(Credit: Kelli R. Grant/Yahoo News, photos; AP/Getty Images)
Running out the clock: The FBI and DOJ slow-walked their investigation into the Clinton Foundation and the sale of Uranium One to Russia-backed interests. As a result of roadblocks, the statute of limitations was allowed to lapse on any prosecution.
Federal investigators believed there was significant evidence worth pursuing related to possible criminality involving the Clinton Foundation and the State Department’s approval of the sale of Uranium One to Russian state-owned interests, but delays by the Justice Department and FBI led the inquiry to whither and die because of statute of limitations issues.
The sale of the Canada-based Uranium One to the Russian state-owned Rosatom was the focus of great controversy and scrutiny from Republicans and others who argued that then-Secretary of State Clinton helped approve the deal and that the Clinton Foundation may have stood to benefit from it.
Career agents and line prosecutors at the FBI and DOJ also believed the saga may have been a criminal one, but orders from DOJ leaders such as then-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe slow-walked and stonewalled the inquiry to the point where it could no longer be pursued.
Andrew McCabe and Sally Yates (Credit: The Associated Press and ABC News)
FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors in Little Rock, Arkansas and elsewhere closely scrutinized the scandal — but were largely blocked from serious investigative action due to leadership delays and, following those delays, arguments that the statute of limitations had run out.
Jonathan Ross, then the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, argued in a 2018 email that “there is no legal barrier in continuing the present investigation” into the Clinton Foundation and Uranium One. Ross has served as U.S. Attorney in Arkansas since 2022, including during Trump’s second term.
Then-U.S. Attorney Cody Hiland of Arkansas also sent a 2018 email to then-U.S. Attorney John Huber of Utah, largely summarizing Ross’s arguments, stressing that “we do not believe the prosecution is time-barred by a statute of limitations” in part “because payments from the subjects of the investigation to the Foundation were made continuously from 2007 through 2014.”
A newly-declassified internal FBI investigative timeline also argued that claims that the statute of limitations had run out on the Uranium One inquiry “failed to include whether Acts of Concealment such as deleting emails in 2015 and making additional statements and representations about those deletions would have extended the statute of limitations” and also pointed to possible federal criminal statutes such as the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, major fraud against the United States, and bank fraud.
The timeline also argued that 18 U.S. Code § 3287 — Wartime Suspension of Statute of Limitations Act — should have extended the statute of limitations for this alleged criminality as well.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, made the records produced to him by FBI Director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi available to Just the News this past weekend. (Read more: Just the News, 12/15/2025) (Archive)