In his rambling press conference Thursday, President Trump again asserted that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, gave American uranium to Russia, repeating a campaign lie that was debunked by PolitiFact.
Russia purchased a majority stake in a Canadian company that owns 20% of U.S. uranium production capacity to gain access to the company’s Kazakhistan uranium production, and the State Department was one of numerous federal and state agencies that signed off on the deal after reviewing whether it would make the U.S. dependent on foreign uranium suppliers, which it won’t because owning a controlling interest in the Canadian company doesn’t give Russia access to its U.S. uranium producers. Buying U.S.-sourced uranium requires export licenses Russia doesn’t have. But even if it could get such licenses, it wouldn’t mean anything, because “the United States and Russia [have] exchanged enriched and raw uranium for years,” according to the New York Times. Read story here.