Former President Barack Obama lied to the American people about the infamous prisoner swap that was part of the Iran deal in 2016, and released fugitives who were considered major national security threats, according to an investigative report by Politico.

“Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal,” Politico’s Josh Meyer reports.

The seven men released on that day as a “humanitarian” gesture were deeply tied to Iran’s nuclear arms efforts, and one was connected with procurement for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that killed American soldiers in Iraq.

“They didn’t just dismiss a bunch of innocent business guys,” a former federal law enforcement supervisor who was centrally involved in the hunt for Iranian arms traffickers and nuclear smugglers told Politico. “And then they didn’t give a full story of it.”

Politico noted that federal prosecutors and agents were shocked and furious when they learned of the release; many of them had reportedly spent years, others decades, “working to penetrate the global proliferation networks that allowed Iranian arms traders both to obtain crucial materials for Tehran’s illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, in some cases, to provide dangerous materials to other countries.”

Politico wrote:

Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.

But that was not all.

Politico also noted that “in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives.”

Those fugitives had allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities believe supported Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

Another, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was reportedly charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

Amin Ravan was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. According to Politico, he was also responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans. “U.S. authorities also believe he was part of a procurement network providing Iran with high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq,” Politico wrote.

The report also found that Obama’s Iran deal destroyed counter-proliferation efforts that ultimately made Iran’s path to nuclear arms easier.

Breitbart News has reported on new findings out of Iran indicating that the Iranian regime is violating the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), the formal name for the nuclear deal, by covertly developing nuclear material near the “off-limits” Parchin military site.

According to the Politico investigation, some current and former officials believe Loretta Lynch, who served as the nation’s top law enforcement official at the time, “failed in her responsibility as attorney general to protect the integrity of the Justice Department’s investigations and prosecutions from any political interference.”

At the same time, Lynch was allegedly also protecting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton from an email scandal that contributed to her devastating loss on Election Day 2016.

President Donald Trump has called the Iran deal the “worst deal ever negotiated.”

As it turns out, he may have been right.