Thread: Obama Admin Won’t Tell Congress How It Paid Iran $1.3 Billion in Taxpayer Funds

Obama Admin Won’t Tell Congress How It Paid Iran $1.3 Billion in Taxpayer Funds

Mystery still surrounds payout to Iran

John Kerry / AP

BY: Adam Kredo
August 23, 2016 3:50 pm

The Obama administration is withholding from Congress details about how $1.3 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds was delivered to Iran, according to conversations with lawmakers, who told the Washington Free Beacon that the administration is now stonewalling an official inquiry into the matter.

The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice have all rebuffed a congressional probe into the circumstances surrounding the $1.3 billion payment to Iran, which is part of an additional $400 million cash payout that occurred just prior to the release of several U.S. hostages and led to accusations that the administration had paid Iran a ransom.

The Obama administration has admitted in recent days that the $400 million cash delivery to Iran was part of an effort to secure the release of these American hostages, raising further questions on Capitol Hill about White House efforts to suppress these details from the public.

The $400 million was part of a $1.7 billion legal settlement reached with Iran earlier this year. Congressional inquiries into how this money reached Iran are failing to get answers.

The State and Treasury Departments declined on Tuesday to answer a series of questions from the Free Beacon about the method in which U.S. taxpayer funds were paid to Iran.

The administration is also withholding key details about the payment from leading members of Congress, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), who launched an inquiryinto the matter earlier this month.

The Departments of State, Treasury, and Justice all failed to respond to the inquiry by Monday’s deadline, according to congressional sources tracking the matter.

“The already bizarre circumstances surrounding the $1.7 billion payment to the Islamic Republic have only gotten stranger in the weeks since we learned of the $400 million in cash that was sent to the Iranian regime last January 16th,” Cruz said to the Free Beacon. “If this payment was, as the Obama administration insists, a straightforward settlement of an old debt that it would have cost America more to contest, why all the secrecy?”

The State Department said it does not know how the remaining $1.3 billion was transferred or to whom it was transferred. Cruz described this disclosure as “confounding.”

“It is even more confounding that the State Department spokesman claimed Monday not to know how or to whom the residual $1.3 billion was transferred, although he does know the transaction happened,” Cruz said. “That kind of money doesn’t just transfer itself to a rogue regime still under heavy U.S. sanctions for its sponsorship of terrorism. Someone in our government must have the answers the American people deserve.”

Cruz and Lee are seeking to determine if these payments violated U.S. law. They also requested information about the U.S. officials who negotiated and carried out the payments.

“While we are deeply concerned about the national security implications of the administration’s cash-for-hostages scheme, especially in light of reports that Iran has already arrested additional Americans, the purpose of this letter is to inquire about the legality of the payment,” the senators wrote in an Aug. 12 letter.

“It is imperative that the administration provide a full accounting of its conduct with respect to the $400 million cash payment to Iran,” they wrote. “If the administration violated the law, then Congress and the American people should be made aware of it so that they can hold the appropriate officials accountable and take whatever steps necessary to strengthen the law and prevent any reoccurrence.”

While the administration has remained silent about the circumstances surrounding the payment, investigative reporter Claudia Rosett recently disclosed that the Treasury Department transferred just under $1.3 billion to the State Department in 13 “large identical sums.”

The funds, allocated for “foreign claims,” could shine a light on how the administration moved taxpayer funds into the State Department’s purview in order to provide the additional payment to Iran.

In 13 individual payments of $99,999,999.99, the Treasury Department moved a total of 1,299,999,999.87, which roughly amounts to the remaining money owed to Iran.

Obama Admin Won’t Tell Congress How It Paid Iran $1.3 Billion in Taxpayer Funds

Kirk likens Obama to 'drug dealer in chief' for $400 million Iran payment




Rick PearsonChicago Tribune 8/22/16

Republican U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, who has made opposition to a U.S.-led nuclear agreement with Iran a major theme of his re-election campaign, likened home-state President Barack Obama to "drug dealer in chief" over a $400 million payment linked to the release of American prisoners.

Kirk's controversial rhetoric has been an issue as the first-term senator is viewed as perhaps the most vulnerable Republican incumbent nationally this fall. He is being challenged by two-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Duckworth of Hoffman Estates.

The latest eyebrow-raising comment came as he spoke last week to a Downstate newspaper. Kirk echoed GOP criticism that the U.S. cash payment of $400 million to Iran was a ransom for the release of American prisoners held by the country.

The money was part of a previously announced settlement in a case stemming from money owed since 1979. The U.S. has had a long-standing policy of not paying ransom for hostages, and the Obama administration described the payment as "leverage" for the release of U.S. prisoners.

"We can't have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer in chief," Kirk said, "giving clean packs of money to a … state sponsor of terror. Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. … We're going to see problems in multiple (countries) because of that money given to them."

Kirk's comments, made to the editorial board of The State Journal-Register of Springfield on Tuesday, were first reported online on Saturday by the paper's political columnist, Bernard Schoenburg.

The senator has made national security issues paramount in his bid for a second term — a campaign complicated by a controversial GOP presidential nominee and Illinois' tradition of voting overwhelmingly Democratic in presidential years.

Kirk has unendorsed Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and has gone through a back-and-forth series of statements of whom he would write in for president, settling on former U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, though the vote would not be counted under Illinois election law.

Kirk's comments are not the first time he has criticized Obama over the deal aimed at reducing Iran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

Shortly after the multination agreement was announced in July of last year, Kirk contended Obama wants "to get nukes to Iran" and called the president "Barack Hussein Obama," using the full name that conservative detractors often use.

Kirk later apologized for those remarks made to a Boston radio station, saying, "Actually (Obama) doesn't want to get nukes." Asked about those comments shortly after he made them, Kirk explained: "That was me being too carried away with, I've been pretty angry about the Iran deal."

In the same interview with WRKO-AM, Kirk compared the nuclear agreement to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Germany's Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler prior to World War II.

"This is the greatest appeasement since Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler," Kirk said then. Obama "is doing this because of his very poor understanding of history and what happened to Neville Chamberlain." Kirk went on to contend the deal "condemns the next generation to cleaning up a nuclear war in the Persian Gulf."

Kirk, who holds Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, has made numerous controversial comments. He called Senate Republican colleague Lindsey Graham of South Carolina "a bro with no ho," adding "that's what we'd say on the South Side," an allusion to Graham being single. Kirk also suggested to the Peoria Journal Star last year that people drive faster through African-American neighborhoods out of fear of crime.

Kevin Artl, Kirk's campaign manager, said the senator used the comparison of drug dealing because of the administration's decision to send "pallets of cash, not even U.S. dollars, but euros and Swiss francs, in a clear ransom payment to Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism."

"The decision sets an awful and dangerous international standard that should be investigated and the lack of transparency from the administration clearly indicated they knew their actions were not aboveboard," Artl said in a statement.

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