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House Opens Inquiry Into Proposed US Nuclear Venture In Saudi Arabia (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: President Trump's former national security adviser and other White House officials pushed a venture to bring nuclear power plants to Saudi Arabia over repeated legal and ethical warnings that potential conflicts of interest around the plan could put American security at risk, concluded a new report from House Democrats released on Tuesday. The 24-page report from the House Oversight and Reform Committee outlined actions taken in the early weeks of the Trump administration to secure government backing to have American companies build dozens of nuclear power plants across Saudi Arabia, potentially at the risk of spreading nuclear weapons technology. But House Democrats said there was evidence that as recently as last week, the White House was still considering the proposal.

Claims presented by whistle-blowers and White House documents obtained by the committee show that the company backing the nuclear plan, IP3 International, and its allies in the White House were working so closely that the company sent a draft memo to the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, to circulate just days after the inauguration. Mr. Flynn had worked on the plan for IP3 during the Trump campaign and transition, the Democrats said, and continued to advocate for it in the White House. Even after Mr. Flynn left the White House in February 2017, officials on the National Security Council pushed ahead, the Democrats said, ignoring advice from the N.S.C.'s ethics counsel and other lawyers to cease all work on the plan because of potentially illegal conflicts. At a March 2017 meeting, a National Security Council aide tried to revive the IP3 plan "so that Jared Kushner can present it to the President for approval," the Democratic report said, a reference to Mr. Trump's son-in-law and top adviser. The draft memo also referenced another close Trump associate, Thomas J. Barrack, who served as chairman of the president's inaugural committee. It said that Mr. Trump had appointed Mr. Barrack as a special representative to implement the plan, which it called "the Middle East Marshall Plan." The memo also directed agencies to support Mr. Barrack's efforts.

4 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Perception by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Aluminium and Steel from Canada? National Security Risk.

    Wahhabi Nuclear? Potential profit!

  2. There is nothing Trump supporters won't defend. by DalM · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Literally nothing. He's giving nuclear technology to a nation that hates Israel and funds and supplies terrorists.

    They still 100% support him unconditionally.

  3. Re:Uranium 1 was worse by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 5, Informative

    Fake news doesn't want to talk about the Uranium One deal though. I wonder why?

    Hey Anonymous Coward, the mainstream media discussed it extensively at the time.

    For example:

    https://www.latimes.com/nation...

    Problem was their fact-based analysis didn't reinforce your lies, so you decried it as "FAKE NEWS!"

  4. Re:Uranium 1 was worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here's the truth: the current logic of Trump and company is to accuse very loudly "the other side" of precisely the crimes they're engaged in. This is intended to later muddy the waters, to issue call backs to "why weren't *they* investigated?", and generally underplay the outrage by making it something the public has felt for years and felt frustrated because nothing was done against "those" people. Having said all that, I wonder how pizza-gate will turn out.