Congress is set to consider new legislation that would block the Obama administration from awarding Iran billions of US taxpayer dollars in what many describe as a ransom payment, according to a copy of the legislation obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
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The Judgment Fund is reportedly administered by the Treasury Department for settling litigation claims. The administration should also clarify if the $20 billion dollars is inclusive of the $11.9 billion in JPOA (Joint Plan of Action, i.e. the interim nuclear deal) funds, or if the $20 billion was in addition to the $11.9 billion.
“It shall be the policy of the United States Government not to pay ransom or release prisoners for the objective of securing the release of United States citizens taken hostage overseas”, the legislation states.
Wagner said she’d never been offered such a briefing.
On Thursday, House Finance Committee member Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., questioned administration officials at a hearing on the matter, pressing them to explain why the payments had been delivered in cash.
Later that month, State Department spokesman John Kirby admitted that they delayed the payment of $400 million until the American prisoners were freed.
Her son, Army Ranger Capt. Raymond Wagner, is serving in the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Ga. He is calling on the Obama administration to be transparent with how American tax dollars are spent.
The Obama administration is acknowledging its transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran earlier this year was made entirely in cash, using non-U.S. currency.
“Certainly, there are other ways to make an immediate payment other than a middle-of-the-night what-appears-to-be a drug drop”, Fitzpatrick said.
“Senator Kirk has been clear that paying ransom for American hostages to the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism puts more Americans in danger and believes the Iranian prisoners released from the U.S.to Iran should have been the sole basis for exchange”. “We negotiated a good deal on the interest”, said Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), the subcommittee’s top Democrat. No one in Tehran seems to share the State Department’s stated view that Iran was well positioned to get a lot more if negotiations at the Iran-US Claims Tribunal in The Hague had dragged on.
Critics, including some in Congress, have attacked the payments as ransom.
The State Department announced the settlement in January, but hadn’t previously disclosed the mechanics of the payments or the fact the the entire amount had been paid in cash, the Journal said.
A cash payment “was the most reliable way that they received the funds in a timely manner, and it was the manner preferred by the relative foreign banks”, Ahren said. More than four times what it initially said it delivered. Still Republicans on the Hill have introduced legislation to ban all payments to Iran and to demand billions from the regime to compensate victims of terror.
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“Sending the world’s leading state sponsor of terror pallets of untraceable cash isn’t just awful policy”, Royce said.
