The Justice Department is re-examining the FBI's investigation of the Uranium One deal

Justice Department prosecutors have begun re-examining the FBI's handling of a corruption investigation into the so-called 2010 Uranium One deal, as ordered by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, NBC News reports. The FBI had ultimately decided against filing charges in the case, despite some critics of Hillary Clinton raising concerns about how she might have used her role as secretary of state at the time to approve the sale of an American uranium mining facility to the U.S.-based unit of Rosatom, a Russian-owned nuclear power company. The Justice Department officials are asking the FBI agents involved in the conclusions to "explain the evidence they found," NBC News writes.

At the center of the controversy is a 2015 New York Times report that certain people linked to the uranium deal contributed millions to the Clinton Foundation and that former President Bill Clinton received $500,000 from a bank connected to the deal for delivering a speech in Moscow. Hillary Clinton, though, "has denied playing any role in the decision by the State Department to approve the sale, and the State Department official who approved it has said Clinton did not intervene in the matter," NBC News writes.

Even some conservative commentators have dismissed the alleged scandal as a nothingburger. As skeptics point out, the State Department was just one of nine government agencies that approved the sale.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It is up to the Justice Department to decide, though, if the Uranium One deal is concerning enough to merit the recommendation of "the appointment of a special counsel." President Trump has urged the investigation on, tweeting: "Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!" Read more about the Justice Department's probe at NBC News.