Mitt Romney: Clinton Foundation donations sure 'looks like bribery'

published 24 April 2015

The GOP's failed 2012 presidential nominee has some very harsh words for the likely 2016 Democratic nominee regarding a big investigative report in The New York Times. The Times report shows that from 2009 to 2013, Hillary Clinton's State Department approved deals that handed Russia's atomic energy agency control over "one-fifth of all uranium production in the United States."

The problem, as my colleague Ryu Spaeth explains, is that "the Canadian magnates behind the deal had donated tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, while a Russian investment bank with an interest in the deal paid Bill Clinton a cool $500,000 for a single speech in Moscow."

Here's Romney's take on these revelations:

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I was stunned by it. I mean, it looks like bribery. I mean, there is every appearance that Hillary Clinton was bribed to grease the sale of, what, 20 percent of America’s uranium production to Russia, and then it was covered up by lying about a meeting at her home with the principals, and by erasing emails. And you know I presume we might know for sure whether there was or was not bribery if she hadn’t wiped out thousands of emails. But this is a very, very serious series of facts, and it looks like bribery. [Romney]

The former Bain Capital mogul made those comments to conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. You can listen below. —Ben Frumin