The White House on Monday rejected renewed criticism of the “>pounced on the administration and Democratic candidates after State Department Spokesperson John Kirby confirmed on Thursday that the U.S. had made the release of the $400 million contingent on Iran releasing the hostages. “We deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues nearly simultaneously,” he said. “With concerns that Iran may renege on the prisoner release, given unnecessary delays regarding persons in Iran who could not be located as well as, to be quite honest, mutual mistrust between Iran and the United States, we, of course,sought to retain maximum leverage until after American citizens were released. That was our top priority.”
“The president and his administration have been misleading us since January about whether he ransomed the freedom of the Americans unjustly imprisoned in Iran,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement on Friday. “The president owes the American people a full accounting of his actions and the dangerous precedent he has set.”
Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on National Security and International Trade and Finance, said on Sunday he would hold a hearing on whether the payment was a “quid pro quo for the release of American hostages” and if it was directed towards financing terror activities. “We can’t have the president of the United States acting like the drug dealer-in-chief,” Kirk said during an editorial board meeting last week with The (Springfield) State Journal-Register. “Those 500-euro notes will pop up across the Middle East. We’re going to see problems in multiple [countries] because of that money given to them.”
A new “>opposed the deal, while only 27 percent supported it.
