As special counsel Robert Mueller prepared to indict two of the President’s top former aides last month, and began to subpoena information from the White House, his campaign and members of his family about possible collusion with Russia, Donald Trump issued a tweet that bordered on hysteria:
“The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”
Responding to that presidential scream, Republicans on Capitol Hill, right-wing media outlets and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are doing something. Working together, they have revived the discredited “Russian uranium” accusations against Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the foundation that bears their names.
Their unsubtle purpose is to distract public and press attention from the ongoing probe of connections between Trump and the Kremlin with a conspiracy theory that envelops the Clintons, the Obama administration, the FBI, and Mueller himself — all with the aim of discrediting the investigation of Trump.
It is an implausible tale, full of logical inconsistencies and false assertions, that dates back to 2015, when Steve Bannon was head of Breitbart News and also ran a small Florida nonprofit called the Government Accountability Institute.
Looking ahead to Hillary Clinton’s likely nomination for President on the Democratic ticket, Bannon and author Peter Schweizer had put together a book called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” which charged that the former President and his wife had benefited from corrupt deals involving their foundation.
The book was a tendentious work, replete with errors and omissions, but it benefited from a pre-publication bonanza when the New York Times publicized one of its most sensational charges on the paper of record’s front page. For reasons best known to its editors, the Times agreed to an “exclusive deal” with Schweizer that led to a 4,400-word front-page article with the vague but suggestive headline “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” The story hinted at serious wrongdoing with implications for national security.
These were the dots connected:
Through a complex series of business deals, Russia had obtained control of a portion of U.S. uranium reserves, using a Vancouver-based company called Uranium One. Some of the Canadian investors who profited from the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom, the Russian state-owned atomic energy corporation, had given millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
Russia’s acquisition of American uranium had been approved by the State Department while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. And Bill Clinton had received a $500,000 fee for a speech delivered in Moscow at a bank that had some connection with Uranium One.
What weakened that apparently damning story was a single big flaw: Hillary Clinton never had the sole authority to sign off on the sale of Uranium One to the Russians, but held only a single seat on a government panel that included members from nine agencies, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.
That committee had voted unanimously in favor of the deal, which had also required and obtained the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state of Texas, then governed by Republican Rick Perry (later chosen by Trump to serve as secretary of energy).
Although “Clinton Cash” attributed a “central role” to Hillary, she hadn’t participated at all in the Uranium One decision. According to the assistant secretary of state who represented her on the inter-agency panel, “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.”
Knowledgeable observers of CFIUS say that its decisions are dominated by the Pentagon and the Treasury Department, which chairs the committee, not by State.
And those nine agencies had approved the sale of the remainder of Uranium One to the Russians in 2013, again unanimously, several months after Hillary Clinton had left government. That sale also required additional approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Canadian regulators.
So neither of the Clintons could have been bribed to approve Uranium One, because they had nothing to sell. And Frank Giustra, the billionaire Canadian mining investor who was by far the biggest foundation donor connected with Uranium One, had divested his holdings in the company years before it was sold.
Lame as it was, however, the Uranium One story helped launch “Clinton Cash” onto the bestseller lists and stoked the Hillary-hating narrative of the Trump campaign. After Trump’s election victory the story faded — until its recent reappearance on in right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and, of course, the presidential Twitter feed, as a cudgel against Mueller and his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.
Now, it is hyped by Fox talking heads as “the biggest scandal of the century,” which former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka says should send Hillary Clinton to the electric chair like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Soviet spies who stole American atomic secrets.
But in order to discredit Mueller, right-wing journalists have expanded the initial version into an even more convoluted and mysterious tale.
In The Hill newspaper, conservative journalist John Solomon pasted together the Uranium One story and a federal criminal investigation of bribes and kickbacks involving an executive at a Rosatom subsidiary called Tenex. Starting in 2009, a Tenex official named Vadim Mikerin had corrupted U.S. trucking companies that transported uranium with bribery, extortion and kickbacks.
Although the story of Mikerin’s bribe schemes had been covered in other outlets, The Hill and then Fox News freshened it up — and tied it to the Uranium One tale as “evidence” that Mueller, the FBI director when the investigation occurred, suffered from a “conflict of interest” in the Russia investigation.
On Fox News, Sean Hannity declared that the special counsel should “resign immediately, tonight!”
The precise nature of Mueller’s alleged conflict remains as puzzling as the claim that the Clintons somehow controlled the approval of Uranium One. The gist of the charge, according to The Hill, appeared to be that the Justice Department under Mueller had failed to loudly trumpet its successful prosecution of Mikerin’s bribery — which had nothing to do with Uranium One. The department had issued press releases, but that wasn’t enough. And it hadn’t misused the case to embarrass Hillary Clinton, who had nothing to do with it.
Yet the continuous squawking over this fabricated “scandal” — like Benghazi and Whitewater before it — has provoked Republicans in Congress as well as the attorney general to pretend that there is something to investigate.
The two House Republicans who specialize in dubious probes, Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes (who had to recuse himself from the Russia investigation this year) and Oversight chair Trey Gowdy (who was humiliated by Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings) have announced a new joint investigation of Uranium One. They have even hyped the upcoming appearance of an unnamed witness who cooperated with the FBI in the Mikerin probe, claiming that he will reveal Russian efforts to influence the Clintons.
Meanwhile, at the Justice Department, Sessions has buckled under continuous mockery and humiliation by Trump. Having promised to recuse himself from all decisions concerning the Russia probe, he reversed that vow last week by announcing that his department will consider appointing a special counsel to investigate the Clinton Foundation’s alleged involvement with Uranium One. He has asked department prosecutors to determine whether such an appointment is warranted.
Neither the House Republicans nor Sessions have yet explained how the Clintons could have controlled the disposition of Uranium One’s assets. Nor have they explained how the Uranium One deal, which prohibited the Russians from selling so much as an ounce of uranium ore outside the borders of the United States, could have endangered American national security.
And they have also failed to explain why the entire deal matters anyway, since the portion of U.S. reserves owned by Uranium One represents a tiny fraction of a fraction — a tenth of 1% — of the world’s uranium supply, most of which comes from Kazakhstan, Australia and Canada.
No doubt the Republicans, and the media outlets that parrot their conspiracies, are unaware of any of those simple facts. But they know one thing: They have to divert attention from the real scandal of Russian interference with our democratic system, and the possible collusion in that scheme by the Trump campaign, before the President starts screaming again.
Conason is author of “Man of the World: The Further Endeavors of Bill Clinton,” coming out in paperback this week with a new epilogue.
