House Republicans are investigating
Democratic leader calls move partisan
the Obama Administration’s approval to sell uranium mines to a Russianbacked company.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans are opening investigations of the Obama administration’s 2010 decision to approve the sale of U.S. uranium mines to a Russianbacked company, lawmakers said Tuesday.
Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, said his panel and the House oversight committee would jointly probe the deal, which President Donald Trump has called “the real Russia story.”
Nunes, R-Calif., and other Trump supporters have raised the 7-year-old uranium deal while four congressional committees and Special Counsel Robert Mueller are looking into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether Moscow had any direct links to the Trump campaign.
Nunes said the House probe would focus initially on whether the the FBI or Justice Department had investigated alleged attempts by Russian officials to gain influence over the U.S. energy industry.
“This is just the beginning of the probe,” Nunes said.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, criticized the new investigations as partisan.
“They are designed to distract attention and pursue the president’s preferred goal — attacking (former presidential candidate Hillary) Clinton and (former President Barack) Obama,” Schiff, D-Calif., said.
The House probe of the uranium deal parallels a Senate Judiciary Committee probe into whether the FBI had evidence that Russian nuclear officials were involved in fraudulent dealings in 2009 before the uranium deal was approved.
In April, Nunes stepped away from leading the House intelligence committee probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election after the House Ethics Committee said it was investigating whether he had improperly disclosed classified information.
But he and his staff have used his chairmanship to push parallel investigations aimed at Trump’s opponents and critics, including Fusion GPS, the political research firm behind an unverified dossier of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia.
Trump and his supporters frequently cite the 2010 purchase of Uranium One by Rosatom, a Russian-run company, as a counter to questions about Russian support for Trump’s presidential bid.
The sale was approved while Clinton led the State Department and some investors in the U.S. company had relationships with former President Bill Clinton and had donated to the Clinton Foundation. The State Department was one of nine U.S. departments or agencies that approved the sale.
Clinton’s presidential campaign and former State Department officials said she was not involved in the approval process by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.