, significant background of which predates Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at

the State Department, has been recounted in ground-breaking reporting by
the Hoover Institution’s Peter Schweizer (in his remarkable book Clinton Cash:
The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped
Make Bill and Hillary Rich) and the New York Times. In a nutshell, in 2005,
under the guise of addressing the incidence of HIV/AIDS in Kazakhstan
(where the disease is nearly nonexistent), Bill Clinton helped his Canadian
billionaire pal Frank Giustra to convince the ruling despot, Nursultan
Nazarbayev (an infamous torturer and human-rights violator), to grant
coveted uranium-mining rights to Giustra’s company, Ur-Asia Energy
(notwithstanding that it had no background in the highly competitive uranium
business). Uranium is a key component of nuclear power, from which the
United States derives 20 percent of its total electrical power.

In the months that followed, Giustra gave an astonishing $31.3 million to the
Clinton Foundation and pledged $100 million more. With the Kazakh rights
secured, Ur-Asia was able to expand its holdings and attract new investors,
like Ian Telfer, who also donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Ur-
Asia merged with Uranium One, a South African company, in a $3.5 billion
deal — with Telfer becoming Uranium One’s chairman. The new company
proceeded to buy up major uranium assets in the United States.

Meanwhile, as tends to happen in dictatorships, Nazarbayev (the Kazakh

dictator) turned on the head of his state-controlled uranium agency
(Kazatomprom), who was arrested for selling valuable mining rights to foreign
entities like Ur-Asia/Uranium One. This was likely done at the urging of Putin,
the neighborhood bully whose state-controlled atomic-energy company
(Rosatom) was hoping to grab the Kazakh mines — whether by taking them
outright or by taking over Uranium One.

The Russian company sought to acquire a controlling interest in Uranium One. That
would mean a takeover not only of the Kazakh mines but of the U.S. uranium assets
as well. Secretary Clinton approved the Russian takeover.

The arrest, which happened a few months after Obama took office, sent
Uranium One stock into free fall, as investors fretted that the Kazakh mining
rights would be lost. Uranium One turned to Secretary Clinton’s State
Department for help. As State Department cables disclosed by WikiLeaks
show, Uranium One officials wanted more than a U.S. statement to the media;
they pressed for written confirmation that their mining licenses were valid.
Secretary Clinton’s State Department leapt into action: An energy officer from
the U.S. embassy immediately held meetings with the Kazakh regime. A few
days later, it was announced that Russia’s Rosatom had purchased 17 percent
of Uranium One. Problem solved.
Except it became a bigger problem when the Russian company sought to
acquire a controlling interest in Uranium One. That would mean a takeover
not only of the Kazakh mines but of the U.S. uranium assets as well. Such a
foreign grab requires approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the
United States, a powerful government tribunal that the secretary of state sits
on and heavily influences. Though she had historically postured as a hawk
against foreign acquisitions of American assets with critical national-security
implications, Secretary Clinton approved the Russian takeover of Uranium
One. During and right after the big-bucks Russian acquisition, Telfer
contributed $1.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Other people with ties to
Uranium One appear to have ponied up as much as $5.6 million in donations.

In 2009, the incoming Obama administration had been deeply concerned

about the potential for corruption were Hillary to run the State Department
while Bill and their family foundation were hauling in huge payments from
foreign governments, businesses, and entrepreneurs. For precisely this reason,
the White House required Mrs. Clinton to agree in writing that the Clinton
Foundation would annually disclose its major donors and seek pre-approval
from the White House before the foundation accepted foreign contributions.
This agreement was repeatedly flouted — for example, by concealing the
contributions from Telfer. Indeed, the foundation was recently forced to refile
its tax returns for the years that Secretary Clinton ran the State Department
after media reports that it failed to disclose foreign donations —
approximately $20 million worth.

Under RICO, an “enterprise” can be any association of people, informal or

formal, illegitimate or legitimate — it could be a Mafia family, an ostensibly
charitable foundation, or a department of government. It is
a racketeering enterprise if its affairs are conducted through “a pattern of
racketeering activity.” A “pattern” means merely two or more violations of
federal or state law; these violations constitute “racketeering activity” if they
are included among the extensive list of felonies laid out in the statute.

Significantly for present purposes, the listed felonies include bribery, fraud,
and obstruction of justice. Fraud encompasses both schemes to raise money
on misleading pretexts (e.g., a charitable foundation that camouflages illegal
political payoffs) and schemes to deprive Americans of their right to the
honest services of a public official (e.g., quid pro quo arrangements in which
official acts are performed in exchange for money). Both fraud and obstruction
can be proved by false statements — whether they are public proclamations
(e.g., “I turned over all work-related e-mails to the State Department”) or lies
to government officials (e.g., concealing “charitable” donations from foreign
sources after promising to disclose them, or claiming not to know that the “(C)”
symbol in a government document means it is classified at the confidential
level).

COMMENTS

The WikiLeaks disclosures of e-mails hacked from Clinton presidential-

campaign chairman John Podesta provide mounting confirmation that the
Clinton Foundation was orchestrated for the purpose of enriching the Clintons
personally and leveraging then-Secretary Clinton’s power to do it. Hillary and
her underlings pulled this off by making access to her contingent on Clinton
Foundation ties; by having top staff service Clinton Foundation donors and
work on Clinton Foundation business; by systematically conducting her e-mail
communications outside the government server system; by making false
statements to the public, the White House, Congress, the courts, and the FBI;
and by destroying thousands of e-mails — despite congressional inquiries and
Freedom of Information Act demands — in order to cover up (among other
things) the shocking interplay between the State Department and the Clinton
Foundation.

Under federal law, that can amount to running an enterprise by a pattern of

fraud, bribery, and obstruction. If so, it is a major crime. Like the major
crimes involving the mishandling of classified information and destruction of
government files, it cries out for a thorough and credible criminal
investigation. More important, wholly apart from whether there is sufficient
evidence for criminal convictions, there is overwhelming evidence of a major
breach of trust that renders Mrs. Clinton unfit for any public office, let
along the nation’s highest public office.

ANDREW C. MCCARTHY — Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the

National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National
Review. @andrewcmccarthy