Yes, Hillary Clinton ‘Okayed’ Russian Uranium Deal, But She Wasn’t The Only One

The Hillary Clinton uranium deal with Russia was again brought up by President Donald Trump this past week, prompting news outlets to again verify and/or debunk the claim, but I’m here to give you the facts, based on research from both the organizations that “disproved” the claim and those that, instead of trying to negate it, tried to verify the truth of how it went down.

My intention is not to persuade you to a specific conclusion, but rather give you the chance to make up your own mind, which really should be the motive of every outlet that chooses to fact-check political allegations.

The Deal

Trump claimed that “Hillary Clinton gave Russia 20 percent of the United States’ uranium.”

This is, believe it or not, both true and false. Was there a Hillary Clinton uranium deal involving Russia? Pretty much, yes, but it didn’t just involve Clinton and Russian president Vladimir Putin and it wasn’t for pure uranium.

Essentially, there wasn’t a transaction in which Clinton literally handed over twenty percent of the country’s uranium and simultaneously Putin literally handed over millions of dollars in exchange. No, it was a little more complicated than that.

Fact-Checkers

It is my humble opinion that mainstream media “fact-checkers” have approached the Hillary Clinton uranium deal with Russia from a biased stance. In my eyes, their job, whether it actually happened or not, is to disprove it, because let’s face it, during the 2016 election mainstream outlets trashed Donald Trump at every chance while at the same time they protected Clinton.

Don’t believe me? That’s okay, because there’s proof, thanks to a whistleblower organization known as WikiLeaks, that the media was colluding with the Clinton campaign.

I have learned the truth about the Clinton uranium deal partly by scrutinizing the fact-checking site PolitiFact’s debunking of it. Their conclusion regarding Trump’s claim is that it’s “mostly false,” but that’s more of their opinion really, because, like I said, there was a deal, it just didn’t happen exactly like Trump said it did.

How It Went Down

The Hillary Clinton uranium deal with Russia was not a one-time transaction, as it reportedly took place starting in 2009, ending sometime in 2013 and it consisted of more than one exchange.

Like I already mentioned, the deal wasn’t for pure uranium, but it instead granted Russia 20 percent of the U.S.’s capacity in uranium. So really, this means Hillary sold a fifth of the maximum space allowed for uranium within U.S. borders. She sold mining rights for uranium.

You may be wondering if that little nugget of information really makes a big difference in the scheme of things. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions regarding that.

The State Department, headed by Clinton at the time this uranium deal took place, was one of nine different government institutions that had the authority to okay the deal, but at the same time lacked the authority to stop it from happening once they’d verified their position in it. Though Hillary technically had the ability to object to the deal once she’d signed her name to it, President Obama was the only person who had the power to stop it once it started, and he didn’t.

Furthermore…

Now we must straighten out this whole “Clinton was paid $145 million” for the uranium deal business. Where did Trump get that number and is it accurate?

For whatever reason, finding the answer to this wasn’t as easy as one would think, considering all the articles that exist out there about this specific topic.

The New York Times touched on the Hillary Clinton uranium deal with Russia in April of 2015, long before Donald Trump had made the claims accusing his political opponent of engaging in a pay-for-play with Vladimir Putin, and the information they offer thickens the plot indeed.

The piece is called “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal”, so unless they wanted to lie in their headline, as far as the Times is concerned, there was a seeming motive for Secretary of State Clinton to authorize the exchange.

The difference between the Times article and PolitiFact’s is that the former isn’t an official fact-checking article, as at the time it was written, debunking a claim made by Donald Trump wasn’t high on their list of priorities.

“…the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.”

The uranium exchange with Russia centered around a Canadian mining company called Uranium One. Russia was to take over this company as part of the deal, and what the Times does make clear is that Clinton was a part of the reason the 20 percent of the United States’ uranium capacity became Russia’s and she did receive money from Uranium One during the time Russia was making the company its own. I did not find proof that the Clintons received $145 million, nor did I find proof of how much they ended up with and who specifically funneled the money into their account.

In Conclusion

Did the Hillary Clinton uranium deal with Russia happen the way Donald Trump said it happened? Does he have a point in that no one seemed to care when Clinton worked with Russia in order to grant them uranium mining rights, but everyone is making a huge deal about Trump supposedly being in cahoots with Vladimir Putin? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.

[Featured Image by Mikhail Metzel/AP Images]