DoJ’s Side Deal to Destroy the Laptops, EmailGate

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Note: to destroy ‘both’ laptops. BREAKING from Catherine Herridge: FBI made side deals with 2 HRC associates to “destroy” their laptops after inspecting them.

The full 3 page letter is here.

On Wednesday, September 28, 2016, Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary Committee at an oversight hearing on the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At the hearing, members of the House Judiciary Committee pressed Director Comey on his recommendation and the Department of Justice’s decision to not prosecute Secretary Clinton for mishandling classified information through private email servers.

Background:
• On July 5, 2016, Director Comey announced that the FBI does not recommend criminal charges against former State Department Secretary Hillary Clinton, even though federal law criminalizes mishandling classified information with “gross negligence.” Following his announcement, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and over 200 members of Congress sent a letter to Director Comey pressing for more information regarding the many questions surrounding his recommendation.

• On July 11, 2016, Chairman Goodlatte and House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) requested that the Department of Justice open an investigation into whether Secretary Clinton committed perjury and made false statements when testifying under oath before Congress. Contrary to statements she made before the House Select Committee on Benghazi hearing in October 2015, Secretary Clinton sent and received emails that were marked classified at the time; her lawyers did not read each email in her personal account to identify all the work-related messages; she used several different servers and numerous devices to send and receive work-related emails; and she did not provide all of her work-related emails to the Department of Justice.

Hearing Takeaways:
• At the hearing, Director Comey defended the FBI’s conclusion of its investigation into Secretary Clinton, but new information casts serious doubts about whether the decision to not prosecute Hillary Clinton was made impartially.

• For example, Cheryl Mills, chief of staff and counselor to Secretary Clinton at the State Department, was granted immunity for the production of her laptop and was able to be in the room with Secretary Clinton while she was interviewed by the FBI. In all of his years in law enforcement, Director Comey admitted that he had never heard of a potential witness representing a subject of an investigation during an interview with investigators.

• The FBI never considered electronically recording Hillary Clinton’s interview with the FBI despite the fact that the Deputy Attorney General issued a memo to all DOJ components encouraging them to do just that in such situations.

Key Videos:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) challenges the FBI’s conclusions in the Clinton investigation and presses Director Comey on Congress’ perjury referral and the immunity deals provided to key Clinton advisors:

“Hillary Clinton chose to send and receive Top Secret information over a personal, unsecure computer server housed in her various homes and once reportedly placed in a bathroom closet. These actions, without a doubt, opened these communications to hostile interception by our enemies and those who wish America harm …

“We, as Congress and the American people, are troubled how such gross negligence is not punished, and why there seems to be a different standard for the well-connected.”

Representative Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), a former federal prosecutor, explains why Secretary Clinton should have been prosecuted:

“Intent is awfully hard to prove. Very rarely do defendants announce ahead of time ‘I intend to commit this crime on this date’ … So you have to prove it by circumstantial evidence. Such as whether or not the person intended to set up an email system outside the State Department; such as whether or not the person knew or should have known that his or her job involved handling classified information; whether or not the person was truthful about using multiple devices….

“The way to prove [intent] is whether or not someone took steps to conceal or destroy what they have done. That is the best evidence you have is that they knew it was wrong, that they lied about it.”

Representative John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) presses Director Comey about why Secretary Clinton was not charged with obstruction of justice:

“I want to make sure the record is clear about the evidence that you did not have [in the investigation]:

The FBI did not have the Clintons’ personal Apple server used for Hillary Clinton’s work emails …
An Apple MacBook laptop and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton’s email archives was lost …
Two blackberry devices provided didn’t have SIM cards or SD data cards …
13 Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded, or destroyed with a hammer …
Various sever backups were deleted over time …
After the State Department, and my colleague Mr. Gowdy here notified Ms. Clinton that her records would be sought by the Benghazi Committee, copies of her emails on laptops of both of her lawyers were wiped clean with BleachBit …
After those emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archives were also permanently deleted from the Platt River Network with BleachBit …
And also after the subpoena, backups of the Platt River server were manually deleted.

“Collectively this list screams obstruction of justice.”

JASTA Sees its First Lawsuit, this one Against Iran

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family file federal lawsuit against Iranian government

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family filed a federal lawsuit Monday against the Iranian government, claiming he was taken hostage and psychologically tortured during his 18 months in prison in an effort by Tehran to influence negotiations for a nuclear agreement with Iran.

Related reading: JASTA, Saudi Arabia

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, says Rezaian was targeted for arrest to gain advantage in a prisoner exchange and to “extort” concessions from the U.S. government in the multinational talks over lifting sanctions if Iran agreed to limits on its nuclear program.

[Read the full lawsuit filed by the Rezaian family]

Iranian officials repeatedly told Rezaian and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, who also was detained for more than two months, that Rezaian had “value” as a bargaining chip for a prisoner swap, the suit says. The filing also links key moments in the nuclear negotiations to Rezaian’s treatment in the judicial system, from arrest to conviction to sentencing, and ultimately his release on the day the deal was implemented. “For nearly eighteen months, Iran held and terrorized Jason for the purpose of gaining negotiating leverage and ultimately exchanging him with the United States for something of value to Iran,” the suit states.

Rezaian, his brother, Ali Rezaian, and their mother, Mary Rezaian, are asking for an unspecified sum for damages under the “terrorism exception” to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That law generally bars U.S. citizens from suing foreign governments in domestic courts, but exceptions are made for terrorist acts, torture or hostage-taking by countries — including Iran — that the State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism. The suit accuses Iran of all three.

[Plane leaves Iran with Post reporter, other Americans, in prisoner swap]

Rezaian and Salehi, who was born in Iran and married Rezaian there, were arrested on July 22, 2014, by Iranian agents wearing surgical masks who forced their way into their apartment and took them for questioning at Evin Prison, a notorious site for political prisoners. Salehi was freed 71 days later on a $32,000 bail provided by her brother-in-law, Ali.

Rezaian was eventually tried and convicted of espionage and related charges, according to Iranian state media accounts. But the Iranian government has never officially disclosed the specifics of his conviction in a closed-door trial, or the sentence imposed by a judge known for meting out harsh punishments.

The lawsuit provides details of Rezaian’s incarceration that have never been publicly revealed before.

Both Rezaian and Salehi were repeatedly subjected to psychological and physical abuse during lengthy interrogations, the suit says. Their captors at turns threatened to dismember or execute them. Interrogated in isolation and often deprived of sleep, each also was warned that the other might be maimed or executed, and the same fate could befall other family members in Iran, according to the filing.

[Detention takes ‘devastating toll’ on Post reporter locked up in Iran]

The ordeal was so intense that Rezaian, Salehi and Rezaian’s brother, Ali, all contemplated suicide, the suit says. Now — almost nine months after Rezaian and four other U.S. citizens were released on the day the nuclear deal was implemented—Salehi, the Rezaian brothers and their mother are still afflicted with trauma and guilt, according to the suit.

“For 544 days, Jason suffered such physical mistreatment and severe psychological abuse in Evin Prison that he will never be the same,” the suit states. “He will require specialized medical and other treatment for the rest of his life.”

Salehi is not a plaintiff in the suit. Nor is The Washington Post. Rezaian is currently on leave from The Post for a year as a Nieman fellow at Harvard University.

“Iran’s unconscionable actions have inflicted deep and lasting wounds on The Washington Post’s Jason Rezaian and his family,” said Executive Editor Martin Baron, who during the reporter’s imprisonment often criticized what he called Iran’s “system of injustice.”

“This legal filing is a stark telling of Iran’s brutal and heartless treatment of an innocent journalist and his wife, and the impact on those who love him. While this legal action is being taken solely by Jason and his family, The Post continues to support the Rezaians through their long and painful recovery.’’

The Rezaian lawsuit is the latest attempt by Americans to have the U.S. justice system provide compensation for harms inflicted by the Iranian government — in particular, by the powerful and hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that fiercely opposed the nuclear deal and has tried to thwart many initiatives of President Hassan Rouhani, a relative pragmatist. The IRGC is named as a co-defendant in the suit.

“This was really one of the few ways they felt they could try to hold Iran publicly accountable,” said David Bowker, Rezaian’s attorney. “Ideally, it will deter this kind of behavior toward other innocent people.”

Rezaian and his family declined to discuss the case, deferring questions to their lawyer.

In a number of suits brought against it over the years, Iran has not responded, resulting in default judgments.

Congress and U.S. courts have provided a legal framework for Americans to sue Iran and be compensated. The State Department has labeled Iran the top state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Also on the list are Sudan and Syria.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law allowing American victims of terrorism and their families to collect almost $2 billion in seized Iranian assets. The case involved relatives of people killed or injured in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut. Iran labeled the decision “confiscation” and “theft.”

The closest precedent to Rezaian’s case involves Nik Moradi, an Iranian American who was seized during a family visit in 2007 and accused of spying for the United States. More than six months before his release on bail, he said he was subjected to physical and mental torture during interrogations. In 2013, Moradi and his wife sued Iran in U.S. federal court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The couple was awarded $20 million in a default judgment after Iran failed to respond.

One possible venue for securing payment on a judgment is the Victims of State Sponsors of Terrorism Fund, created last year by Congress to compensate the Americans held hostage in Iran during the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution. It also set aside money for victims with court judgments against state sponsors of terrorism, funded by money from a civil penalty paid by BNP Paribas bank for violating sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan.

The lawsuit provides dark glimpses of Rezaian’s 50 days in solitary in a small, dank, cockroach-infested cell. Anxiety and depression made him hallucinate, as he perceived the walls moving and talking. The cell was constantly lit, and a noisy fan prevented sleep. He slept on the floor, and prison officials eventually gave him tranquilizers to induce sleep. His food sometimes had concrete, rocks, dirt and other inedible objects mixed in.

“During his time in solitary confinement, Jason believed he was losing his mind,” the suit says.

In the initial months of his imprisonment, Rezaian was taken blindfolded several times a day to an underground room for interrogations that lasted hours. He was forced to write down his answers, which prison officials translated into Farsi before trying to coerce him to sign without explaining the translations.

In an effort to get him to confess to espionage, the suit says, one interrogator threatened him with beheading. Another held out the carrot of a video confession as his only chance for freedom.

“They threatened Jason with physical mutilation, such as cutting off his limbs, and repeatedly told Jason that he would never see Yeganeh alive again,” the suit says.

Though Salehi is not a plaintiff, her agony is clear in the dry legalese.

During her detention, Salehi was blindfolded while interrogators hit the table, broke glass and kicked her chair, startling her. One interrogator threatened to cut off her left leg and right hand or arm. They told her they would throw her husband off a cliff if she did not incriminate him.

By the time she was released, her legs would go numb and she sometimes fainted when sitting down. She had to shear off her hair because it was so matted. She had skin lesions. On her infrequent prison visits to see her husband, she sometimes was made to don a prison uniform and told she might be detained again, the suit says. Convinced her husband would die in Evin Prison, she considered killing herself to draw attention to his plight.

Ali Rezaian, who quit his job to work full-time campaigning for his brother’s release, also grew despondent, according to the suit. Iranian agents tailed him when he went to Geneva to appeal for help from the U.N. Human Rights Council and his mother was held against her will in Iran.

[Jason Rezaian works to reclaim his life after return to the U.S.]

“He contemplated suicide in the fall of 2015, having lost faith that his brother would ever be released,” the suit states. “At the time, Ali believed that only by ending his own life could he prompt action by defendants or others, to free Jason.”

Jason Rezaian now experiences depression, sleeplessness, short-term memory loss and other symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder, the suit says. He grows anxious in large crowds, fears for his family’s safety and has grown more “detached” from them. He sees a psychologist.

“Plaintiffs live in constant fear that Iranian agents are spying on them, plotting additional acts of terrorism and planning ways to hurt them and their family members again,” the suit says.

Ann E. Marimow contributed to this report.

Read more:

Rezaian’s wife and mother recall tortuous final hours in Iran

A triumphant return for Jason Rezaian

Supreme Court Rejects Obama’s Appeal for Re-Hearing

Posted on October 3, 2016October 3, 2016 by Denise Simon

Primer: Donald Verrilli, the Department of Justice Solicitor General who argued these cases before the Supreme Court resigned in June. Verrilli successfully defended President Obama’s healthcare plan before the Supreme Court, is joining the Los Angeles law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson.

Supreme Court declines to hear immigration and Redskins cases

WaPo: The Supreme Court will not reconsider President Obama’s plan to shield undocumented immigrants from deportation and denied the Washington Redskins’ bid to get its trademark case on this term’s docket.

With oral arguments postponed for a day because of the Rosh Hashana Jewish holiday, the first Monday in October that marks the beginning of the new Supreme Court term became a day of rejection. The court issued a thick stack of cases that had accumulated over the summer that the justices decided not to hear.

Among the other losers: the NCAA, which had asked the court to review an appeals court ruling about its policies involving the amateur status of college football and basketball players. The issue remains alive in other court proceedings.

[Deadlocked Supreme Court won’t revive Obama immigration plan]

The administration’s request was a longshot bid to salvage what had been the biggest legal defeat of Obama’s presidency. In June, a deadlocked court failed to revive his stalled plan to shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation and give them the right to work legally in the United States.

The justices’ votes at the time were not announced, but the court’s liberals and conservatives were split at oral argument last spring. The tie meant that a lower court’s decision that Obama probably exceeded his powers in issuing the executive action kept the plan from being implemented.

The court’s action affected about 4 million illegal immigrants estimated to be covered by Obama’s plan, which would have deferred deportation for those who have been in the country since 2010, have not committed any serious crimes and have family ties to U.S. citizens or others lawfully in the country.

The Supreme Court rarely grants motions for rehearing. But the administration’s lawyers made the request in hopes that by now the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia would be filled.

Instead, Senate Republicans have blocked consideration of Obama’s nominee to the court, appeals court judge Merrick Garland. They say the next president should fill the election-year opening.

This immigration case is the matter where the Judge ordered Department of Justice lawyers to attend an ethics class.

JonathanTurley: United States District Judge Andrew Hanen issued a remarkable opinion yesterday that found that Justice Department lawyers not only lied to him and opposing counsel but “it is hard to imagine a more serious, more calculated plan of unethical conduct.” What is even more remarkable however is that, after finding such calculated and unethical conduct, Hanen ordered the lawyers to simply take ethics classes rather than refer them to the bar for suspension or disbarment. Many attorneys object that government lawyers routinely escape serious punishment for false or misleading statements. In this case, the judge found that the Justice Department misled him and opposing counsel in a case by Texas and 25 other states that sought to block President Barack Obama’s controversial immigration programs. Hansen blocked the program. Notably, the Justice Department is even opposing ethical classes as a sanction.

The government misled the court on when the government would begin implementing one of the programs. The Justice Department team assured the court the government would not start implementing an expansion of a program called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals until February 18, 2015. The court and opposing counsel relied on that date even though the government implemented a part of the program before February and granted over 100,000 applications. Hansen found that the “Justice Department lawyers knew the true facts and misrepresented those facts.”

Apparently, lawyers, somewhere in the halls of the Justice Department whose identities are unknown to this Court, decided unilaterally that the conduct of the DHS in granting three-year DACA renewals . . . was immaterial and irrelevant to this lawsuit and that the DOJ could therefore just ignore it. Then, for whatever reason, the Justice Department trial lawyers appearing in this Court chose not to tell the truth about this DHS activity. The first decision was certainly unsupportable, but the subsequent decision to hide it from the Court was unethical.

In an effort to convey how unethical the Justice Department acted in the case, Hanen even excerpted a portion of the film “Miracle on 34th Street” when a young Tommy Mara Jr. says “Gosh, everybody knows you shouldn’t tell a lie, especially in court.” Judge Hanen noted “There are certain attorneys in the Justice Department who apparently have not received that message.”

Here is the opinion: Immigration Decision.

Obamacare Proven Fraud and Single Payer

Posted on September 30, 2016September 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

(Washington, D.C.) – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) expressed exasperation after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released the final results of its 2015 undercover tests on the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) fraud prevention capabilities. Amid naïve proclamations by President Obama that the ACA is “working exactly as it’s supposed to,” the GAO report reveals the sad reality that this law is uniquely prone to fraud and taxpayers have good reasons to worry.

GAO began “secret shopper” investigations in 2014 to test whether or not the federal healthcare exchange (marketplace) and select state marketplaces were able to detect and prevent falsified applications for subsidized health coverage from being accepted. Those tests found that 11 of 12 fictitious identities received coverage and after a call to the marketplace in 2015, 10 of those 11 were re-enrolled for the following coverage year.

On September 12, 2016, GAO released the final results of its 2015 testing, which covered the federal marketplace and state exchanges in California, Kentucky, and North Dakota. The results were similarly jarring.

All 10 fictitious identities that applied for taxpayer subsidies were approved, even after eight of the 10 failed the preliminary identity check. Investigators were able to obtain subsidies after they provided false proof of income, documentation of citizenship, and Social Security numbers that began with zeroes. The federal exchange made no effort to validate that information. GAO also created fake applicants for Medicaid coverage, and the results were not much better: seven of the eight fictitious applicants were approved for subsidized coverage.

Perhaps the most distressing revelation in this report is the following admission from federal and state marketplace officials: “The marketplace or Medicaid offices only inspect for supporting documentation that has obviously been altered. Thus, if the documentation submitted does not show such signs, it would not be questioned for authenticity.”

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, “The Congressional Budget Office estimates that subsidized health coverage through Obamacare will cost taxpayers $866 billion over the next ten years. The fact that there is still no reliable system in place to prevent rampant fraud is a bad omen for taxpayers. This damning report provides further justification for this flawed law to be completely overhauled and replaced.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.

**** Heading to Single Payer:

In part from The Hill:

The McKinsey Center for U.S. Health System Reform, which studies the ACA and its implications, showed in an Aug. 18 analysis that the percentage of counties in the U.S. with five or more participating insurance carriers remaining in the exchanges will likely shrink from 51 percent in 2016 to 31 percent in 2017, and the number of counties having only one carrier participating will likely grow from 2 percent in 2016 to 17 percent in 2017. Pinal County in Arizona found out in August that it will have no insurance carriers participating in ObamaCare exchanges in 2017.

This massive insurer exodus from Obamacare markets not only creates a shrinking pool of competition and narrower networks, but could also be setting the stage for something far more devastating: the inevitable push for a single-payer or public option to either be added to, or replace, ObamaCare.

In an Aug. 2 Journal of the American Medical Association article, President Obama, despite the overwhelming evidence that heavy-handed government control has not worked to make quality healthcare more affordable, called for adding a public option; more tax dollars to prop up the exchanges; more government bureaucrats and politicians making decisions on how healthcare is delivered to our nation’s citizens; and pharmaceutical price controls, which would destroy research and development and deny patients access to promising new therapies.

One need only to look at the Veterans Administration to understand what a government-run, single-payer healthcare system looks like. Horror stories of long waits for treatment, bureaucratic inertia, fraud, incompetence, cover-ups and politics abound.

Others in favor of a complete government takeover demand “Medicare for all,” also a single-payer system, ignoring the fact that on its current trajectory, the Medicare trust fund will be depleted in 2028, two years earlier than projected in 2015. Only massive tax hikes, budget cuts to other government programs, or more borrowing will save it.

These pro-single payer zealots want to emulate the disastrous single-payer systems adopted in other countries, where program costs exceeded expectations and rose faster than predicted, price controls were enacted, rationing became necessary and higher taxes were imposed to cover ballooning costs. Indeed, they are pushing hard for the United States to replicate these failed policies on an even grander scale.

They are ignoring the results so far of ObamaCare: numerous co-op failures costing billions of dollars, skyrocketing premiums and crippling deductibles across the country. With a slew of insurers exiting the ObamaCare exchanges, the nation’s healthcare system is now even more perplexing and costly.

With about two months left until the presidential election, it is time to start thinking critically about healthcare and why moving toward a propped-up ObamaCare or adopting a single-payer approach are not the answers to fixing the country’s broken healthcare system.

Creating an environment where a true market-based system can flourish and in which the purchasing power and healthcare decision-making stands with consumers, not with Washington politicians and bureaucrats, is the way to go.

Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste.

US lifted Sanctions on Iran Banks as Part of Prisoner Release

Posted on September 30, 2016September 30, 2016 by Denise Simon

The White House published document on the Iran deal including those alleged ‘snapback’ sanctions, which will never happen. Given the huge infusion of cash into Iran, their economy and infrastructure will become more harden to any actions or damage future sanctions as is the objective, including snapback sanctions.

U.S. Signed Secret Document to Lift U.N. Sanctions on Iranian Banks

Administration backed measures on the same day Tehran released four American citizens from prison

WSJ: WASHINGTON—The Obama administration agreed to back the lifting of United Nations sanctions on two Iranian state banks blacklisted for financing Iran’s ballistic-missile program on the same day in January that Tehran released four American citizens from prison, according to U.S. officials and congressional staff briefed on the deliberations.

The U.N. sanctions on the two banks weren’t initially to be lifted until 2023, under a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers that went into effect on Jan. 16.

The U.N. Security Council’s delisting of the two banks, Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, was part of a package of tightly scripted agreements—the others were a controversial prisoner swap and transfer of $1.7 billion in cash to Iran—that were finalized between the U.S. and Iran on Jan. 17, the day the Americans were freed.

Brett McGurk, a senior State Department official, signed three documents with a representative of the Iranian government in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17 that set out commitments for a prisoner swap, a cash transfer to Iran and the delisting of sanctions on two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. Photo: mandel ngan/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The new details of the delisting have emerged after administration officials briefed lawmakers earlier this month on the U.S. decision.

According to senior U.S. officials, a senior State Department official, Brett McGurk, and a representative of the Iranian government signed three documents in Geneva on the morning of Jan. 17.

One document committed the U.S. to dropping criminal charges against 21 Iranian nationals, and Tehran to releasing the Americans imprisoned in Iran.

Another committed the U.S. to immediately transfer $400 million in cash to the Iranian regime and arrange the delivery within weeks of two subsequent cash payments totaling $1.3 billion to settle a decades-old legal dispute over a failed arms deal.

The U.S. agreed in a third document to support the immediate delisting of the two Iranian banks, according to senior U.S. officials. In the hours after the documents were signed at a Swiss hotel, the different elements of the agreement went forward: The Americans were released, Iran took possession of the $400 million in cash, and the U.N. Security Council removed sanctions on Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International, these officials said.

“Lifting the sanctions on Sepah was part of the package,” said a senior U.S. official briefed on the deliberations. “The timing of all this isn’t coincidental. Everything was linked to some degree.”

A documentary published by Tasnim News Agency, an Iranian media outlet affiliated with the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, claimed in February that Iranian government officials had demanded that Sepah be taken off the sanctions list as part of a deal to release the prisoners.

The Obama administration, under the nuclear deal reached in July 2015, agreed to lift Treasury Department sanctions on Bank Sepah, but U.N. penalties were to remain in place for eight years.

But after the nuclear deal was forged, U.S. officials said, there was a continued dialogue with Iran about the status of the two banks before the deal went into effect in January.

Tehran argued that the banks were critical to the country’s economy and international trade. Bank Sepah is Iran’s oldest bank and one of its three largest in terms of assets. Bank Sepah International, based in London, was key to financing Iran’s international trade before sanctions were imposed.

U.S. officials said there was a desire in Washington to harmonize the U.N. sanctions list with the U.S.’s. And they said Washington believed Iran had earned more sanctions relief because Tehran had been implementing the terms of the nuclear agreement, which called for a major scaling back of its infrastructure and production of nuclear fuel.

“The issue of Bank Sepah has been one of many topics we discussed with Iran in our overall diplomatic discussions,” said a second senior administration official briefed on the deliberations.

Another senior administration official said lifting sanctions on Bank Sepah and its London affiliate was in the spirit of the commitment by the U.S. and other world powers to provide Iran with sanctions relief.

Administration critics and some congressional officials said they believed the move broke the commitments the administration made to Congress about the deal.

The Obama administration had told Congress that under the deal the U.S. would lift sanctions only on companies and individuals tied to Iran’s nuclear development. Sanctions on those involved in missile development were to remain in place, these critics said.

The Obama administration has repeatedly said it is committed to rolling back Iran’s ballistic missile program.

“By agreeing to remove U.N. and EU sanctions eight years early on Iran’s main missile financing bank, the administration effectively greenlighted their nuclear warhead-capable ballistic missile program,” said Mark Dubowitz, a top critic of the Iran nuclear deal at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Bank Sepah, Bank Sepah International and its then-chairman in 2007 for their alleged role in backing Iran’s missile program. The designation didn’t mention what direct role the entities allegedly played in helping Iran’s nuclear program.

At the time, the Treasury said that Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International had provided financial support to Iranian-state owned companies and organizations developing Iran’s missile program. These included Iran’s Aerospace Industries Organization and the Shahid Hemmat Industries Group.

“Bank Sepah is the financial linchpin of Iran’s missile procurement network and has actively assisted Iran’s pursuit of missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction,” the Treasury said in a January 2007 statement.

Iran has conducted up to 10 ballistic missile tests since the forging of the nuclear agreement in July 2015. The U.N. Security Council has condemned Tehran’s actions but hasn’t moved to impose any new sanctions on the country.In March, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on two Iranian companies it said were working with Shahid Hemmat Industries.

U.S. officials said the Obama administration closely vetted the activities of all individuals and entities tied to Bank Sepah before supporting the lifting of U.S. and U.N. sanctions.

“We have the ability to quickly reimpose U.S. sanctions if Bank Sepah or any other entity engages in activities that remain sanctionable,” said the second senior U.S. official.

The Obama administration’s decision to send such large amounts of cash to Iran has fueled charges in Congress that the White House paid ransom to Tehran to secure the release of the American prisoners. The White House has repeatedly denied the charge, saying the $1.7 billion settlement saved the U.S. as much as $8 billion that it could have owed Iran if it lost, as was expected, a court proceeding that was taking place in The Hague, Netherlands. The administration has said the cash was used as “leverage” to make sure the American prisoners were released.

The dispute in Washington has only deepened in recent weeks, as senior Pentagon officials, including Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, told Congress in a hearing that they weren’t notified by the White House about the cash transfer. The chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, said at a hearing last week that he found it “troubling” that the U.S. provided Tehran with so much cash, which he argued could be used for “spreading malign influence.”