Fox News anchor Shepard Smith on Tuesday evening debunked what his own network has called the Hillary Clinton uranium scandal, sparking fury among some Fox viewers.

Smith said Donald Trump’s repeated accusations during the election campaign that Hillary Clinton smoothed a deal while she was secretary of state involving US uranium mining, Russia and the family’s charitable Clinton Foundation was “inaccurate in a number of ways”.

Shepard Smith breaks with Fox News line on Trump: 'Why all these lies?' Read more

The story was revived this week because the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is under pressure from the president to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the old allegations. Sessions hinted in a congressional hearing on Tuesday that there was no basis to do so.

But a comprehensive unraveling of the accusations themselves via Fox News, albeit by an anchor who has balked before at the channel’s habit of stoking stories that bolster Trump and weaken Clinton, has shaken many in Fox’s loyal conservative audience.

“Get Shepard Smith off of Fox. He’s arrogant and doing his own spin. Nobody knows how deep the left’s conspiracy goes and Shepherd Smith has ZERO inside info because nobody trusts him. OUT!” one outraged Fox viewer posted on Twitter after the segment aired.

RiotWomenn (@riotwomennn) Fox News reports on Uranium One. Shepard Smith uses detailed facts & graphs to explain why there is no reason to investigate. It is a false controversy meant to draw our attention from real issues within the Trump administration. pic.twitter.com/Kx84vsTGDZ

In a lengthy and complex segment, Shepard Smith outlined the original accusations, made in a book by a journalist for rightwing news website Breitbart, and Trump’s using them to boost support on the campaign, and took them apart.

He first described the accusations that when Hillary Clinton led the state department in the Obama administration, she approved the sale of a Canadian company, which had large uranium mining interests in Wyoming, to the Russian nuclear agency and in a quid pro quo received $140m in donations to the Clinton Foundation from nine people involved in the business deal.

The accusations, along with the problem of Clinton using a private email server while she was secretary of state, which was prohibited, had prompted frequent chants of “Lock her up” from Republican crowds on the campaign trail, which Trump did not discourage.

On Tuesday night, Smith played a clip of Trump repeating the allegations against Clinton.

“That statement is inaccurate in a number of ways,” Smith said. He then went on to describe how the deal needed the approval of a committee formed from the heads of nine federal government agencies, and Barack Obama – because of the national security implications of Russia holding any US uranium interests – under rules written during the Ronald Reagan administration. He pointed out that the state department said Clinton did not intervene to approve the deal and, besides, did not have the power to approve or block the deal.

He added that none of the uranium mined in Wyoming by the Canadian company was exported to Russia, and the vast bulk of the donations to the Clinton Foundation were made by a man who had already sold his stake in the uranium company in 2007 – years before the Russian deal went through and about 18 months before Clinton became secretary of state.

As if perhaps realizing he was broadcasting a segment that went against the grain of other stories about the uranium deal reported by Fox, and against the political bent of many viewers, Smith stumbled over his script several times during the report.

After detailing the scheduling of the donations, he said: “Here the timing is accurate … inaccurate.”

Fox News made much of the revived scandal on Monday and the prospects of Sessions summoning general counsel to investigate. Sessions has asked DoJ lawyers to review the facts before he makes any announcement.