The Obama administration secretly tried to help the country that screams “death to America” use U.S. banks to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian assets.
First, Obama failed to disclose to Congress the existence of secret side deals on inspections when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. (They were only uncovered by accident when then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned about them during a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna.)
Then, Obama secretly sent a plane to Tehran loaded with $400 million in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies on the same day Iran released four American hostages, which was followed by two more secret flights carrying another $1.3 billion in cash.
But wait there’s more!
Republicans on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), revealed in a report that the Obama administration secretly had tried to help Iran use U.S. banks to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian assets. This was after Obama promised Congress that Iran would not get access to the U.S. financial system — and then after lied to Congress about what he had done.
In July 2015, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, under the nuclear accord, Iran “will continue to be denied access to the [U.S.] financial and commercial market” and that “Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financing arrangements with U.S. banks.”
A few weeks later, one of Jack Lew’s top deputies, Adam Szubin, said the exact same thing in a testimony to the Senate banking committee.
However, Senate investigators found that on Feb. 24, 2016, the Obama Treasury Department “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system” — exactly what Jack Lew and Adam Szubin promised would not happen — including unlimited future Iranian deposits at Bank Muscat in Oman until the license expired.
Not only that, but Senate investigators also found that officials from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which regulates U.S. banks’ compliance with U.S. sanctions law, “encouraged two U.S. correspondent banks to convert the funds.” The report states that “both banks declined to complete the transaction due to compliance, reputational, and legal risks associated with doing business with Iran.”
Then, after issuing the license, the Obama administration denied to Congress that it had done what it had promised it wouldn’t do. Jack Lew and Adam Szubin both failed to disclose the license in congressional testimony while continuing to promise that the Obama administration would not give Iran access to U.S. financial institutions — when they had just tried to do exactly that.
Also, in a letter to Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in June 2016, Treasury officials said: “The U.S. Department of Treasury is not working on behalf of Iran to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars elsewhere in the international financial system, nor are we assisting Iran in gaining access to dollar payment systems outside the U.S. financial system. The Administration has not been and is not planning to grant Iran access to the U.S. financial system.” This was a lie.
Investigators also found internal State Department emails, in which officials admitted that the Obama administration had “exceeded our JCPOA commitments” by authorizing Iranian access to U.S. banks.
Furthermore, the report also reveals that the Obama administration put on more than 200 “roadshows” across the world where they encouraged foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran “as long as the rest of the world left the United States out of it.”
According to the report, during a roadshow in London, OFAC Director John Smith “downplayed the likelihood of any future penalties or fines,” telling the audience “that 95% of the time OFAC sees an apparent violation it results in a simple warning letter or no enforcement action.”
So basically, the so-called “scandal free” Obama administration:
(1) told Congress it would not allow Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (2) issued a special license allowing Iran to Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (3) unsuccessfully pressured U.S. banks to help Iran; (4) lied to Congress and the American people about what it had done; (5) admitted in internal emails that these efforts “exceeded” U.S. obligations under the nuclear deal; (6) sent officials, including bank regulators, around the world to urge foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran; and (7) promised that they would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for violating U.S. sanctions.
The Democrats big accusation right now is that President Trump was engaged in a cover-up – which Mueller found no evidence of – but where were they when Obama did this?
Instead, the fake news mainstream media, Democrats and the left are pushing a fake cover-up conspiracy while ignoring a real cover-up that they helped cover-up.
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