Free Republic

Editor's Note: This piece was coauthored by Bruce Abramson.It’s hard to miss the stakes for America in November’s election. President Trump and the GOP base inhabit a starkly different world than do Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and progressive Democrats. That difference transcends mere policy debate; America’s political parties operate on different moral planes. In no foreign context is that moral divergence clearer than the Middle East. Two recent events illuminate the gap: The Biden-led 2020 Democrat Platform, and the UAE/Israel pact that President Trump brokered. The election will determine whether the Middle East continues on the path towards stability and...

President Trump is destroying Obama’s insane Middle East policies one day at a time and the world is a much safer place. Politico Magazine surprisingly uncovered and released a report critical of the Obama Administration shortly after the 2016 election entitled, “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook“. The long piece started: In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.The campaign,...

More than any other group in Lebanon, the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah bears responsibility for the conditions that led to the blast. ... Lebanon is a mafia state governed entirely through criminality and institutionalized corruption. The .. Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. If there’s one group that bears primary responsibility for the state of affairs in Lebanon that led to the explosion in Beirut, it’s Hezbollah. ... Tony Badran.. Hezbollah’s role in governing Lebanon. .. the terrorist group isn’t a parallel structure to the government, it is the government. ... Hezbollah has long used the port for massive commercial scams and...

A Kuwaiti paper reveals another monstrous Obama betrayal. We thought the Obama administration could stoop no lower when it was revealed that the administration transferred $1.7 billion in untraceable cash to the Islamic Republic as ransom for the release of four Americans hostages they were holding. We were wrong. In its twilight weeks, the administration gave its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. According to experts familiar with the transaction, the uranium could be enriched to weapons-grade sufficient for the production...

The US Department of Justice will investigate claims that the Obama administration shielded the Lebanon-based Shi’ite terrorist group Hezbollah from criminal prosecution for its drug-trafficking and gun-running operations, as part of an effort to curry favor with Hezbollah’s patron, Iran. Last week, Politico released an investigative report citing Drug Enforcement Administration and former Treasury Department officials who claimed that the previous administration blocked the prosecution of Hezbollah officials known to be involved in the smuggling of illegal narcotics and weapons – including chemical weapons – in an effort to bring Hezbollah’s patron state, Iran, to the negotiating table. In 2015,...

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it is creating a task force to take a fresh look at drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations linked to Hezbollah after an investigative report last month claimed that the Obama administration turned a blind eye to such activities to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. The task force, dubbed the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team (HFNT), will begin its work by reviewing investigations stemming from Project Cassandra, a campaign led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) targeting the Lebanese terror group’s actions. According to a Politico report published last month, officials with the Obama Justice...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., once falsely accused President Ronald Reagan's CIA of all but causing urban cocaine dealing in the '80s. She claimed that Reagan, by working with Nicaraguan drug dealers to defeat the communists running that country, colluded with them to created the urban drug epidemic. Never mind that The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all debunked Waters' claim. At a town hall meeting about these allegations, Waters shouted, "If I never do anything else in this career as a member of Congress, I'm gonna make somebody pay for what they've done to...

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” Asher helped establish and...

Earlier this week Politico Magazine published a story by Josh Meyer headlined "The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook." This copiously sourced piece relates how, "in its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as Hezbollah was funneling cocaine into the United States." The law enforcement program in question is called Project Cassandra, which for eight years "used wiretaps, undercover operations, and informants to map Hezbollah's illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign...

PART I A GLOBAL THREAT EMERGES How Hezbollah turned to trafficking cocaine and laundering money through used cars to finance its expansion.

According to a report published by Politico, former President Obama blocked the Drug Enforcement Agency's efforts to stop the Islamic terrorist group Hezbollah from developing a global narcotics syndicate. The nominal rationale for this intrusion to thwart a law enforcement operation was "to not upset delicate negotiations with Iran." Hezbollah is largely funded by the Iranian government. Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Adviser during the Obama Administration, characterized the revelation as "Monday-morning 'quarterbacking.' Are we supposed to be shocked that a president might place a higher priority on reaching a diplomatic agreement with another country ahead of a routine...

Politico published a jaw-dropping, meticulously sourced investigative piece this week detailing how the Obama administration had secretly undermined US law enforcement agency efforts to shut down an international drug-trafficking ring run by the terror group Hezbollah. The effort was part of a wider push by the administration to placate Iran and ensure the signing of the nuclear deal. Now swap out “Trump” for “Obama” and “Russia” for “Iran” and imagine the eruption these revelations would generate. Because, by any conceivable journalistic standard, this scandal should’ve triggered widespread coverage and been plastered on front pages across the country. By any historic...

EXCLUSIVE: Attorney General Jeff Sessions is launching a review of a law enforcement initiative called Project Cassandra after an investigative report was published this week claiming the Obama administration gave a free pass to Hezbollah’s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations to help ensure the Iran nuclear deal would stay on track. The Justice Department said in a statement to Fox News that Sessions on Friday directed a review of prior Drug Enforcement Administration investigations “to evaluate allegations that certain matters were not properly prosecuted and to ensure all matters are appropriately handled.”

The former Obama officials who manufactured a media “echo chamber” to sell the Iran deal are now working to undermine a bombshell report that revealed how former President Barack Obama’s administration derailed its own Drug Enforcement Agency’s efforts to stop Islamist terrorist group Hezbollah from developing a global narcotics syndicate. The Obama administration gave Hezbollah a pass, according to a bombshell Politico piece, in order to protect the Iran deal — one of the few remaining pillars of Barack Obama’s legacy. Two Republicans on the House oversight committee, Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan announced a congressional...

Fox News contributor Marie Harf was definitely not happy about what she called a “hit job” that exposed former President Obama’s alleged actions involving the terrorist group Hezbollah. Former Obama officials like Harf dismissed Josh Meyer’s Politico bombshell detailing “how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” by undermining the U.S. government’s own efforts to take down the terror group’s drug-trafficking operations.

You know, there are explosive stories, then there are EXPLOSIVE stories. And a new report in Politico isn’t just explosive; it’s EXPLOSIVE. We all knew that Barack Obama wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of his stupid Iran Deal. And now we know that includes drug trafficking, arms trafficking, terrorism, and other criminal enterprises. In this Politico piece, we learn that Barack “Scarface” Obama obstructed a DEA operation to shut down the pipeline between Hezbollah and Latin American cocaine suppliers. This operation – called Project Cassandra – began in 2008. And with the aid of thirty US...

Congress investigating former administration's efforts to appease Iran Congress instructed the Department of Justice on Thursday to turn over all documents and communications that may be related to newly disclosed efforts by the Obama administration to handicap an investigation into the terror group Hezbollah and its Iranian benefactors, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Jeff Sessions obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. The letter represents the first salvo in a new investigation by congressional leaders into allegations senior Obama administration officials thwarted a decade-long Drug Enforcement Agency investigation into Hezbollah's illicit operations. The Obama administration, in what congressional...

“The Obama administration has been remarkably scandal-free.” —New York Times faux conservative columnist David Brooks, Feb. 9, 2016 Scandal-free-----as long as you ignore the Fast and Furious gunrunning scandal, IRS targeting of conservative groups, trading five hardened terrorists for traitor Bowe Bergdahl, a private email server and use of aliases between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Benghazi, NSA warrantless collection of every American’s private communications, etc., etc., etc. But this latest bombshell may be the most shocking violation of the public trust yet. As revealed in an in-depth investigative report by Politico, Obama used his presidential power to cripple Project...

Only someone who worked in Hillary Clinton’s State Department and thought giving ISIS summer jobs would stop their beheadings and terrorist attacks could dispute Josh Meyer’s lengthy, well-researched article in Politico detailing “how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook” by undermining his own government’s efforts to take down the terrorist group’s drug trafficking operations: “I was part of the negotiating team that got the Iran nuclear deal done,” the former Obama State Department spokeswoman told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday. “Until Politico wrote this piece, I had never even heard of this program. You know, the Politico story, this...

Some lawmakers are incensed, but not wholly surprised by this week's bombshell report from Politico that the Obama administration knowingly derailed an anti-Hezbollah investigation because it would have threatened the nuclear deal with Iran. The Drug Enforcement Administration was so convinced that Hezbollah was amassing $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking that it started Project Cassandra in 2008, an under cover investigation, to follow the money. Yet, according to Politico's sources, the Justice and Treasury departments "delayed, hindered or rejected" requests from project members as they sought answers.Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) expected such meddling from the Obama White...