Jared’s Time In The Nuclear Barrel

What? You thought we were done? The crimes are limitless.

Remember that canard about Hillary selling out a U.S. Uranium mine (Ridiculous nonsense. Peripherally involved, Canadian company with Russian interests, Operations and Management only- strict export controls.)?

Now we find Jared is selling potentially dual use Nuclear Reactors to The House of Saud.

They actually have a legitimate use for them if they’re reserving Oil for export but they burn enough Methane to power themselves for a year in a day and think nothing of it, not to mention that Sun.

Dual use means of course valuable in making Nuclear Weapons.

I’ve felt The House of Saud had Nuclear capability right along. I would have bought them from Pakistan, highly sophisticated and well tested. Jong Un wishes he could afford these. Still, if a visionary… Prince say, were to decide that future supplies might be, umm… unreliable, a domestic infrastructure could prove remarkably foresighted, hmm…

Top Trump appointees promoted selling nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia over objections from national security officials, House Democratic report says
By Tom Hamburger, Steven Mufson, and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post
February 19, 2019

Key members of the Trump administration pushed a plan to sell nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia in the months after the inauguration despite objections from members of the National Security Council and other senior White House officials, according to a new report from congressional Democrats.

The 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee is based on internal White House documents and the accounts of unnamed whistleblowers. It said the objectors — including White House lawyers and National Security Council officials — opposed the plan out of concern that it violated laws designed to prevent the transfer of nuclear technology that could be used to support a weapons program.

Of greater concern to some were potential conflicts of interest on the part of Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general who was President Trump’s first national security adviser and who had advised a firm pitching the nuclear plan. Yet the effort persisted even after Flynn resigned and left the White House, the report alleges.

The possible sale of nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia was discussed in the Oval Office just last week. The meeting included Energy Secretary Rick Perry, representatives from the NSC and State Department, and a dozen nuclear industry chief executives, one of the people present told The Washington Post.

The Democrats’ report was released Tuesday morning by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the new chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, who has pledged multiple investigations into the Trump administration. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that his panel would join the Oversight Committee in investigating the proposed nuclear sales.

“Multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of highly sensitive U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia in potential violation” of federal law, the Oversight Committee report says.

The report, key elements of which were confirmed by people directly familiar with the matter, cites whistleblowers who said that the Trump appointees “ignored directives from top ethics advisers who repeatedly — but unsuccessfully — ordered senior White House officials to halt their efforts.”

The Trump White House has balked at endorsing intelligence reports suggesting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in the killing of Khashoggi, which was carried out Oct. 2 inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

Many American experts on proliferation say it is in U.S. interests to sell American nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to prevent rival Russian or Chinese companies from rushing in, potentially undermining the long geopolitical relationship between Washington and Riyadh.

Recently, the kingdom has been signaling an interest in forging greater ties with countries aside from the United States. It has been cooperating with Russia on oil policy, and a report Tuesday by the Russian news agency Interfax said the two countries were in talks on air defense missiles.

Saudi officials have said they would like to buy nuclear power plants so that their country is not totally reliant on oil, although it has the world’s second-largest known petroleum reserves. The kingdom says it wants nuclear energy to displace oil burned to generate electricity, especially for air conditioning. That would boost Saudi Arabia’s oil export capacity. Saudi electricity consumption doubled between 2005 and 2015.

But Saudi Arabia also sees nuclear energy as a way to compete with Iran, which has one reactor in addition to the uranium-enrichment program it concealed for years. The Saudi crown prince warned in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” last year that his country would develop nuclear weapons if Iran did. That added to concern among U.S. analysts that the Saudis want the atomic power project as a covert way to develop nuclear weapons.

The report released Tuesday notes that one of the power plant manufacturers that could benefit from a nuclear deal, Westinghouse Electric, is a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, the company that has provided financial relief to the family of Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser. Brookfield Asset Management took a 99-year lease on the Kushner family’s deeply indebted New York City property at 666 Fifth Ave.

Kushner is preparing for a trip to the Middle East to discuss the economic component of his Middle East peace initiative, according to the report. A lawyer for Kushner did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The Democratic report singles out several top Trump associates at the time as key proponents of the sales, and identifies Flynn as the leader. A plan was initially floated by IP3, a firm led by several former high-ranking military officers, the report said. They called their plan a “Marshall Plan” for nuclear reactors in the Middle East. Flynn described himself in ethics filings as an adviser to a subsidiary of IP3. The company has denied that it hired him.

Derek Harvey, a senior director for Middle East and North Africa affairs at the National Security Council, was an advocate of the IP3 plan. In late January 2017, after meeting with IP3 leaders, Harvey sought to put together a briefing package about the nuclear sales for Trump ahead of a scheduled phone call with Saudi King Salman, according to the report, which cited an email from one of the IP3 founders to NSC officials.

Weeks after Flynn resigned, there were indications that he remained involved in pushing a nuclear deal. Harvey said during an internal meeting on March 2, 2017, that he spoke with Flynn every night. The report said his remarks came from separate accounts of five unnamed individuals.

Harvey did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. In July 2017, he became an adviser to Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

According to the Democratic report, Harvey’s NSC colleagues warned repeatedly that any plan to transfer nuclear technology had to comply with the Atomic Energy Act. The United States imposes limits on uranium enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel, both of which could be used to produce material for nuclear bombs. Saudi Arabia does not want to make those commitments.

On Jan. 30, 2017, the report says, NSC staffers, ethics counsel and lawyers alerted the top NSC legal adviser, John Eisenberg, who reports to the White House general counsel. Eisenberg instructed the NSC staffers to stop all work on the plan, according to the report.