Thread by @JewhadiTM

RUSSIAN COLLUSION

Russians Gave $35 Million to Company with @JohnPodesta on Board breitbart.com/politics/2019/…

Podesta, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, served on the board of Joule Unlimited, a now defunct alternative energy company, from January 2011 to January 2014. He resigned from the company’s board to accept the powerful job of Counselor to Barack Obama.

During Podesta’s tenure on the board of Joule Unlimited, a significant investment in the company by a firm owned by the Russian government escaped review and scrutiny by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

In September 2011, 8 months after Podesta joined the board of Joule Unlimited, Rusnano, a venture capital fund wholly owned by the Russian government, announced it was investing $1B Russian rubles, $35M, in the company.

This accounted for 46% of the $75M invested in it up to that time from its launch in 2007. Founders Afeyan Noubar and Dr. David Berry invested an estimated $10M in the 2007 first round.

The venture firm Noubar heads, Flagship Ventures – now known as Flagship Pioneering – led a second round investment of $30 million in 2010, as the Boston Globe reported.

Curiously, the CFIUS failed to initiate a review of the transaction despite statutory and administrative guidelines that any such transaction in which a foreign country or foreign company obtained more than a ten percent interest in an American company was reviewable.

“CFIUS has significant discretion to determine when a foreign entity has sufficient control to confer jurisdiction,” according to Overview of the CFIUS Process, a report prepared by the law firm Waltham & Lakins, a leading practitioner before CFIUS:

“As a practical matter, the scope of CFIUS’ jurisdiction is often ambiguous.”

“This ambiguity is illustrated by the one “safe harbor” explicitly established by CFIUS’ regulations...”

“... which provides that investments resulting in a foreign person having an ownership interest of 10% or less of the outstanding voting interests in the US business are not within CFIUS’ jurisdiction, if those investments are held “solely for the purpose of passive investment.”

“While this formulation appears straightforward, a closer read reveals that the “passive” nature of the investment can be called into question in light of “other” facts deemed relevant by CFIUS — e.g., contractual or other arrangements between the foreign investor and the target”

Apparently no member of the management teams or board of directors of either Joule Unlimited or Rusnano USA notified CFIUS of the transaction before it took place.

This is surprising, given the sophistication and business experience of both parties, as well as typical practices in such transactions.

Established in 1988, CFIUS is an interagency board consisting of representatives from nine major cabinet departments, the most significant being the Dept. of Treasury, whose representative chairs the board, and the Department of State.

Assistant Secretary of State for Economy, Energy and Business Affairs Jose W. Fernandez served as the Department of State’s representative to CFIUS at the time it ignored the Rusnano investment in Joule Unlimited.

Nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate, Fernandez was sworn in on December 1, 2009 and was the State Department’s representative on the CFIUS board in October 2010 when it approved the controversial acquisition of Uranium One...

the Canadian company that owned 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves, by ARMZ, which is wholly owned by the Russian government.

That controversial approval came just four months after former President Bill Clinton–husband to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also the co-founder of the Clinton Foundation–was paid $500,000 by Renaissance Capital “for his 90-minute June 29, 2010, speech.

“Renaissance Capital had ties with the Kremlin and was talking up the Uranium One purchase in 2010, giving it an encouraging investment rating in Russia right at the time the U.S. was considering approval of the uranium sale, according to reports in the New York Times in 2015,”

Fernandez’s relationship with Podesta came under scrutiny in 2016, when a Wikileaks email describing a 2015 phone conversation between the two about how Fernandez described former Secretary of State Clinton’s role in the 2010 Uranium One deal approval by CFIUS came to light.

dailycaller.com/2016/10/14/e-m…

While serving on the board of Joule Unlimited, Podesta was joined in 2012 by one of Vladimir Putin’s closest associates, Anatoly Chubais.

The total amount invested in Rusnano USA by Joule Unlimited came to 1.1 billion Russian rubles, or a little more than $39 million in 2011 dollars.

(Due to the dramatic decline of the ruble over the past eight years, the current value of that investment, in 2019 dollars, is a little over $16 million.)

All told, Joule Unlimited received $200 million in investments before it was shut down in 2017, a consequence of the changed political attitude towards federal subsidization of experimental alternative energy sources in the new Trump administration.

Due to its investment in Joule Unlimited through Rusnano USA, the Russian government stood to benefit financially if pro-alternate energy Hillary Clinton won the presidency in 2016, and to lose financially if Donald Trump won.

According to the 2012 CFIUS annual report, there were no “covered transactions” from Russian companies reviewed in 2011, although a total of 111 other transactions that year were identified as “covered transactions,” including 25 from the UK, 14 from France, and ten from China.

Throughout Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State from January 2009 to February 2013, Russian investments in American technology and related companies did not receive a great deal of attention from CFIUS.

In calendar year 2009, for instance, 65 “covered transactions” were reviewed by CFIUS. Not one was from a Russian Federation company. (Source: CFIUS 2012 Annual Report to Congress)

Of these 65 reviewed transactions, five notices were withdrawn prior to the commencement of an investigation, 25 investigations were undertaken, and two notices were withdrawn after investigations commenced.

In total seven of the 65 “covered transactions” were withdrawn, Law360.com reported.

Lacking a focused investigation into John Podesta, Rusnano,and Joule Unlimited, we may never know why CFIUS failed to review a transaction that by all apparent indicators fit the statutory requirements for CFIUS review.