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Flashback: Hillary Clinton Attacked Obama for Backroom Deals with Nuclear Industry Donors

April 24, 2015

During Hillary Clinton's 2008 primary fight with Barack Obama, she attacked him for cutting deals "behind closed doors" with donors from a nuclear power company that allowed it to avoid full disclosure in the industry.

"Senator Obama has some questions to answer about his dealings with one of his largest contributors, Exelon, a big nuclear power company," Clinton said in February 2008. "Apparently he cut some deals behind closed doors to protect them from full disclosure in the nuclear industry."

Clinton's comments came in response to a question from an Iowa voter that wanted assurance that Clinton would not be "making deals behind closed doors" if elected president. 

To her credit, Clinton's suspicions about Obama turned out to be true. Top Exelon executives were early supporters of Obama, and it successfully bought them access to his White House. The Illinois company, which was founded with the help of Rahm Emanuel, even referred to itself as "the president’s utility."

Clinton was busy making her own backroom deals with nuclear companies while in the administration.

Officials from a Kazakh nuclear utility had a secret meeting with former President Bill Clinton at the family's Chappaqua, N.Y., mansion, and lied to a New York Times reporter saying that the meeting never happened. The meeting was arranged by a Canadian mining tycoon who has pledged $100 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The New York Times also reported on Thursday that millions of dollars flowed to the Clinton Foundation from parties interested in the State Department approval of the sale of a Canadian-run uranium mining operation to the Russian government.

It was Clinton's transparency that was being called into question during the primary interview.

"How can we believe that you are not going to [make deals behind closed doors] if you do not do something as simple as release your tax returns?" was the question she was responding to.

Her current campaign for president is dealing with more of the same. It has already been revealed that she kept a private email server during her years as secretary of state and that many of the emails were permanently deleted without government approval.