Two House committees are investigating the tangled deal involving Russia, its acquiring of U.S. uranium, and Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the multiple layers that lawmakers, and potentially a special counsel, will explore take some unpacking.

The probe addresses unanswered questions about the Uranium One mining company’s ties to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit founded by the former president, during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

In a 2010 deal approved by a committee including Hillary Clinton and eight other members of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, a Kremlin-connected entity obtained 20 percent of America’s uranium production by acquiring Canada-based Uranium One.

Although a joint investigation by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is just getting under way, many congressional Republicans already are calling for a special counsel to look into the facts.

A Clinton Foundation spokesperson, citing numerous news stories and fact-checking organizations, told The Daily Signal that the Uranium One-related allegations against Hillary Clinton, Democrats’ 2016 nominee for president, have been debunked. A spokesperson for Uranium One did not respond to The Daily Signal’s phone and email messages Wednesday.

Here are six major elements to the scandal now known as Uranium One.

1. What Is the Deal, and Who Approved It?

Uranium One announced in June 2010 it was selling a majority of the mining company to ARMZ, part of Rosatom, a Russian-owned nuclear energy company. Promoters of the Russian company were involved in a $500,000 speaking engagement for Bill Clinton in Moscow.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a panel charged with approving any merger where national security questions emerge, approved the deal in October 2010.

National security came up in this case because uranium is the primary fuel for nuclear energy and can be used either to make weapons or produce electricity.

The foreign investment panel is made up of nine Cabinet members, two ex officio members, and others as appointed by the president. So, neither Clinton, who was secretary of state from 2009 until 2013, nor the State Department were in a sole position to approve the deal in which Russian interests acquired Uranium One. These officeholders frequently are represented on the foreign investment panel by lower-ranking officials.

If any member of the Foreign Investment Committee opposes a sale, then the president, in this case Barack Obama, is the only one who can step in to block it, according to Treasury Department guidelines.

Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by ranking member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, warned against the sale in an October 2010 letter to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, arguing:

The transaction could give Moscow control of up to 20 percent of the U.S. national uranium extraction capability and a controlling interest in one of the country’s largest uranium mining sites. … Russia’s record of transferring dangerous materials and technologies to rogue regimes, such as those in Iran and Syria, is very troubling.

2. What’s All This About Racketeering?

Most recently, The Hill news organization reported the foreign investment panel of Obama administration officials charged with approving the Russia-backed purchase of U.S. uranium resources was not made aware of an in-depth FBI criminal investigation related to Uranium One.

“I would hope the board and decisionmakers are as aware as possible of all factors, so they would know what they are voting on,” Ron Hosko, a former assistant director at the FBI, told The Daily Signal this week in a phone interview.

The FBI investigation appeared to be quite broad, The Hill reported that it found “substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion, and money laundering designed to grow [Russian President] Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

The FBI probe began in 2004 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, was director of the bureau. The probe ended in three convictions of individuals for money laundering and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a federal law.

Rod Rosenstein, then U.S. attorney for Maryland and now the Trump administration’s deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, supervised the FBI investigation.

After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself early this year from probes of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, Rosenstein—No. 2 to Sessions at Justice—appointed Mueller as special counsel.

“There was a criminal investigation related to Uranium One already and it seems because of political considerations, it was kept from the American people,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative government watchdog, told The Daily Signal.

“Uranium One is just the tip of the iceberg regarding foreign money when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state,” Fitton said in a phone interview. “With the information about the [Clinton] foundation and the State Department, there is easily enough to form the basis for a criminal investigation.”

Published reports have focused on numerous cases in which countries that gave money to the Clinton Foundation also had business before the State Department.

In August 2015, the Justice Department announced the guilty plea of Russian official Vadim Mikerin, a resident of Chevy Chase, Maryland, for his role in arranging more than $2 million in payments to corruptly influence the awarding of private contracts with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation.

Mikerin was head of Tenam Corp., a U.S.-based subsidiary of Moscow-based Tenax, the supplier and exporter for Russian uranium to nuclear power companies. Tenax was aligned with Rosatom, the Russian energy company, at the time Rosatom acquired Uranium One.

Daren Condrey of Glenwood, Maryland, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to commit wire fraud. Boris Rubizhevsky of Closter, New Jersey, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering.

The Justice Department press release explained:

According to court documents, between 2004 and October 2014, Mikerin conspired with Condrey, Rubizhevsky and others to transmit funds from Maryland and elsewhere in the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts located in Cyprus, Latvia and Switzerland. Mikerin admitted the funds were transmitted with the intent to promote a corrupt payment scheme that violated the FCPA [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act]. Specifically, he admitted that the corrupt payments were made by conspirators to influence Mikerin and to secure improper business advantages for U.S. companies that did business with TENEX. …

According to court documents, over the course of the scheme, Mikerin conspired with Condrey, Rubizhevsky and others to transfer approximately $2,126,622 from the United States to offshore shell company bank accounts.

Hosko, the former FBI official, said he doesn’t believe the bureau’s past investigation would pose a conflict for Rosenstein, Sessions’ No. 2 at the Justice Department.

Hosko also said he doesn’t think the racketeering case should bear on Mueller’s current investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and suspected collusion between Russians and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, since an FBI director likely wouldn’t be aware of every investigation.

3. How Is the Clinton Foundation Involved?

Conservative author Peter Schweizer’s 2016 book “Clinton Cash,” as well as The New York Times, reported in April 2015 that the Clinton Foundation got millions from investors in Uranium One both before and after the government approved the deal, and the foundation didn’t disclose those donations.

The Clinton Foundation is a 20-year-old nonprofit charitable organization run by the former president along with his wife, Hillary, and their daughter, Chelsea.

After initially making denials, several days after the Times story appeared the Clinton Foundation issued a statement acknowledging that it had made a mistake:

Like every contributor to the Foundation, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada) is publicly listed as a donor on our website. But as it is a distinct Canadian organization, separate from the Clinton Foundation, its individual donors are not listed on the site. … So yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don’t happen in the future.

As widely reported, Bill Clinton spoke at a Moscow conference organized by the Russia-based Renaissance Capital Group, collecting $500,000 for the appearance.

Clinton made the speech shortly after the Rosatom-Uranium One merger was announced in June, but before U.S. government officials approved it in October. Renaissance Capital Group reportedly had “talked up Uranium One’s stock.”

4. What’s the Case for a Special Counsel Probe?

Sessions told the House Judiciary Committee during testimony Tuesday that the Justice Department is reviewing requests from Congress to name a special counsel to investigate Uranium One and other legal questions surrounding Hillary Clinton.

However, the attorney general insisted a legal process exists to determine whether an independent investigator is needed.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., for one, is losing patience.

“I have been calling for three and a half months for an investigation on Uranium One and the Obama-Clinton era scandals, and have now reached the point that I am done with the DOJ’s smoke and mirrors,” Gaetz said in a written statement Thursday. “The time has come for Jeff Sessions to name a special counsel and get answers for the American people, or step down from his position as the attorney general.”

Conservative groups also strongly advocate an independent investigation, regarding not only Hillary Clinton but other Obama administration officials.

“The Obama administration cover-ups need to be investigated and exposed. This one is a no-brainer,” Jenny Beth Martin, chairwoman of the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, told The Daily Signal in an email. “In a nutshell, the American people need to know whether or not Robert Mueller—then the FBI director—and Rod Rosenstein—then a U.S. attorney—told the committee of senior Obama administration officials about the FBI’s yearslong investigation into Uranium One that included allegations of kickbacks, bribery, and money laundering.”

Martin continued:

Those officials, who eventually decided to approve the sale of 20 percent of America’s uranium reserves to the Russians, needed that information before voting to approve the deal. Those officials included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder. If they weren’t told about the [FBI] investigation, why not? If they were told, why did they approve a deal they should’ve certainly nixed? Either way, some big names are in hot water and either way, President Obama had to know.

It would benefit the public to have a fact-finding process, Hosko said, although the former assistant FBI director added that he agrees with the caution expressed by Sessions.

Hosko said the first step is establishing that a crime might have been committed.

“Second, if there is a crime to investigate, has the statute of limitations run out?” Hosko continued. “Third, is there some reason the Department of Justice or the FBI is disabled from conducting the investigation?”

5. Does a National Security Threat Exist?

Uranium, as a nuclear fuel, could be weaponized. However, under the rules of the deal, the Uranium One merger with the Kremlin-backed company Rosatom may not pose a national security threat, based on what the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has stated.

At the time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said of two Uranium One facilities in Wyoming that “no uranium produced at either facility may be exported.”

In June 2015, the nuclear commission determined that Uranium One could export uranium from the Wyoming sites to Canada. The agency explained that Canada, where the mining company is headquartered, must obtain U.S. government approval to ship U.S. uranium to any country other than the United States.

The commission also said that “no Uranium One Inc.-produced uranium has been shipped directly to Russia and the U.S. government has not authorized any country to re-transfer U.S. uranium to Russia.”

The United States is home to 1 percent of the world’s uranium reserves, while Russia has 9 percent, according to the World Nuclear Association.

Uranium is significant because the metal is the primary fuel for nuclear energy power plants and is used in some regions of the world to produce electricity. Canada has the highest grade uranium in the world, while Australia has the greatest quantity.

6. What About the Congressional Probes?

In late October, the two House committees announced plans to investigate.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the inquiry would focus on:

… regulatory approvals related to the U.S. uranium industry, foreign donations seeking to curry favor and influence with U.S. officials, whether a federal nuclear bribery probe developed evidence of wrongdoing connected to the Uranium One mining company, and Department of Justice criminal and counterintelligence investigations into bribery, extortion, and other related matters connected to Russian acquisition of U.S. uranium.

The two committees sent letters Tuesday to the FBI, the Treasury Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the State Department.

The House intelligence committee’s investigation is led by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the emerging threats subcommittee, and the oversight panel’s inquiry is led by Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., chairman of the national security subcommittee.

Clinton calls Uranium One story a ‘distraction,’ warns of dictatorship

Hillary Clinton on Wednesday slammed what she described as the “politicization of the Justice Department” after reports that the Trump administration was considering a special counsel to probe the Uranium One deal and alleged conflicts with the Clinton Foundation.

President Trump has criticized the uranium deal and suggested that Clinton, who served as U.S. secretary of state in the Obama administration, may be implicated in wrongdoing.

But in an interview with Mother Jones, Clinton claimed that the Uranium One story has been “debunked” a number of times and that the Trump administration was merely using the story as a distraction.

“And if they send a signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship, some authoritarian regimen where political opponents are going to be unfairly, fraudulently investigated — that rips at the fabric of the contract we have that we can trust our justice system,” she said.

Trump and his supporters have accused Clinton of overseeing the sale of 20 percent of America’s uranium supply to Russia. They see her alleged role as a scandal, particularly amid charges the Trump campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 presidential election.

Allegations also have been made that the approval of the sale of Uranium One benefited major donors to the Clinton Foundation, raising conflict-of-interest questions.

Fox News reported exclusively Tuesday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed senior federal prosecutors to evaluate “certain issues” requested by congressional Republicans, involving the sale of Uranium One and alleged unlawful dealings related to the Clinton Foundation, leaving the door open for an appointment of another special counsel.

The alleged relationship between the approval of the sale and the Clinton Foundation was first raised in 2015 by conservative author Peter Schweizer. He and others have pointed to some of the investors in the deal and their ties to former President Bill Clinton and his foundation.

In April 2015, The New York Times published an article echoing much of the Schweizer book, including one sensational contention that not long after the Russians said they wanted to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Bill Clinton received $500,000 for a speech in Moscow. The speech was paid for by a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin as it promoted Uranium One stock.

Canadian financier Frank Giustra, a top Clinton Foundation donor, sold his company, UrAsia, to Uranium One, which was chaired by Ian Telfer, also a Clinton Foundation donor. Giustra has said he sold his stake in the deal in 2007, while Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were vying for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

PolitiFact found that the majority of the donations from individuals related to Uranium One and UrAsia were made before and during Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign — but before she became secretary of state in 2009.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

3 UCLA basketball players return to US after being detained in China for allegedly shoplifting

Three UCLA basketball players who were arrested in China for allegedly shoplifting while their team was in the country for a tournament last week were released and placed on a flight home Tuesday, Fox News confirmed.

UCLA Men’s Basketball players LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill and Cody Riley were arrested after being accused of stealing designer sunglasses from a Louis Vuitton store next to the team’s hotel in Hangzhou. They boarded a plane on Tuesday and are headed back to Los Angeles. The rest of the team flew back last Saturday.

Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott said Tuesday the matter “has been resolved to the satisfaction of the Chinese authorities.”

President Trump personally asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping to help resolve the case during his visit to Beijing last week, Fox News confirmed. Scott thanked Trump, the White House and the State Department for their efforts in resolving what he called “the incident with authorities in Hangzhou, China.” He indicated UCLA made “significant efforts” on behalf of its three players.

The team was playing their season-opening game against Georgia Tech in Shanghai on Saturday. They won the game 63-60.

It’s unclear if the players would be playing in Wednesday night’s home opener against Central Arkansas. They are expected to make a statement after they arrive in Los Angeles.

FoxNews.com/The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The confirmation this week that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee paid an opposition-research firm for a “dossier” on Donald Trump is bombshell news. More bombshells are to come.

The Fusion GPS saga isn’t over. The Clinton-DNC funding is but a first glimpse into the shady election doings concealed within that oppo-research firm’s walls. We now know where Fusion got some of its cash, but the next question is how the firm used it. With whom did it work beyond former British spy Christopher Steele ? Whom did it pay? Who else was paying it?

This probe of the Democratic Party’s Russian dalliance has a long, long way to go.

The answers are in Fusion’s bank records. Fusion has doggedly refused to divulge the names of its clients for months now, despite extraordinary pressure. So why did the firm suddenly insist that middleman law firm Perkins Coie release Fusion from confidentiality agreements, and spill the beans on who hired it?

Because there’s something Fusion cares about keeping secret even more than the Clinton-DNC news—and that something is in those bank records. The release of the client names was a last-ditch effort to appease the House Intelligence Committee, which issued subpoenas to Fusion’s bank and was close to obtaining records until Fusion filed suit last week. The release was also likely aimed at currying favor with the court, given Fusion’s otherwise weak legal case. The judge could rule as early as Friday morning. . .

Keep reading Kimberley Strassel’s column in the Wall Street Journal. >>

 

Clinton Used Putin Smear Firm to Smear Trump

The controversial dossier containing salacious allegations about President Donald Trump and his possible connections to Russia, including coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, resulted from funding by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee to the firm Fusion GPS, a source familiar with the situation confirmed to Fox News.

Fusion GPS was retained by Marc E. Elias, an attorney representing the DNC and the Clinton campaign, The Washington Post first reported Tuesday. Fusion GPS then reportedly hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to write the now-infamous dossier.

Steele had ties both to the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI.

Prior to the firm being retained in April 2016 by Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS’s research had been subsidized by an unidentified Republican during the GOP primary.

But the Clinton campaign – and the DNC – saw the research through, funding the firm through the end of October 2016, just days before Trump defeated Clinton in the general election, according to The Post’s reporting.

Steele’s findings and other research were then submitted to Elias via Fusion GPS, The Post reported. The method and the amount of the information that was provided to the campaign and the DNC wasn’t immediately clear. It also wasn’t known who in those organizations knew about the roles of both Steele and Fusion GPS.

Following Trump’s victory, The Post reported, the FBI arranged to pay Steele to proceed with intelligence gathering about both Trump and Russia. That deal was later nixed after the former intelligence officer was identified in news reports.

Perkins Coie was paid $5.6 million in legal fees by the Clinton campaign in a time period ranging from June 2015 to December 2016, The Post reported, citing campaign finance records. The DNC also paid the firm $3.6 million for “legal and compliance consulting” going back to November 2015.

Sources told The Post that neither the Clinton campaign or the DNC specifically directed Steele’s work, labeling the intelligence officer simply as a Fusion GPS subcontractor.

FUSION GPS OFFICIALS TAKE THE FIFTH IN TRUMP DOSSIER INTERVIEW ON CAPITOL HILL

Fusion GPS has recently been in the spotlight of congressional Republicans as they’ve tried to get the firm to reveal those who supported Steele’s work.

Fusion GPS has refused to do so, citing client confidentiality agreements.

Officials with the firm have also invoked their right to refuse to answer questions from the House Intelligence Committee. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., subsequently subpoenaed the firm’s bank records in order to identify the client who subsidized the dossier.

Meanwhile, Glenn Simpson, the Fusion GPS founder, already gave a 10-hour interview to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

TRUMP DOSSIER FIRM’S ‘SMEAR’ TACTICS UNVEILED

The report on the dossier’s funding come just days after the president tweeted about the controversial file. “Officials behind the now discredited ‘Dossier’ plead the Fifth,” Trump tweeted on Oct 21. “Justice Department and/or FBI should immediately release who paid for it.”

“Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization,” DNC Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement following the report’s publication.

“But let’s be clear, there is a serious federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and the American public deserves to know what happened.”

First published by Buzzfeed in January, the dossier contained a series of controversial financial and sexual allegations about Trump.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge and Ashley Koerber contributed to this report.

After months of batting back accusations of collusion with Moscow in last year’s presidential campaign, Republicans say Democrats are the ones who now have “some explaining to do” as fresh developments raise questions about their own Russia connections.

First came reports that the FBI knew about a Russian bribery plot tied to nuclear energy interests in the U.S. well before the Obama administration OK’d a mining company sale to a Russian firm, giving it partial control over American uranium reserves.

Then came a report that Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is looking at the dealings of Tony Podesta, a powerful Democratic lobbyist and the brother of former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Meanwhile, Fusion GPS, the firm behind the controversial anti-Trump dossier, has gone to court to block Congress from getting its bank records after its representatives pleaded the Fifth in a Capitol Hill appearance last week.

Hillary Clinton on Monday brushed off the revival of the uranium deal controversy as “baloney” meant to distract from GOP controversies.

But Republicans beg to differ.

“Now it’s the Democrats who have some explaining to do,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement overnight. “I hope they will cooperate with the investigation, be forthcoming with the American people and I expect the media to cover these new developments with the same breathless intensity that they have given to this investigation since day one.”

NBC News first reported early Monday that Tony Podesta and The Podesta Group are now subjects in the special counsel’s Russia investigation, following inquiries regarding former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s finances.

According to Monday’s NBC News report, Mueller’s team started looking into a Manafort-involved PR campaign for a pro-Ukraine nonprofit reportedly backed by a pro-Russia party; the Podesta Group reportedly was one of many firms that worked on the campaign. According to the report, Mueller’s investigators have since launched a criminal inquiry into whether the company violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which requires people in the U.S. who lobby on behalf of foreign entities to register as foreign agents and disclose their work.

Podesta’s firm eventually filed a registration for the work, after the media reported on the business and Congress started asking questions. But in a statement on Monday, a spokesperson for The Podesta Group claimed the company was in compliance — citing a series of filings dating back years — and is “fully” cooperating with the special counsel’s office.

“The Podesta Group fully disclosed its representation of the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECFMU), and complied with FARA by filing under the lobbying disclosure act over five years ago and within weeks of starting our work,” the spokesperson said. “Any insinuation to the contrary is false. The Podesta Group has fully cooperated with the Special Counsel’s office and taken every possible step to provide documentation that confirms compliance with the law.”

Meanwhile, new details have emerged since last week on the 2010 approval of the sale of Canadian mining company Uranium One to Russia’s Rosatom nuclear company. The U.S. was involved because the sale gave the Russians control of part of the uranium supply in the U.S.

The Hill reported, however, that the FBI had evidence as early as 2009 that Russian operatives used bribes, kickbacks and other dirty tactics to expand Moscow’s atomic energy footprint in the U.S., related to a subsidiary of the same Russia firm.

Several Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are now asking questions about how the deal was approved the next year by an inter-agency committee. Among them, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo. – who has raised concerns about the Uranium One transaction since 2010 – wrote to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Oct. 19 that he’s “extremely disheartened and disturbed” by reports indicating the government approved the deal despite the DOJ having “evidence of corruption by Russian nuclear energy officials in the United States.”

He asked for “all documents” disclosed by the department to the committee – of which the DOJ was a member – concerning the investigation prior to the approval.

The Hill has since reported that as Hillary Clinton began her role as secretary of state, a Russian spy posing as an accountant became close to a Democratic donor in hopes of gathering intelligence on Clinton’s State Department. (The spy was later arrested.) Lawmakers have also revived questions that first surfaced in 2015 about payments to both Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation from “interested parties.”

Addressing the matter Monday on C-SPAN, Clinton said “it’s the same baloney they’ve been peddling for years, and there’s been no credible evidence by anyone. In fact, it’s been debunked repeatedly and will continue to be debunked.”

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee said these issues are just part of the “distraction and diversion” from the investigation into Russian meddling and possible coordination with Trump associates in last year’s election.

“The closer the investigation about real Russian ties between Trump associates and real Russians … the more they want to just throw mud on the wall,” Clinton said.

But White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday that the only “collusion” is on the other side.

“If you want to see collusion with anyone and the Russians, look no further than the Democrats. Look no further than Tony Podesta and the Clinton crew,” she said.

On another front, Fusion GPS has gone to court in an attempt to block a House committee subpoena for the company’s banking records.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had issued a subpoena on Oct. 4 for those TD Bank records. But, according to documents reviewed by Fox News, Fusion is seeking a “temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction” to block the release of those records.

Fusion’s filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia claimed that complying with the subpoena would “deny Plaintiff and its clients their rights to free speech and expressive association as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

House Republican lawyers countered Monday in their own court filing that the company is a for-profit business and not an “association” engaged in protected activity under the First Amendment. “Plaintiff’s argument is too clever by half, and an insult to the efforts of true advocacy organizations,” they said.

Fusion has refused to tell congressional committees who paid for the dossier or reveal its sources. Two top officials from the political research firm invoked their Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer questions last Wednesday before the same House panel.

FoxNews.com

Dem rep on Weinstein scandal: Women have ‘responsibility’ to watch their attire and behavior

A Democratic congresswoman suggested in a local TV interview that women bear a certain “responsibility” when it comes to sexual harassment, saying their attire and behavior can be “inviting.”

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, later sought to clarify her comments and explained they came from an “old-school”perspective.

But in the original interview with NBC 5 on Wednesday, Johnson ‘went there’ when asked to respond to the scandal over disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. She said that she was “disappointed” in the man who supported many of her Democratic colleagues, but that women should be mindful how they appear.

“I grew up in a time when it was as much the woman’s responsibility as it was a man’s – how you were dressed, what your behavior was,” Johnson said. “I’m from the old school that you can have behaviors that appear inviting. It can be interpreted as such. That’s the responsibility, I think, of the female.”

Johnson, a 13-term congresswoman and former chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, added that men have a “responsibility to be professional themselves.”

“I think we also need to start talking about the power that women have to control the situation. There’s law enforcement, you can refuse to cooperate with that kind of behavior,” Johnson said. “I think that many times, men get away with this because they are allowed to get away with it by the women.”

Johnson’s comments sparked a backlash Thursday on Twitter.

But when reached by Fox News for comment, Johnson later issued a detailed clarification, saying she does not “blame victims of sexual assault for the actions of their assailants.”

“Sexual assault and harassment has no place in our society. This is something I believe deeply. And at each turn of my professional life, I have made it my mission to fight for women’s rights. I do not blame victims of sexual assault for the actions of their assailants,” Johnson said. “I do acknowledge that my comments regarding behavior and attire come from an old school perspective that has shaped how some of us understand the issue, but that does not detract from the fact that criminals need to be held accountable for their actions.”

She continued, “I will never condone those who feel they can abuse the power of their positions to sexually assault and harass women, and I will always encourage victims to come forward so that we can hold these criminals accountable.”