CCD Editor: If you’ve ever wondered if Hillary Clinton is just another corrupt politician, wonder no more. Pollock does a good job untangling the tangled weave.
by Richard Pollock, Daily Caller
Joule Unlimited, a secretive green energy company that appears to have placed a big bet hiring Democratic insider John Podesta to its board, appears to have been doomed when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.
When the 2016 presidential election ended, senior company executives admitted the prospects for their renewable energy “biofuels” company evaporated. “We had a lot of prospects last year,” former Joule CEO Brian Baynes told BioFuels Digest in a rare interview in July. “But those new investor prospects walked away, particularly post-election.”
Dmitry Akhanov, the president and CEO of Rusnano USA Inc., a Kremlin-owned venture capital firm nicknamed “Putin’s child,” oversaw the Russian government’s investment in Joule and sat on its board along with two other Russians with ties to the Kremlin. Akhanov agreed that Clinton’s loss doomed the company.
“We lined up investors who were willing to buy the bonds, but after the elections, with some statements from the new administration regarding potential uncertainty, the future support of biofuels was stopped,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “The company was not able to do the deal and it was one of the reasons why the company was closed.”
Akhanov confirmed to TheDCNF his company invested and lost 1 billion rubles, worth $35 million when Joule closed its doors.
The two other board members with ties to Moscow were Ruben Vardanyan, who Putin appointed to a Russian economic modernization council, and Anatoly Chubais, a close personal friend of former President Bill Clinton and economic advisor to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Chubais allegedly made millions in the sell-off and “privatization” of Russia’s state-owned industries.
The FBI was concerned about Russian government investments in American high-technology firms, as previously reported by TheDCNF.
Lucia Ziobro, the special agent in charge at the FBI’s Boston field office, issued an “extraordinary warning” in 2014 about Russian investors to startups like Joule.
“The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies,” she wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed.
Hillary’s loss of the 2016 presidential election meant Podesta would not serve in the White House and thus was not in a position to advance the company’s prospects.
The Obama administration became a big “hedge fund” trying to finance and promote renewable energy technologies at any cost, Thomas Pyle, president of the libertarian Institute for Energy Research, told TheDCNF.
“The whole entire eight years under Obama, the Department of Energy was basically a hedge fund — and a bad one — for renewable energy for wind, solar and biofuels,” he said.
Critics of former President Barack Obama’s renewable energy agenda believe it’s likely a President Hillary Clinton would have doubled down on Obama’s renewable energy initiatives.
“If Hillary Clinton had won, then we would have four to eight more years of the Obama trajectory, which means everything that calls itself ‘progressive energy policy’ would have just ramped up,” Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute, told TheDCNF.
“So the market would have been even more tilted in favor of so-called ‘green energy companies. And President Trump has basically changed the direction,” he said.
Since entering office, Trump reversed many of Obama’s regulatory mandates that hurt fossil fuels and assisted renewable energy in the marketplace. He also ended the U.S. participation in the Paris agreement on climate change, which was designed to cut carbon emissions.
Trump signed a sweeping executive order in late March at the Environmental Protection Agency that rescinded six of Obama’s climate change executive orders.
“The order represents a clear difference between how Trump and former President Barack Obama view the role the United States plays in combating climate change,” CNN reported at the time.
Podesta was one of Joule’s biggest political assets. He had served as President Bill Clinton’s White House chief of staff and co-founded Podesta Associates, a D.C. lobbying shop with his brother Tony. John Podesta also founded the Center for American Progress, a Washington liberal advocacy group.
Podesta served on Joule’s board from December 2010 to December 2013. In January 2014, he joined the Obama White House, where he served as “counselor” to President Obama. After leaving the White House, he joined Hillary Clinton to help run her presidential campaign as its national chairman.
From the very beginning, Joule executives knew Podesta’s value. Bill Sims, one of Joule’s CEOs, was excited about landing Podesta and talked about “leveraging his insights” when he announced the board appointment.
“We look forward to leveraging his insights as we progress toward international deployment,” he declared.
As one of the biggest power players in Washington, Podesta could open doors for Joule. Obama’s first secretary of energy, Steven Chu, visited the company in November 2011, according to WikiLeaks.
Podesta told Chu’s chief of staff, Brandon Hurlbut, he was delighted with the upcoming Chu visit. “The gang is excited. I think he’ll be impressed,” he wrote in a Nov. 28, 2011, email released by WikiLeaks.
“I felt fortunate to be able to engage with a leading expert like John to get feedback, as I did with many other experts,” Hurlbut told McClatchy News for a 2016 article titled, “WikiLeaks emails show how Clinton’s campaign chief once opened doors for energy firm.”
And even as he worked at the White House, Podesta apparently continued to provide advice to Joule.
“As promised, I am providing to you a corporate slide presentation, a short summary of the company and videos of the Hobbs plant. Please let me know if I should change any of it, or feel free to edit as you see fit. I look forward to learning about next steps and to your guidance for the company about how best to forge partnerships globally,” Noubar Afeyan, the founder, and CEO of Flagship Pioneering, the main venture capital firm that underwrote Joule Unlimited, told Podesta in an Aug. 31, 2015, email.
On Oct. 12, 2015, Afeyan followed up, emailing Podesta, “Dear John, I wanted to get this back on your radar screen hoping you can make some intros in the far east as we had previously discussed. Please let me know how I can follow up. Regards, Noubar.”
Podesta did not respond to a request for comment.
The company’s rise, as well as its demise, have been shrouded in secrecy. It claimed to have a patent for genetically engineered microbes that could harness the sun’s energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, diesel fuel or jet fuel.
“Many people were very skeptical that they could pull off what they were trying to pull off,” Robert Rapier, who runs a website called R-Squared Energy, told The Boston Globe.
“There are other companies out there that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars and come up with the same results,” John Beneman, an expert on algae-based biofuels and CEO of MicroBio Engineering, told the Globe. “Either they are walking dead, or ghosts, or resting in peace.”
Jim Lane, a reporter for Biofuels Daily who favors renewable energy technologies, noted the company had a penchant for secrecy including when it closed its doors.
“The news from Joule closes out an extraordinary period of silence for a company that we once described as The Sultans of Stealth for their secretive approach to development,” he wrote.
The firm went through four CEOs in less than two years, according to Biofuels Digest.
Further adding to its mystery, the company raised 1 billion Rubles or $35 million from Rusano, the Kremlin-owned nanotechnology company that set up a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. Two other Russians with Kremlin ties sat on Joule’s board along with Podesta.
Flagship Pioneering, the main venture capital firm that underwrote Joule Unlimited, did not respond to numerous information requests from TheDCNF.
Read more at Daily Caller
If Hillary had won, the DOE would have continued its trajectory as a ‘green energy hedge fund.’ And her campaign’s national chairman John Podesta would stand to benefit greatly. Cozy. And the ties to Kremlin-backed board members sitting alongside Podesta will be ignored by the MSM.
A goon squad armed with law degrees rose to power in Washington DC. The Clinton’s were the prototypical business model. Don’t toe the line, tap dance on the edge.
The FBI has been reduced to WWF referees.
Lady Justice shrugs.
In the smug words of Tony Soprano “What’ya gonna do?”
This whole thing is about a Democrat record wipe before the next election . Isn’t it revealing when elected officials in the highest positions in the land are stonewalled by the “intelligence ” community . Records requests denied or redacted so bad they are useless yet FIFA requests are made as easily as coffee orders by people pretending to be other people in the Obama administration .
Funny why Powers just zipped it and or condoned it as day after day American citizens and political opponents were spied on by
the Democrats under her name . Who falsified the name ? Who received the ill-gotten information and who was it subsequently distributed to ? Powers better have a serious security detail on her
or she might get “robbed ” like Rich Seth .
And the mainstream media (with a few exceptions ) has gone silent on the Russia / Trump nothing burger but spying on journalists and political opponents …. silence . Watergate on steroids and not a peep perhaps because the illegally gained information was their source . No wonder these clowns are going broke . They deserve to.
Time for Micheal Mann to eat every copy of his putrid kids book THE TANTRUM THAT SAVED THE WORLD it seems parents had better be more careful what kind of stuff their kids read in schools run by the NEA and Greenpeace
This whole thing stinks out loud, and this story is but the tip of an incredible iceberg.
HRC/Clinton Foundation corruption.
State Department corruption.
FBI corruption.
Justice Department corruption.
CRIMINAL corruption. REAL Russian espionage!
The scope and gravity of this scandal are absolutely mind boggling.
The FBI had solid, documented evidence for all of the above that has been turned away by Obama’s Justice Department. It looks like the whole Russia/Trump narrative of the left is a contrived red herring designed to obfuscate and confuse the massive high-level crimes committed by guess who?…
Watergate now looks like Romper Room, and where is the leftstream media?
Who follows the Left stream media? Liberals.
Hear no evil, see no evil, because their media doesn’t speak of it. They’re cheerleaders.
Reporting the corruption and hypocrisy might disillusion Democrat voters. Can’t have that.
Speaking of Podesta what happened to Seth Rich ? Killed in a “robbery ” my ass .
Obama started his “hedge fund ” ways early helping to finance another government reliant flame out , Chicago Climate Exchange with his pal Earth Has a Fever Gore and the Enron blueprint for separating people and their money .
These jackasses cost taxpayers $Billions as they cultivated businesses designed to catch cash from government imposed regulation they were behind pushing . Tax payers were set up
and fleeced .
The fact the “green ” industries collapse after the Clintons choked
is no surprise at all . Insiders playing with a loaded deck still screwed up . $35 million lost vs the expected payoff similar to some of the other “green ” farces is chump change . Half a $billion blown on one solar company flame out alone . What did those insiders walk away with ?
Either Mueller is going to reveal and unravel the biggest fraud in history or he and his pals are going to cover it up . I know where my bet is .
Like I said what happened to Seth Rich ?