This Is Troubling, But Not Surprising

Yesterday PJ Media posted the following headline, “REPORT: Former Obama Staff Colluded With Iran to Undermine Trump.” This is not really a surprise. There were a lot of Democrats and Republican who sought to undermine Trump. We heard a lot of talk about a ‘peaceful transition of power’ when Joe Biden was elected, but we need to understand that there was no ‘peaceful transition of power’ when President Trump was elected. President Obama remained in Washington, D.C., and from his command center threw every obstacle he could into the path of President Trump with full compliance from the media. The antics of the Democrats, some swamp-dwelling Republicans, and the media from 2015 until 2020 are a disgrace to our republic.

The article reports:

Former Obama administration officials, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, went behind President Donald Trump’s back in backchannels with Iran, sources told The Washington Times. Some of the architects of the Iran nuclear deal met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif after Trump withdrew from the deal.

A slew of former Obama officials, including Kerry, Obama’s Middle East advisor Robert Malley, and Obama-era Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, met with Zarif during the Trump years. Kerry, Malley, and Moniz led negotiations in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in which the U.S. provided sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts in exchange for Iran’s promises to limit nuclear enrichment.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the deal in 2018, citing the need for a tougher agreement that also addressed Iran’s support for terrorist groups and its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East. Yet a former senior U.S. official told The Washington Times that Zarif met with Democrats like Kerry multiple times in 2017, 2018, and 2019, before the Trump administration halted his visa in 2020.

The former official told the Times that Zarif’s meetings aimed “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to build support for a new version of the Iran deal in case a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.

Kerry acknowledged meeting with Zarif at least twice in the early years of the Trump administration. He told radio host Hugh Hewitt that there was nothing secret about his meetings with the Iranian minister. Kerry said he intended to find out “what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”

Kerry was a private citizen at that time; he had no authority to represent America in any way or to meet with foreign leaders in any capacity.

The article concludes:

“Former administration officials can play a very helpful role in close coordination with a sitting administration to open and support sensitive diplomatic channels,” Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Times. “But it is not good practice for senior officials who served at the highest levels of a former administration, Democratic or Republican, to be trying to undermine the policy of a sitting administration by engaging actively with a known enemy of the United States.”

Indeed, Malley was reportedly engaging in this “shadow diplomacy” while Iran-backed militias targeted U.S. troops in Iraq, leading up to the assassination of Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020.

Sources also told The Washington Times that Zarif wields tremendous influence over the Iran lobby in the U.S. They described a “web” of activity linked to think tanks across the U.S. as well as lobbying efforts that reached into the Obama White House.

Many members of Congress, including Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), have hired current or former staffers with the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), an organization with links to Iran’s regime and which Iran state media has described as “Iran’s lobby” in the U.S.

Did the Obama administration architects of the Iran deal carry out a “shadow diplomacy” with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism in order to undermine President Trump, hoping that a Democrat would win in 2020 and return them to power? Did they work with the Iran lobby behind the scenes? This explosive report suggests the answers to those questions are “yes,” but the details are yet to be forthcoming.

Where is the Logan Act when you actually need it?