Kaine made the comments in response to Trump’s claim that he saw video of a plane full of cash landing in Iran, just as four American hostages were released by the regime.
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US President Barack Obama has rejected claims by Republicans that $400 million his administration paid to Iran amounted to a ransom payment for the release of US prisoners.
At the time, the United States said it had settled a long-standing Iranian claim at the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal in The Hague, releasing $400 million in funds frozen since 1981, plus $1.3 billion in interest that was owed to Iran.
At a rally in Daytona Beach, Florida on Wednesday, Donald Trump told a large audience that he had seen a professionally shot video of “money pouring off a plane” meant to embarrass the United States. “Iran ― I don’t think you’ve heard this anywhere but here ― Iran provided all of that footage, the tape, of taking that money off that airplane”. It was a tape that’s a ideal angle, nice and steady, nobody getting nervous because they’re going to be shot because they’re shooting a picture of money pouring off a plane’.
Trump’s claim came as national intelligence officials confirmed that he and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would soon be allowed access to classified intelligence briefings, raising questions – first raised in the Huffington Post – about whether he was leaking privileged information.
“That was given to us has to be by the Iranians”, he said. Right? You saw that?
“They said, ‘We are waiting for another plane and until that plane [arrives], we never let you go, ‘” Pastor Saeed Abedini told Fox Business Network on Thursday.
“I woke up yesterday and I saw $400 million dollars, different currencies, they probably don’t want our currency”, Trump said Thursday in Portland, Maine. Republicans call it ransom; the Obama administration says it was money the US legally owed Iran.
‘So it looks like the Iranians recorded the Americans in order to embarrass them’. And they want to embarrass our president because we have a president who’s incompetent. It’s only for one reason.
Trump emphatically admitted to the mistake in a tweet sent Friday morning.
The Obama administration has denied the money paid to Iran on the same day the Americans were released was a ransom paid for their release as Republicans have charged, and that the timing of the two actions were coincidental.
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He pointed to Trump’s recent criticism of Kaine, who Trump said in a late-July news conference “did a bad job in New Jersey” – despite Kaine being a governor and senator from Virginia, not New Jersey.
