Often repeating a lie doesn't make it true

To The Eagle,

Let’s straighten out one twisted fact mentioned in an opinion piece last week. I refer to the repeated lie that “Hillary Clinton sold 20 percent of our uranium to Russia,”

Folks who have casually smeared Clinton’s reputation by Trumpeting fake facts about her performance at the state department will no longer be receiving a free pass to traffic in such innuendos.

The verifiable facts are these. In 2010 Rosatom, a Russian nuclear power consortium, purchased controlling interest in Uranium One, an American uranium mining company.

According to Peter Grier, staff reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, and Louis Nelson of Politico, during that purchase, Clinton was one of nine members of a US committee weighing that transaction. While cabinet heads made up the committee, such positions were nominal. As is often the case in government, subordinates go to the meetings and do the work.

Further, they reported: Because uranium is considered an asset with national security implications, the sale to Rosatom was subject to approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an intragovernmental agency that included input from the Departments of State, Treasury, Justice, Energy, Defense, Commerce and Homeland Security, as well as the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. They unanimously approved the transaction.

Clinton never had the power to approve the deal on her own.

With its purchase of Uranium One, Rosatom assumed control of roughly 20 percent of uranium production capacity in the U.S. Since then, other new mining firms have reduced that figure to about 10 percent, according to a lengthy investigation of Uranium One assets by The Washington Post.

The license issued to Rosatom by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, prohibits the company from exporting uranium outside the country, according to OilPrice.com.

There it is. Now, who's next?

JB Bouchard

Puget Island