Chip Bok's Bokbluster

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was busted for paying hush money by making cash withdrawals that would be difficult to trace. Never mind that he was a perv trying to hide the fact that he had molested a high school wrestler. It was violating the $10,000 cash withdrawal limit that got him busted.

“Hastert was indicted for two alleged felonies: 1) withdrawing cash from his bank accounts in amounts and patterns designed to hide the payments; and 2) lying to the FBI about the purpose of those withdrawals once they detected them and then inquired with him.”

Well, the WSJ reported yesterday that the Obama administration tried to hide a $400 million cash payment to Iran. And it tried to hide the purpose of the payment – ransom of five hostages.

The Justice Department opposed the deal.

Michelle Kosinski of CNN asked White House spokesman Josh Earnest if the hostages would have been released without the payment. He refused to answer. Actually, Earnest’s drawn out unrelated responses were kind of amusing. You can see the exchange at the -41:11 mark of this C-SPAN video.

Ransom Laundry

The ransom was paid in Swiss Francs and Euros delivered by unmarked plane in the middle of the night. Since it’s against the law to trade dollars with Iran Dr. Krauthammer says the administration is guilty of money laundering.

Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence. The reason that it was objected to by Justice, there is a statute that prohibits us from engaging in Iran dealing with dollars. So, they had to print the money here, ship it over to Switzerland, turn it into Swiss francs and euros and ship it over to Iran. If a private company had done this, this is called money laundering. The CEO would be in jail right now.”

He added, “The reason it was concealed is because it’s illegal. That’s why Congress wasn’t notified, because it’s scandalous for the administration to explicitly defy a law that says you can’t deal in American currency. And the second thing is, it isn’t only that it encourages terrorism in the future, it’s that the money is in cash. Why in cash? Because that you can’t trace it. It’s going to go straight to Hezbollah, straight to Hamas, straight to terrorists in Iraq.”

Update:

Andrew McCarthy in National Review maintains Obama committed a felony. He says the law restricts the transfer of value to Iran in any way.

By his own account, President Obama engaged in the complex cash transfer in order to end-run sanctions that prohibit the U.S. from having “a banking relationship with Iran.” The point of the sanctions is not to prevent banking with Iran; it is to prevent Iran from getting value from or through our financial system — the banking prohibition is a corollary. And the point of sanctions, if you happen to be the president of the United States sworn to execute the laws faithfully, is to follow them — not pat yourself on the back for keeping them in place while you willfully evade them. The president’s press conference is better understood as a confession than an explanation.