The liberal mainstream media has spent more than a year claiming that Trump — both as a candidate and as president — colluded with Russia in business deals and back-room deals that have never materialized. Now that there is proof positive that their darling, Hillary Clinton, is guilty of colluding with Russia, those same liberal mainstream media are either silent on the subject or making lame attempts to whitewash yet another Clinton scandal.

On Tuesday The Hill reported on new government documents showing that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on transferring between 20 and 25 percent of U.S. uranium to Russia in the Uranium One deal even though the FBI was aware that Putin’s regime in Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to secure the deal. This was — or course — at a time when the Clinton Foundation was receiving huge donations from Russian interests involved in the deal.

As this writer reported then:

The evidence of bribes and kickbacks is not mere conjecture and innuendo (as in the case of allegations against Trump), but is solidly supported by “a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry” who gathered “extensive financial records,” made “secret recordings,” and intercepted “emails as early as 2009,” according to The Hill. Moreover:

They also obtained an eyewitness account — backed by documents — indicating Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow, sources told The Hill.

The racketeering scheme was conducted “with the consent of higher level officials” in Russia who “shared the proceeds” from the kickbacks, one agent declared in an affidavit years later.

And yet — even with the FBI and other federal authorities being aware of this in 2009, the DOJ dragged the investigation out until 2015, allowing a deal to go through that transferred between 20 and 25 percent of U.S. uranium to Russia in the Uranium One deal that fattened the coffers of the Clinton Foundation, strengthened Putin’s Russia, and weakened the United States. For the anti-American element (for whom Clinton was the perfect candidate), that is a win/win/win scenario.

The liberal mainstream media largely ignored the story (causing President Trump to tweet on Thursday, “Uranium deal to Russia, with Clinton help and Obama Administration knowledge, is the biggest story that Fake Media doesn't want to follow!”) or — when nearly forced to report on it — began soft-selling and whitewashing it.

Newsweek for example, only uses the name “Clinton” three times in its article on the scandal, and the sum and substance of those uses are that Clinton had no idea what was going on. Scandal? You don’t say! Here are those three uses:

FBI agents also gathered documents and a witness account that Russian officials routed millions of dollars to ex-President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat on a committee that gave a nod to the dealings with Moscow.

Like the Obama administration, the Clintons said there was no evidence to prompt them to go the other way on the Uranium One deal.

Instead of allowing the focus to remain on Clinton, Newsweek put the emphasis on the “Obama administration,” writing, “The Obama administration signed a controversial nuclear deal with Moscow despite prior FBI findings that Russian officials were bribing their way into the U.S. atomic energy industry, according to government documents just published by The Hill.”

And while Newsweek reported on this early, others waited until Trump called them out for ignoring it.

The New York Times — which in 2015 had reported on more than $40,000,000 in donations to the Clinton Foundation in connection with the Uranium One deal — fell oddly silent until Thursday. Even then, the Times merely ran an Associated Press article in which the focus was not on the scandal itself, but on President Trump’s response to it. And in that article, the AP pulls out buckets and buckets of whitewash. Between “Clinton said in a June 2015 interview with WMUR in New Hampshire that she ‘was not personally involved because that wasn't something the secretary of state did’” and “the majority of the donations from individuals related to Uranium One and UrAsia were made before and during Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign — before she became Secretary of State,” the article leaves one with the impression that Clinton is without blame for taking over $40,000,000 in bribes and then doing the bidding of her Russian masters.

But the prize goes to that bastion of liberal “principles,” the Washington Post. In an article — also published Thursday — under the headline, “Making sense of Russia, uranium and Hillary Clinton,” the Post says:

New reporting this week by the Hill has, indeed, added a layer of intrigue to the sale of a uranium mining company to Russia's atomic energy agency, which was approved by the Clinton-led State Department and eight other U.S. government agencies. But the latest developments, as they relate to Clinton, are not as explosive as certain news outlets — eager to draw attention away from reporting on President Trump and Russia — would have you believe.

You have to give the folks over at the Post credit; it takes a special kind of nerve to try to spin a Clinton/Russia collusion scandal into a Trump/Russia collusion scandal. Nerve, however, is not intellect. And that is where this attempt at whitewashing falls short. Writing for the Post, Callum Borchers goes on to “break it down” for us. The only thing that breaks down, though, is the disjointed line of “reasoning” on which the article leans as it makes one ridiculous assertion after another, finally culminating in what would be a great punchline if Borchers had meant all of this as a joke.

He writes that Clinton may not have even known about the FBI investigation of the Uranium One deal, saying:

But there is reason to doubt that Clinton would have been in the know. The FBI investigation was still four years from completion at the time that the uranium deal was approved. (One Russian official, Vadim Mikerin, was indicted in 2014 and later sentenced to four years in prison.)

As further “proof” of Hillary’s ignorance (and since when is an ignorant secretary of state a good thing?), Borchers cites Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway. He quotes “a surprised Hosko” as saying, “I had no idea this case was being conducted” and projects the lines to assert that if Hosko “did not know about the FBI's investigation, then Clinton probably didn't, either.”

Seriously?

Holding up a self-confessed ignorant assistant FBI director as a proof of Hillary’s ignorance seems to assume a degree of ignorance on the part of the reader that any reader to the right of Mao should find offensive.

But Borchers is not finished.

Since it would be impossible to deny those millions the Russians stuffed into the coffers of the Clinton Foundation, Borchers quotes the Times report from 2015 and then just sort of casually brushes the whole thing away as if it doesn’t matter. He ends his article with:

The New York Times reported in 2015 that “as the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation.”

It is virtually impossible to view these donations as anything other than an attempt to curry favor with Clinton. Donations alone do not, however, prove that Clinton was actually influenced by money to vote in favor of the Uranium One sale — or to overlook the FBI investigation. Again, there is no evidence that she even knew about the investigation.

Similarly, it is virtually impossible to view foreign dignitaries' habit of lodging at Trump's Washington hotel as anything other than an attempt to curry favor with the president. Reservations and room service alone do not, however, prove that Trump's foreign policy is actually influenced by money.

Some people willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt are denying Clinton the same courtesy.

If his nerve had not already outpaced his intellect, it certainly does so here. To compare foreign dignitaries paying the going rate for accommodations and amenities to over $40,000,000 in “donations” from people who would then profit many times that amount in a deal that Clinton pushed through is — well, since this magazine is read by mixed company, let’s say — something left behind by bulls. And after the liberal mainstream media is finished trying to whitewash UraniumGate, the smell of both the scandal and the material used to attempt that whitewash will likely remain for a long time.

Image: Screenshot from Uranium One promotional video