(Fox News) The Obama-Biden State Department “actively interfered” to prevent the FBI from executing arrest warrants on individuals illegally in the United States who were allegedly supporting Iranian financial efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, whistleblowers told Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson.
Fox News Digital obtained letters Grassley, R-Iowa, and Johnson, R-Wis., sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and Attorney General Merrick Garland on the matter.
The Obama-Biden administration began its Joint Plan of Action, which served as the negotiating process for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, that was signed by then-President Obama in 2015. At the time, Obama said broader sanctions would remain in place, which the administration would “continue to enforce… vigorously.”
The United States, for decades during both Republican and Democratic administrations, imposed sanctions on “Iranian individuals, companies, and organizations for involvement in nuclear proliferation, ballistic missile development, support for terrorist groups, and human rights abuses.”
Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch with Secretary of State John Kerry seen here with President Barack Obama in 2016(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
But Grassley and Johnson received unclassified and legally protected whistleblower disclosures which they say show that “while the Obama-Biden administration publicly committed to ‘preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by raising the cost of Iran’s defiance of the international community,’ then-Secretary of State John Kerry actively interfered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation executing arrest warrants on individuals in the U.S. illegally supporting Iranian efforts, including financial efforts, to develop weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program.”
The records, according to the senators, show that the Justice Department and FBI leadership, including then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch and then-FBI Director James Comey “failed to take the necessary steps to stop Kerry’s obstructive efforts against law enforcement.”
One email — an unclassified FBI email from August 25, 2017 — detailed at least eight instances connected to the Iran nuclear deal where “the FBI/DOJ/USG could have moved forward with the cases but the State Department chose to block them.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei views Iranian nuclear achievements on Sunday, June 11. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA/Reuters)
According to the records, in six of these instances, the FBI “lost the opportunity to arrest the main subject.”
The email says that one of the subjects the FBI was unable to arrest was “on the Terrorism Watch List” and another “returned to Iran.”
The email further says that the State Department “blocked” one planned FBI arrest while the subject was “mid-flight and the subject was forced to leave the US immediately upon arrival.”
