On her Sunday show, MSNBC host Joy Reid claimed that Hillary Clinton did not sit on the panel that approved the Uranium One deal.
″So what you’re talking about is a deal that nine members of CFIUS approved unanimously. None of them was Hillary Clinton,” Reid said.
The purchase of a majority share in the uranium mining company Uranium One, by the Russian Atomic Energy Agency was first approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and received final approval from the Obama administration in 2010. CFIUS is made up of nine departments, including the State Department, of which Clinton was the secretary during the sale’s approval.
In a 2015 interview, however, Clinton said she was not involved in the Uranium One deal. “There were nine government agencies who had to sign off on that deal,” Clinton told a New Hampshire TV station. “I was not personally involved because that was not something the secretary of State did.”
At the time, the New York Times received a statement from former assistant secretary Jose Fernandez, who was appointed to the CFIUS during the Uranium One deal. “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter,” Fernandez told the Times.
So while Clinton may have been briefed on the matter, according to Fernandez and Clinton, the secretary did not personally approve the deal.
In 2013, the CFIUS posted a general overview of the committee’s process. The article notes the strict confidentiality of the committee, stating, “By law, information filed with CFIUS is subject to strong confidentiality requirements that prohibit disclosure to the public.”
The CFIUS overview goes on to say that the committee members are made up of the heads of each department and that these members are the ones who review each transaction. The Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007 states that CFIUS “shall be comprised of the following members or the designee of any such member.” Fernandez, presumably, was Clinton’s designee.
Both Clinton and Fernandez publicly insist that Clinton did not intervene in the Uranium One deal. And no one with knowledge of the process has suggested that they are misrepresenting the truth.
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