FBI Informant Cleared to Testify on Hillary Clinton's Uranium Pay-for-Play

thehill  |  The Justice Department on Wednesday night released a former FBI informant from a confidentiality agreement, allowing him to testify before Congress about what he witnessed undercover about the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favorable decisions during the Obama administration.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed to The Hill a deal had been reached clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time, nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI. 

“As of tonight, the Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” she said.

Multiple congressional committees have been seeking to interview the informant, whose name has not been released publicly, because he stayed undercover for nearly five years providing agents information on Russia’s aggressive efforts to grow its atomic energy business in America. 

His work helped the Justice Department secure convictions against Russia’s top commercial nuclear executive in the United States, a Russian financier in New Jersey and the head of a U.S. uranium trucking company in what prosecutors said was a long-running racketeering scheme involving bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering. 

But the informant was unable to provide answers to lawmakers’ recent inquiries because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the bureau. He also was forced by the Justice Department in 2016 to withdraw a lawsuit that threatened to call attention to the case during last year’s presidential election.

The man’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Hill on Wednesday night that the FBI sent her a formal letter saying it no longer had any reason to ask the informant to keep his work confidential, clearing the way for him to potentially testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

The committees are keen to learn what the informant knows about any Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton, to win Obama administration approval for Moscow’s purchase of large uranium assets in the United States or to secure billions in new uranium sales contracts with American utilities.