The American people dodged a bullet when John Kerry failed to become president in 2004. Unfortunately, he was well-connected in the swamp, and eventually became Barack Obama’s Secretary of State.

And it was in that capacity as Secretary of State that whistleblowers are now telling Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson that John Kerry actively blocked the FBI from making arrests of Iranian nationals – including one subject who was on the Terrorism Watch List – not once, not twice, but EIGHT TIMES in 2015 and 2016.

FBI WBs came to me & Sen Johnson w emails showing fmr Scty of State John Kerry blocked MULTIPLE FBI attempts 2 arrest dangerous Iranian individuals during Iran nuclear deal negotiations Obama/Biden State Dept put politics over natl security We made those records public 2day

— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) May 22, 2024

This all stems back from the Obama Administration’s absolute determination to make the Iran Deal happen.

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.”

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.”

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.”

The email also claims at least two targets were arrested only after “State lifted their block…since the new [Trump] Administration took office.”

In a letter to the State Department, Grassley and Johnson present the whistleblower evidence, and are looking for answers.

Accordingly, as an initial request, no later than June 4, 2024, search for and produce all records relating to the following names and terms20 in the email repositories for these State Department officials: John Kerry, William J. Burns, Wendy Sherman, and Antony Blinken.
1. Mohammad Javad Zarif;
2. The Joint Plan of Action (JPOA);
3. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA);
4. Iran Nuclear Deal;
5. Iran Proliferation/Counterproliferation;
6. Law enforcement actions pertaining to Iranian citizens, to include visa lures, extraditions and related subject matter;
7. The case file for each of the eight cases mentioned in Exhibit A.

Notice the first name on that list: Mohammad Javad Zarif. That would be the same Zarif who John Kerry is very close to. Very, very close. As in, let’s get together and chat even though I’m no longer Secretary of State kind of close. Back in September 2018, Senator Marco Rubio tried to get then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to open an investigation into John Kerry over these chats with Zarif.

I write to encourage the Department of Justice to make a determination on whether former Secretary of State John F. Kerry’s actions since leaving office related to the Iran nuclear deal (known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) potentially violate the Logan Act (18 U.S.C. § 953) or the Foreign Agents Registration Act (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.). As you know, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism, and the State Department continues to characterize the regime in Tehran as “the foremost biggest state sponsor of terrorism” in its annual reports on international terror.

Last week, former Secretary Kerry publicly admitted that he has met with Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif “probably three or four times,” including in the United States, since leaving office. This admission confirms the Boston Globe’s news report of May 4, 2018, that Kerry had “sat down at the United Nations [in New York] with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving” the JCPOA, and that “[i]t was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration.”

For his part, Donald Trump was convinced that John Kerry needed to be prosecuted under the Logan Act back in 2019.

But back to the eight cases where the State Department actively interfered with the FBI attempting to arrest Iranian nationals. The first cases that Grassley and Johnson want details about, and that the whistleblowers provided emails regarding, are from July 2015. That would be the same month that the Iran Deal was being signed. According to Grassley and Johnson, the whistleblowers claim this interference continued, to the point that Loretta Lynch got involved.

Additional unclassified FBI emails indicate that the State Department’s alleged interference into ongoing FBI investigations became such an issue, that then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch had to discuss the matter with Secretary Kerry. An unclassified email from April 29, 2016, described a meeting between the two as: “[t]he Thursday meeting between Secretary Kerry and the AG didn’t go well for us…the read-out is that now is not a ‘good time’ to be requesting approvals for extraditions or lures on Iran CP cases.” Another email from May 3, 2016, describes the tension between the AG and Secretary Kerry as “when the PC [Principals Committee] ended, Kerry packed up his stuff and rushed out without engaging with the AG at all. The issues remain unresolved.”

Lynch might have tried to confront Kerry, but she didn’t do anything to stop him – either because she was unwilling to, or unable to. Does anyone think that John Kerry was acting without the knowledge of his own president, Barack Obama, during all of this? Or that Loretta Lynch never brought up how the State Department was actively blocking these arrests? Exactly what Barack Obama knew, and when did he know it, has always been an open question when it comes to the unsavory details of the Deep State inner workings during his administration. But it is a testament to the enduring quality of that same swamp, the Deep State, that kept John Kerry from being actively prosecuted for admitted Logan Act violations during the Trump administration. After all, the FBI had IMPORTANT things like “Crossfire Hurricane” to take care of, so the upper management no longer cared quite so much that John Kerry had messed with their investigations.

And Antony Blinken was Deputy Secretary of State under John Kerry. What did HE know about the State Department actively interfering with the FBI? The Swamp has deep roots, and they connect a whole lot of people.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Kerry was whining that Trump pulled out of the Iran Deal, so everything that has happened is really Trump’s fault.

“When Donald Trump refused the appeals of our closest allies and pulled the United States out of the JCPOA, it created a more dangerous region, empowered Iran, and isolated the United States instead of isolating Tehran,” Kerry said in a statement obtained exclusively by The Hill, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“Even Republicans who opposed the original agreement had appealed to the Trump White House to remain in the agreement to maintain leverage over Iran, but instead Trump chose chaos,” Kerry added. “It made the world more dangerous and Americans less safe.”

Kerry, who oversaw the completion of the Iran agreement in 2015 while serving as secretary of State, argued in Wednesday’s statement that the deal was working and that Trump’s decision to withdraw caused Iran to become more aggressive.

“Now Trump is back as a candidate for president singing the same song — threatening to once again go it alone, undermine our global leadership, and isolate us from our allies,” Kerry said. “He’s attacking democracy and our fundamental rights here at home. Thanks to President Biden’s strong leadership, we have allies sharing the burden and working by our side, and the U.S. is once again at the forefront on the international stage. Americans want stability, not a chaos agent back in the White House.”

Someone hand Lurch a mirror. The Iran Deal was nothing but at an attempt at appeasement, and Biden has proved that his incredible failures on foreign policy have created nothing BUT chaos. John Kerry himself made the world less safe when he blocked the arrest of Iranian nationals in order to make a very bad deal for political reasons.

And the media – with the exception of those that lean more to the right – are silent about John Kerry. They are currently more worked up about Justice Alito flying a Revolutionary War-era flag at his beach house than they are about the former Secretary of State making sure his Iranian “friends” weren’t getting arrested. After all, the media has their priorities… and investigating Democrats isn’t one of them.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click