Campaign promise fulfilled? NBC News reports this morning that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has personally ordered prosecutors to review FBI files relating to the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom, a controversial sale which raised allegations of corruption involving Bill and Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, and the State Department. The aim, NBC reports, is to determine whether the evidence warrants a second special counsel investigation:

On the orders of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Justice Department prosecutors have begun asking FBI agents to explain the evidence they found in a now dormant criminal investigation into a controversial uranium deal that critics have linked to Bill and Hillary Clinton, multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News.

The interviews with FBI agents are part of the Justice Department’s effort to fulfill a promise an assistant attorney general made to Congress last month to examine whether a special counsel was warranted to look into what has become known as the Uranium One deal, a senior Justice Department official said.

At issue is a 2010 transaction in which the Obama Administration allowed the sale of U.S. uranium mining facilities to Russia’s state atomic energy company. Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time, and the State Department was one of nine agencies that agreed to approve the deal after finding no threat to U.S. national security.

NBC’s report gives a brief primer on the Uranium One deal, most of which is unnecessary for Hot Air readers. We’ve covered the Uranium One scandal comprehensively over the last two and a half years, from the time the story broke through the election and beyond. Unlike some other issues involving the Clintons, the Uranium One scandal has received significant media coverage, if at times too dismissive. People who pay attention to news at all will already have some familiarity with this scandal, and one would imagine that Sessions would have brought himself up to speed very early in his tenure on the facts.

So why order this now? For one thing, Donald Trump has put a lot of pressure on Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton, mainly to force the media to acknowledge that the Clintons had more commercial and political ties to the Russians than Trump ever did. He wanted a “sauce for the goose” probe to balance out what Trump considers a “witch hunt” investigation on Russia-collusion speculation. When the latter was still in-house at the DoJ, Trump wanted an FBI investigation for the former; now that the collusion probe has a special counsel, Trump wants the same thing for Uranium One.

That pressure increased two months ago after The Hill’s John Solomon uncovered an FBI informant who claimed that the DoJ had prevented him from blowing the whistle on Russian extortion and influence operations going back to 2009. That involved the Uranium One deal, among others, and specifically targeted Hillary Clinton. In response, Congress demanded that the DoJ lift the whistleblower’s non-disclosure agreement. A month later, Sessions told Congress that he was considering the necessity of appointing a special counsel to review the actions of the Obama-era DoJ in regard to Uranium One and the potential for a criminal investigation.

With that in mind, this doesn’t exactly look like a rush to get to the bottom of Uranium One, nor is this NBC “exclusive” a surprise. Sessions already told Congress that he was considering his options, and asking for a review from career prosecutors at the DoJ would be a necessary step — most likely the first step — in that process. One might wonder why it took a month between Session’s testimony in mid-November to now, except that the NBC report doesn’t specify the timing of the request. The review may have begun weeks ago, and prosecutors are now just getting around to interviewing the FBI agents.

Politically, of course, this would be a highly sensitive step. A criminal investigation focusing on the loser of the previous presidential election would be unprecedented in modern American politics, and possibly entirely unprecedented. It’s worth pointing out that setting this precedent could backfire on the current occupants of the White House when they exit the stage, which is probably one reason we haven’t seen this scenario unfold in the past.

No matter what Sessions decides, he’ll run the risk of large-scale political blowback. If he chooses to shut it down without a special counsel, he’ll be torn to shreds by Trump and his supporters; if he appoints a special counsel, Democrats will accuse him of touching off a constitutional crisis (it won’t be, but that’s been their slogan all year). That’s why it will either be a special counsel or nothing at all, too. Even though there’s no reason at all to go outside the DoJ for such an investigation, Sessions won’t want his fingerprints on it.

In the meantime, Trump will have what he wants — a potential bookend to the “collusion” nothingburger that may force the news media to report on the Clintons and all their slimy dealings in conjunction with the Clinton Foundation. How long Sessions will string that out is anyone’s guess, but in the end it’s not just the Clintons whose reputations will be on the line. It involves the Obama administration too, whose DoJ silenced the FBI informant for some reason. That alone is worth an Inspector General review and Congressional oversight.

Did the Obama administration shut down attempts to stop Hezbollah’s arms and drug operations, including into the US? An in-depth report from Politico’s Josh Meyer has members of Congress interested in getting an answer to that question, and potentially the people who will have to answer it. Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo reports that the House has ordered the Department of Justice to submit all documents relevant to Project Cassandra, and whether Obama-era officials allowed the Iranian proxy a free hand in exchange for the deal on nuclear-weapons development:

Congress instructed the Department of Justice on Thursday to turn over all documents and communications that may be related to newly disclosed efforts by the Obama administration to handicap an investigation into the terror group Hezbollah and its Iranian benefactors, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. …

Congressional leaders have begun a formal investigation into the matter and petitioned the DOJ to hand over “all documents and communications” that may shine light on “interference with the DEA’s law enforcement efforts against Hezbollah,” according to a letter sent by Reps. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) and Jim Jordan (R., Ohio.).

“We have a responsibility to evaluate whether these allegations are true, and if so, did the administration undermine U.S. law enforcement and compromise U.S. national security,” the lawmakers wrote to Sessions, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

The lawmakers are requesting the DOJ hand over to Congress all materials relating to a DEA operation known as Project Cassandra, which Politico first reported was part of an effort to investigate Hezbollah’s drug activities across Latin America.

Sessions has a heavy workload over the Christmas season, no? Just to refresh the memory, Meyer summed up his blockbuster exposé at the beginning:

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way, according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions, officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected their requests.

The economic operations of Hezbollah alone, as Meyer depicts them, should have Congress alarmed. According to Meyer, Hezbollah has hundreds of car rental operations in the US, operating them as fronts to move money through legal channels for illegal purposes. They also run cocaine into the US to boost their revenue, feeding the addictions of Americans as means for funding terrorism. And every time the DEA and FBI got close to shutting down these operations, the Obama-era DoJ found ways to stall them or obstruct their progress.

It’s a good thing that Congress is getting curious about these actions. So far, most of the national media has barely covered Meyer’s stunning report, let alone the implications of it on national security, crime, addiction, and terrorism. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board addressed it today, calling for a formal congressional investigation:

Three major suspects involved in weapons and drug trafficking got away. Ali Fayad, a Lebanese arms dealer alleged to work for Russia supplying weapons in Syria and Iraq, was arrested in the Czech Republic in 2014. He had been indicted in the U.S. but the Administration “declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him,” says Mr. Meyer. He was sent to Beirut where he continues to ply his trade.

Alleged Venezuelan drug kingpin Hugo Carvajal was arrested in Aruba in 2014. Venezuela’s close alliance with Iran is no secret and reeling in “the chicken,” as Carvajal was known, would have generated key intelligence about cocaine trafficking to the U.S. and North Africa. The Netherlands mysteriously intervened and returned him to Venezuela.

When Colombia arrested Walid Makled, a Syrian-born Venezuelan who was alleged to be shipping ten tons of cocaine to the U.S. each month, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos refused U.S. extradition requests and sent him to Venezuela. Mr. Obama repaid Mr. Santos by backing his amnesty for the FARC, the largest drug cartel in the Americas.

Mr. Meyer reported that former Obama officials assured him that they had not “derailed any actions against Hezbollah or its Iranian allies for political reasons.” But many government officials believe otherwise, which is why this warrants a congressional investigation.

It warrants a congressional investigation for many reasons, but also to draw more attention to this issue. When congressional hearings begin, it will be difficult for media outlets to continue to ignore the story, or simply to frame it with denials from Iran-deal figure Ben Rhodes and others. If even half of what Meyer reported was accurate, this goes way beyond Uranium One and the nothingburger-so-far on Russian collusion.

We need sunlight on the full scope of what we have up for that terrible deal with the Iranians, and we need it now. Pallets of cash on an airplane to Tehran may end up as the least objectionable concession.

Buzzfeed reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election is seeking documents from the Jill Stein campaign. Buzzfeed learned of the request from Dennis Trainor Jr., a former Stein campaign staffer. One of the things he believes the committee may be interested in is Stein’s visit to a conference and dinner hosted by propaganda network RT. At the dinner, Stein was seated near Vladimir Putin at the same table as Gen. Michael Flynn.

Trainor said he expects the Senate Intelligence Committee will want to know more about the Moscow dinner, but that he wasn’t employed by the campaign at that time and therefore wouldn’t have any documents related to the event. Stein has said that unlike Flynn, she was not paid to attend the dinner and paid for her own travel costs.

Even Mother Jones admits there’s nothing to desperate Russia smear spread by Maddow, Reid & fellow neo-McCarthyists. https://t.co/9pgijw6bHL

— Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) June 13, 2017

Trainor said he believes the committee is primarily interested in Stein’s appearances on RT, “vilifying anyone who’s ever appeared on or talked with anyone on the RT network.”…

“There’s a lot of smoke around RT and not a lot of fire,” he said. Trainor also believes Intelligence Community assessment refers to his own documentary about Occupy Wall Street, though not by name, in a section about RT’s alleged attempts to “fuel discontent” in the US — something he called a “body blow.”

The photo above showing Stein at the table with Flynn and Putin has been widely circulated but that was just a dinner. Stein was actually there for a day-long conference celebrating the 10th anniversary of RT. She was introduced at the December 2015 conference as the 2016 Green Party candidate for president.

Later, when her appearance at the conference became an issue, Stein would focus on her comments critical of Russia’s bombing in Syria. Looking back, most of her criticism was aimed at the United States. “We have a very powerful military-industrial complex,” Stein said. She continued, “The beast needs to be fed and it requires an enemy in order to continue to justify the massive funding which currently occupies about 50 percent of the discretionary budget of the U.S.” Her criticism of Russia basically came down to saying Russia was following the U.S.’s footsteps, that being the lowest one could stoop apparently.

In this Aug. 2017 clip from Democracy Now!, Stein says she “declined” sponsorship of her expenses, which suggests that RT offered to pay but, unlike Flynn, she said no. Maybe Stein really did see the chance to talk about Middle East peace as more valuable than the cash she was offered, but that doesn’t mean that Putin didn’t see her invitation as part of his plan to sow chaos in the 2016 election. The most useful of all the useful idiots are the ones who don’t even need to be paid to do your bidding. Here’s Jill Stein offering her message from Red Square during the 2015 trip.

Finally, here’s the panel she was a part of at the RT conference.