Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said on CNN she misspoke when she blamed Obama for the 2004 death of Muslim-American soldier Humayun Khan, during the Iraq war. First, ransom usually involves someone else’s money; this was Iran’s dough to begin with.
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Trump spoke at several campaign rallies this week about an article by the Wall Street Journal that said the United States gave Iran $400 million in cash at the same time that four American soldiers were released from Iran.
“Now, here’s the incredible thing: Over there, where that plane landed, top secret”. After that plane landed, the captives were allowed to leave.
President Obama staunchly reiterated that the USA does “not pay ransom”. How stupid does he think we are? “You know why the tape was given to us?”
The administration has insisted the money was separate from the prisoner release, part of a $1.7 billion payment stemming from an unfulfilled arms deal – a payment the administration announced in January.
The footage, which is from an Iranian documentary published a few months ago, contradicts claims by Obama administration officials maintaining that the payment was completely unrelated to the release of these USA hostages, despite the payment having been supplied on the same day these individuals were freed by Iran. That would be the same as saying that I pay ransom each month to Xcel for electricity.
Trump certainly makes it sound as if there’s video footage of the cash being hustled off a plane, and that he’s seen that footage.
“We do not pay ransom for hostages”, President Barack Obama said Thursday during a news conference at the Pentagon after meeting with his national security advisers. On Friday morning, Trump said in a tweet that he was mistaken about the video.
For now, we are going by Trump’s own statement, backed up by Hicks’ statement, that he was referring to a different video – the widely aired footage that shows the hostages being released, without any money being transferred.
The documentary describes the Obama administration’s prisoner swap and Iran’s cash windfall as “a win-lose deal that benefits the Islamic Republic of Iran and hurts the United States”, according to two English translations obtained by the paper. “With the airplane coming in – nice plane – and the airplane coming in and the money coming off I guess, right?”
On the campaign trail this week, the Republican nominee has been dramatically describing a video he says shows the U.S. paying off Iran as part of a deal to release United States sailors from Iranian custody, but there is no evidence such a tape exists. While the US has far fewer troops in the region than when he took office in 2009, Republicans argue that the drawdown of troops from Iraq created a vacuum that allowed the Islamic State to thrive.
“They didn’t talk about money”, he said.
Earlier Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S.
“I’ll never forget the scene this morning“, Trump told a Daytona Beach crowd.
On the same day, January 16, 2016, Iran released four Americans, including The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian; Marine veteran Amir Hekmati; Christian pastor Saeed Abedin; and a fourth man, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, whose disappearance had not been publicly known before he was freed.
Point number three is that the timing of this was in fact dictated by the – by the fact that as a outcome of us negotiating around the nuclear deal, we actually had diplomatic negotiations and conversations with Iran for the first time in several decades…
News outlets label that footage as being shot in Geneva around the same time the Americans were freed.
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“The only bit of news is that we paid cash”, he said.
