First, former Bush speechwriter and
Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer claimed—with an assist from the
New York Times—that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had approved a deal involving a Russian uranium mining company. Unfortunately for Schweizer and the
Times the facts showed that the State Department is just one of nine votes on the committee that had to approve that deal, that Clinton wasn't personally involved in the review, and that other independent agencies also had to approve it. But fear not! Schweizer had a fallback position, which he trotted out on
Fox News Sunday,
because of course Fox News:
WALLACE: Nine separate agencies and they point out there's no hard evidence, and you don't cite any in the book that Hillary Clinton took direct action, was involved in any way in approving as one of nine agencies the sale of the company?
SCHWEIZER: Well, here's what's important to keep in mind: it was one of nine agencies, but any one of those agencies had veto power. So, she could have stopped the deal.
All the money that allegedly flowed to the Clintons to smooth the way for this deal to go through was so that Clinton would not attempt, as the head of one of nine agencies on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, to veto it? When the State Department's review of the deal didn't rise to the level where the secretary would get personally involved? Oh, and by the way, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Canadian government also signed off on the deal, and if the cabinet secretaries on the CFIUS can't agree on whether to approve a deal, it's not a one-secretary veto situation:
the president then decides.
So Schweizer's allegation basically boils down to that Hillary Clinton did not intervene in a process that hadn't risen to the level of needing the secretary's attention, and that she did not exercise veto power she didn't really have. Boy, those donors sure bought some extra-special treatment from her.