Justice Department Effectively Ends Clinton Investigation After Finding Nothing: Report

A Department of Justice inquiry into Hillary Clinton that began after conservatives demanded more investigations into the former Democratic presidential candidate is reportedly ending with no actual results.

Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions appointed U.S. Attorney John Huber in 2018 to look into concerns raised by President Donald Trump and his Republican allies that the FBI did not properly look into Clinton’s involvement in a uranium deal while she was secretary of state in the Obama administration.

Huber allegedly reviewed documents and spoke with federal law enforcement officials in Arkansas who were handling an investigation into the Clinton Foundation. Though the inquiry has not formally ended and no official notice has been sent to the Justice Department or to Congress, Huber has effectively finished his assignment and found nothing worth pursuing, current and former officials told The Washington Post in a report published Thursday. HuffPost has not been able to independently confirm that the inquiry has ended.

Canadian mining company Uranium One, which had major U.S. holdings, was sold in 2010 to a Russian firm while Clinton was secretary of state. The sale required approval from nine U.S. agencies, including the State Department, before it could proceed. Conservative media and critics of the 2016 Democratic nominee have falsely claimed that the sale was a quid pro quo for donations to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation.

The State Department did not have the power to unilaterally approve or reject the sale, and Clinton was not actually directly involved in the approval process. The original FBI investigation into whether Clinton had ties to the deal found no evidence of wrongdoing, but Sessions revived the inquiry in late 2017 after facing pressure from Trump.

Huber’s effective conclusion of his review is likely to anger many Republicans who hoped the top prosecutor from Utah would validate their long-held conspiracy theories about Clinton.

Attorney General William Barr, a Trump nominee who succeeded Sessions, has previously supported the president’s call to investigate Clinton and has questioned the need for Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

But Trump has largely shifted his focus away from Huber’s investigation and toward U.S. Attorney John Durham’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation, which concluded with a report that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in order to help Trump win. Barr appointed Durham to the review last year, though he allegedly sees no evidence so far that the Russia probe was a setup by intelligence officials, as Trump claims.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.