Michael Bastasch, DCNF

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reportedly buried evidence tying the Clinton Foundation to a Russian bribery scheme underway as the Obama administration decided whether or not to give Moscow control over U.S. uranium reserves.

FBI officials collected evidence of a Russian bribery scheme that started as early as 2009, including “an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow,” The Hill reported Tuesday.

WATCH:

On the campaign trail, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton defended her role in approving Rosatom’s, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy company, acquisition of Canadian mining company Uranium One.

Clinton said there was no reason at the time to oppose the Uranium One deal, and argued the committee she served on had no veto power to stop the deal — they only gave the president a recommendation.

But The Hill found documents showing investigators “had gathered substantial evidence well before the committee’s decision that Vadim Mikerin — the main Russian overseeing Putin’s nuclear expansion inside the United States — was engaged in wrongdoing starting in 2009.”

“The Russians were compromising American contractors in the nuclear industry with kickbacks and extortion threats, all of which raised legitimate national security concerns,” a source who worked on the case told The Hill.

“And none of that evidence got aired before the Obama administration made those decisions,” the source said.

Rosatom began its Uranium One takeover in 2009, and U.S. officials approved the Uranium One take over in October 2010. The takeover gave Russia control over 20 percent of U.S. uranium reserves.

The merger lasted through 2013, and during that time donations from the charitable foundation of Uranium One’s chairman donated $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Former President Bill Clinton also got $500,000 for a speech he gave in Moscow shortly after Rosatom announced its plans to take control of the Canadian mining company. Clinton was paid by a “Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock,” The New York Times reported in 2015.

Mikerin was sentenced 48 months in prison and fined more than $2.1 million in late 2015, but the Justice Department’s release on the court case totally omitted any evidence about “Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons,” The Hill found, despite evidence of “the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation.”

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