Post by a425coupleWashingtonpost.com
Opinion / Obama took lying to new heights with the Iran deal
"First, President Barack 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 chance 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, we learned that the Obama administration had secretly sent
a plane to Tehran loaded with $400 million in Swiss francs,
euros ...
The administration’s statements were a bottomless pit of deception."
Can someone verify the rest of the story and give the date?
Yeah, here you go!
https://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/columns/marc-a-thiessen-obama-took-lying-to-new-heights-with/article_3162e8c6-6b1c-11e8-bb09-83e6f2650005.html
Marc A. Thiessen: Obama took lying to new heights with the Iran deal
By Marc A. Thiessen, The Washington Post Jun 8, 2018
President Barack Obama
WASHINGTON -- When it comes to the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama
administration increasingly appears to have been a bottomless pit of
deception.
First, President Barack 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 chance 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, we learned that the Obama administration had
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.
Now, in a bombshell revelation, Republicans on the Senate Permanent
Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, have
revealed in a new report that the Obama administration secretly tried to
help Iran use U.S. banks to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian assets,
after promising Congress that Iran would not get access to the U.S.
financial system -- and then lied to Congress about what it had done.
(Full disclosure: My wife works for Portman).
In July 2015, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew assured 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 Lew's top deputies, Adam Szubin, used
the exact same words in testimony to the Senate banking committee.
But 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 Lew and Szubin said would not happen --
including unlimited future Iranian deposits at Bank Muscat in Oman until
the license expired.
Not only that, Senate investigators 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 says "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 explicitly
denied to Congress that it had done so. Lew and Szubin both failed to
disclose the license in congressional testimony while continuing to
assert that the Obama administration would not give Iran access to U.S.
financial institutions -- when they had just tried to do so. And in a
June 2016 letter to Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill.,
Treasury officials declared "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 patently false.
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 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 percent
of the time OFAC sees an apparent violation it results in a simple
warning letter or no enforcement action."
In other words, the Obama administration: (1) told Congress it would not
allow Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (2) issued a special
license allowing Iran to do exactly that; (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.
How bad is this? Remove the words "Obama" and "Iran" and replace them
with "Trump" and "Russia" and imagine the outrage that would ensue over
the same revelations. Democrats would be holding news conferences, and
the story would be front-page news.
We hear a lot these days from the media about the danger of presidential
lies. Well, when it comes to the Iran deal, the Obama administration
took lying to new heights. And no, that's not Fake News.
Marc A. Thiessen writes for the Washington Post.