Shepard Smith tackles the Uranium One scandal - and makes a surprising conclusion

Fox News' Shepard Smith tackled the Uranium One deal with Russia and the suspected scandal surrounding it, but drew a surprising conclusion.

Here's the video of Shepard Smith taking on the Uranium One deal:

Fox's Shep Smith takes apart the Uranium One conspiracy his Fox News colleagues have been relentlessly hyping pic.twitter.com/HZBlBtFvo4

— Media Matters (@mmfa) November 14, 2017

Here's what he said:

"So what are the facts? What is Uranium One? Uranium One is the name of a South Africa-based mining company," Smith began.

"Back in 2007 it merged with Urasia energy based in Canada. And in 2010 the mining arm of the Russian nuclear agency Rosatom, bought controlling interest in the company. Among other places, that mining company had operations in Wyoming that amounted to what the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions or the NRC said was at the time was about 20% uranium production capacity in the U.S.," he explained.

"Today the NRC says it's about 10%," he said. "Now, here's the accusation."

"Nine people involved in the deal made donations to the Clinton Foundation totaling more than $140 million," he added. "In exchange, Secretary of State Clinton approved the sale to the Russians. A quid pro quo."

"The accusation first made by Peter Schweizer," Smith continued, "the senior editor at large of the website Breitbart in his 2015 book, Clinton Cash. The next year, candidate Donald Trump cited the accusation as an example of Clinton corruption."

"Hillary Clinton's State Department approved the transfer of 20% of America's uranium holdings to Russia, while nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation," President Trump said in a recorded video.

"That statement is inaccurate in a number of ways," Smith said. "First, the Clinton State Department had no power to veto or approve that transaction. It could do neither. Here's how it does work."

"By law, when a foreign company wants to buy anything with potential national security implications, an interagency committee of the federal government must approve it," he continued. "The committee was given a broad mandate under President Reagan to advise the president on foreign investment transactions."

"That committee is called CFIUS," he explained, "or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. It includes nine department heads. The Secretary of the Treasury is the chair person. The rest are the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Commerce, Defense, State and Energy, plus the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. That's CFIUS. The nine department heads all approved the sale of Uranium One."

"It was unanimous - not a Hillary Clinton approval," he said.

"We don't know definitively whether Secretary Clinton participated at all directly," Smith added. "The then-Secretary of State, I should say Assistant Secretary of State Jose Fernando represented State on CFIUS. He says she did not, reporting that the secretary never intervened."

"Further neither Secretary Clinton nor the committee as a whole could stop any deal of this kind. The committee members evaluate the sale of anything potentially related to national security," he continued. "By law, if one member objects, the president and only the president can veto such a transaction. No committee member of the nine objected."

Smith went on to dismantle some of the other accusations in the scandal.

"The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not," he said. "That is your Uranium One."

Is this being investigated?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday that he asked his senior federal investigators to look into whether the charges merited an investigation and a special counsel.