Monday, January 2, 2017

Squeaky clean, huh? Obama forgot about these 25 scandals

BIG LIST of president's most outrageous abuses of executive power
author-image Chelsea Schilling
 
Chelsea Schilling is a news and commentary editor for WND and a proud U.S. Army veteran. She has a master's degree in public policy and a bachelor's degree in journalism. Schilling also worked as a news producer at USA Radio Network and as a news reporter for the Sacramento Union.

President Obama (Photo: White House)


It’s an eye-popping claim: Barack Obama is a squeaky-clean president who will leave office without ever having been marred by a single scandal or embarrassment during his eight years in the White House.

At least that’s what the outgoing president and his advisers would like America to believe.

“The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal,” Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close friends and longtime adviser said during a Sunday interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”

Asked about the Obamas’ public personas, she continued, “I think that they behave as the people who they are. What you see in public is the same thing I see in private. Do they feel responsibility because they’re historic figures? Yes, they do. But I don’t think it has made them be different than who they are. The president prides himself on the fact that his administration hasn’t had a scandal and he hasn’t done something to embarrass himself. That is not because he is being someone other that who he is. That’s who he is. That is who they are. And that is what really resonates with the American people.”

n November 2016, Obama got an earful from Twitter after he declared, “I’m extremely proud of the fact that over 8 years we have not had the kinds of scandals that have plagued other administrations.”

What do YOU think? Which of Obama’s top 25 scandals is most outrageous? Sound off in today’s WND poll!
Apparently a refresher is in order, so WND assembled a list of Obama’s top 25 most outrageous scandals during his eight years in the White House.

Obama’s Iran nuke deal


iran-missile 
On July 14, 2015, the Obama administration negotiated and signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, a nuclear deal between Iran, the United States and the “P5+1,” which included France, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Russia, and the European Union. The Obama administration pushed the deal through and agreed to major terms without consulting with the U.S. Senate. The White House championed the plan as “the historic deal that will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.” 
 
Obama later conceded that the deal he sought with Iran would not prevent the jihadist theocracy from obtaining nuclear weapons, but said it would delay that by 10 to 15 years.


As part of the deal, Iran made commitments with regard to its nuclear program, including reduction of low-enriched uranium stockpiles to 300 kilograms, limits on future enrichment of uranium to 3.67 percent, storage of centrifuges for 10 years, restrictions on research and development and monitoring and inspections. Iran also agreed to rebuild its Arak nuclear reactor so its core cannot produce weapons-grade plutonium and transform its Fordow facility into a research center. In exchange, Iran was promised sanctions relief and the unfreezing of up to $150 billion in assets. The agreement allowed Iran to continue its uranium enrichment – a major sticking point for opponents who cite Iran’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism and its repeated threats against the U.S. and her ally, Israel.

But the Obama administration has kept secret many unclassified documents related to the deal. Members of the public and even some congressional staffers cannot access the files held in secure areas on Capitol Hill known as Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or SCIF. Even some top Democratic Party lawmakers are calling on Donald Trump to release the documents after he enters the White House in January.

“Unless there’s a damn good reason to keep them out of the public eye, turn them over,” Jon Tester, D-Mont., said earlier this month, the Weekly Standard reported. “I’m more on the side of transparency than not, that is for sure. … But that’s a first blush, not really knowing what’s in them.”


President Obama announces Iran nuclear deal (Photo: Screenshot)  

In September, the Institute for Science and International Security reported that the Obama administration allowed Iran to exceed limits imposed by the deal so as to claim Tehran was still in compliance with the terms. The Obama administration dismissed the institute’s report.

“The administration was really nasty after we released these documents,” David Albright, founder and president of the institute, told the Weekly Standard. “It was very tough for us to get the information. … I think that is we hadn’t released, they had every intention to keep it secret. They may have given lip service to openness, but I think their intention was to keep it secret.”

Albright continued, “You have to ask the question of, what else is being hidden? The administration did it to try to minimize the chance that people would know what was in these decisions, and certainly keep these people from talking to people like me in the technical community that can actually interpret what’s in those decisions.”

The Obama administration reportedly has allowed Iran to keep low-enriched uranium disallowed under the 2015 deal, including uranium “deemed unrecoverable” for use in making nuclear weapons. In exchange, Iran promises to not try to recover the uranium. However, that language is not in the actual Iran deal. Other revelations indicated Obama made a secret side deal with Iran, allowing it to decide which nuclear sites to inspect and letting Iran do its own inspections at the Parchin site, where experts suspect Iran has been developing nuclear arms. The side deal also reportedly lets Iran provide its own photos and videos of suspect locations, while “taking into account military concerns.”

In August 2015, action star and WND exclusive columnist Chuck Norris wrote a column exposing “Obama’s 6 biggest lies about the Iran nuke deal.” 


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