Wait...This Was On FOX NEWS? (Shepard Smith Debunks The Uranium One Fake News)

Again this was on Fox "News."  The Washington Post has a good summary. He started with the charge:

Nine people involved in the deal made donations to the Clinton Foundation totaling more than $140 million. In exchange, Secretary of State Clinton approved the sale to the Russians, a quid pro quo. The accusation [was] first made by Peter Schweizer, 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.

Then added Trump's retelling of the charge:

Hillary Clinton’s State Department approved the transfer of 20 percent of America’s uranium holdings to Russia. Well, nine investors in the deal funneled $145 million to the Clinton Foundation.

The Post goes on:

Smith called the statement “inaccurate in a number of ways,” noting that “the Clinton State Department had no power to veto or approve that transaction.” Rather, it must be approved by an interagency committee of the government consisting of nine department heads, including the secretary of state.

Most of the Clinton Foundation donations in question, he pointed out, came from Frank Giustra, the founder of the uranium company in Canada. But Giustra, Smith noted, “says he sold his stake in the company back in 2007,” three years before the uranium/Russia deal and “a year and a half before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state.”

Smith sums up:

. . . The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not. A committee of nine evaluated the sale, the president approved the sale, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others had to offer permits, and none of the uranium was exported for use by the U.S. to Russia.

Shepard Smith joins other fact-checking organizations in debunking this story:

• Snopes 
• Factcheck.org 
• Washington Post

But this hasn't stopped our friends at the Trib from pushing this falseness. Only last month they editorialized:

New controversy over a 2010 deal that gave Russia 20 percent of America's uranium-mining capacity raises questions about whether the Obama administration knew about alleged corruption involving Russian nuclear officials.

What an interesting wrinkle! Now it's whether the Obama administration knew about the corruption (that didn't happen)!

A conservative newspaper and a conservative cable news channel. I am wondering if my friends at the Trib caught Smith's debunking and whether those stubborn facts will stick with them.

Yea, I was kidding.