Sorry, he's not.
$400 million in cash to Iran in January at the same time Tehran was releasing four jailed Americans, payment that a top congressional Republican is calling “ransom.”
It was later confirmed by the State Department that cash payment was contingent on prisoner release
"State Department confirmed on Thursday that the United States conditioned the release of a $400 million cash payment to Iran on the departure of American prisoners from Tehran."
Here is the statement from a State Department official "We deliberately leveraged that moment to finalize these outstanding issues nearly simultaneously,"
This statement is direct conflict with an earlier statement from the Obama Administration by John Kirby that claimed the negotiations between hostage release and the cash payment were separate and not involved with one another.
"As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim … were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,”
This does not lend credence to the claim that the payment was not a ransom payment.
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