The Republican attempt to distract from Trump’s Russia scandal by weaving a Hillary ClintonUranium One conspiracy theory is built on lies

As special counsel Robert Mueller prepared to indict two of the President’s top former aides last month, and began to subpoena information from the White House, his campaign and members of his family about possible collusion with Russia, Donald Trump issued a tweet that bordered on hysteria:

“The Dems are using this terrible (and bad for our country) Witch Hunt for evil politics, but the R’s are now fighting back like never before. There is so much GUILT by Democrats/Clinton, and now the facts are pouring out. DO SOMETHING!”

Responding to that presidential scream, Republicans on Capitol Hill, right-wing media outlets and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are doing something. Working together, they have revived the discredited “Russian uranium” accusations against Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as the foundation that bears their names.

Their unsubtle purpose is to distract public and press attention from the ongoing probe of connections between Trump and the Kremlin with a conspiracy theory that envelops the Clintons, the Obama administration, the FBI, and Mueller himself — all with the aim of discrediting the investigation of Trump.

It is an implausible tale, full of logical inconsistencies and false assertions, that dates back to 2015, when Steve Bannon was head of Breitbart News and also ran a small Florida nonprofit called the Government Accountability Institute.

Looking ahead to Hillary Clinton’s likely nomination for President on the Democratic ticket, Bannon and author Peter Schweizer had put together a book called “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” which charged that the former President and his wife had benefited from corrupt deals involving their foundation.

The book was a tendentious work, replete with errors and omissions, but it benefited from a pre-publication bonanza when the New York Times publicized one of its most sensational charges on the paper of record’s front page. For reasons best known to its editors, the Times agreed to an “exclusive deal” with Schweizer that led to a 4,400-word frontpage article with the vague but suggestive headline “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal.” The story hinted at serious wrongdoing with implications for national security. These were the dots connected: Through a complex series of business deals, Russia had obtained control of a portion of U.S. uranium reserves, using a Vancouver-based company called Uranium One. Some of the Canadian investors who profited from the sale of Uranium One to Rosatom, the Russian state-owned atomic energy corporation, had given millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

Russia’s acquisition of American uranium had been approved by the State Department while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. And Bill Clinton had received a $500,000 fee for a speech delivered in Moscow at a bank that had some connection with Uranium One.

What weakened that apparently damning story was a single big flaw: Hillary Clinton never had the sole authority to sign off on the sale of Uranium One to the Russians, but held only a single seat on a government panel that included members from nine agencies, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

That committee had voted unanimously in favor of the deal, which had also required and obtained the approval of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the state of Texas, then governed by Republican Rick Perry (later chosen by Trump to serve as secretary of energy).

Although “Clinton Cash” attributed a “central role” to Hillary, she hadn’t participated at all in the Uranium One decision. According to the assistant secretary of state who represented her on the interagency panel, “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any CFIUS matter.”

Knowledgeable observers of CFIUS say that its decisions are dominated by the Pentagon and the Treasury Department, which chairs the committee, not by State.

And those nine agencies had approved the sale of the remainder of Uranium One to the Russians in 2013, again unanimously, several months after Hillary Clinton had left government. That sale also required additional approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Canadian regulators.

So neither of the Clintons could have been bribed to approve Uranium One, because they had nothing to sell. And Frank Giustra, the billionaire Canadian mining investor who was by far the biggest foundation donor connected with Uranium One, had divested his holdings in the company years before it was sold.

Lame as it was, however, the Uranium One story helped launch “Clinton Cash” onto the bestseller lists and stoked the Hillary-hating narrative of the Trump campaign. After Trump’s election victory the story faded – until its recent reappearance on in right-wing media outlets like Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting and, of course, the presidential Twitter feed, as a cudgel against Mueller and his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign.

Now, it is hyped by Fox talking heads as “the biggest scandal of the century,” which former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka says should send Hillary Clinton to the electric chair like Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the Soviet spies who stole American atomic secrets.

But in order to discredit Mueller, rightwing journalists have expanded the initial version into an even more convoluted and mysterious tale.

In The Hill newspaper, conservative journalist John Solomon pasted together the Uranium One story and a federal criminal investigation of bribes and kickbacks involving an executive at a Rosatom subsidiary called Tenex. Starting in 2009, a Tenex official named Vadim Mikerin had corrupted U.S. trucking companies that transported uranium with bribery, extortion and kickbacks.

Although the story of Mikerin’s bribe schemes had been covered in other