The State Department during the administration of President Barack Obama allegedly worked to hinder the FBI’s efforts to arrest individuals under investigation for financially assisting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, according to whistleblower accounts.
The allegations were made public Wednesday when Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin published a letter they had sent Tuesday to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.
Grassley and Johnson complained to Blinken that then-Secretary of State John Kerry, according to whistleblower disclosures, “actively interfered” with the FBI when the bureau was “executing arrest warrants on individuals in the U.S.”
The individuals in question, according to the letter, were suspected of “illegally supporting Iranian efforts, including financial efforts, to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and its ballistic missile program.”
The senators further alleged that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey did not satisfactorily act to thwart Kerry’s “obstructive efforts against law enforcement.”
As a result of such handling of the matter, the FBI “lost the opportunity to arrest the main subject” in six such instances of State Department interference, the senators said.
Grassley and Johnson included partially redacted FBI emails in their letter.
This included an email that, according to the senators, indicated one of the subjects the bureau had lost was on its terrorism watch list.
Another suspect had managed to escape to Iran in time, the letter said.
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One subject the FBI had failed to apprehend was supposed to be arrested “mid-flight,” the records said, according to the senators.
However, the State Department blocked the individual’s detainment, and the person in question was only refused admission into the country, the letter said.
According to the letter, two suspects were arrested only after the Trump administration’s State Department reversed the Obama administration’s imposed block on their arrests, according to Grassley and Johnson.
All of the incidents occurred while the Obama administration was working with Iran on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — better known as the Iran nuclear deal.
The United States withdrew from the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump, a fierce critic of what he called “the worst deal in history.”
“The records provided to our offices show that the Obama/Biden administration’s State Department, under the leadership of John Kerry, actively and persistently interfered with FBI operations pertaining to lawful arrests of known terrorists, members of Iranian proliferation networks, and other criminals providing material support for Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” Grassley and Johnson said.
“The records also show that DOJ and FBI leadership apparently allowed it to happen until the Trump administration altered course,” the senators said.
They demanded that the State Department grant them records containing keywords linked to Iran and the nuclear deal from Blinken as well as former officials such as Kerry, William J. Burns and Wendy Sherman.
