Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she is “not concerned” about the potential appointment of a special counsel to investigate the so-called Uranium One scandal Republicans have homed in on in recent weeks.
During an exclusive interview with Mother Jones Wednesday, Clinton said reports that the attorney general had asked top prosecutors to look into appointing a special counsel to probe the sale of a uranium company to Russia represented a “politicization of the Justice Department.” She defended her actions, saying the Uranium One story “has been debunked countless times.”
“It is nothing but a false charge that the Trump administration is trying to drum up in order to avoid attention being drawn to them. I mean, even (Rep.) Trey Gowdy (R-SC), someone who is hardly a fan of mine, said that there doesn’t seem to be the basis for a special counsel,” she said. “Taking myself out of it, this is such an abuse of power and it goes right at the rule of law.”
Some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have decided the sale of Uranium One while Clinton was head of the State Department is the real Russia story and have claimed there was some type of link between the sale of the company to Russian interests in 2010 and donations to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton has maintained there was no link between the two and has cited that there were nine different federal agencies that signed off on the deal.
“If they send a signal that we’re going to be like some dictatorship, like some authoritarian regime, where political opponents are going to be unfairly, fraudulently investigated, that rips at the fabric of the contract we have, that we can trust our justice system,” she said. “With all of our problems, you know them and I know them, ultimately we have to stand up for that, we have to believe that, we have to fix the problems when they occur and when justice is denied, but moving into the political realm is something we’ve never seen.”
She said if Attorney General Jeff Sessions decides to appoint a special counsel to investigate the deal, “nothing will come of it” but it will “cause a lot of terrible consequences,” like “demoralizing” the American people’s opinions of the justice system.
“It will also send a terrible signal to our country and the world that somehow we are giving up on the kind of values that we used to live by and we used to promote worldwide,” she said. “I’m not concerned, because I know that there is no basis to it. I regret if they do it because it will be such a disastrous step into politicizing the justice system.”
Watch the interview below:
