By now everybody has heard that back in January, the Obama administration secretly airlifted a $400 million payment in foreign cash to Iran in the middle of the night, reportedly on the same day four American hostages were released.

In America, we have laws against funneling money to terrorist organizations. We have laws against laundering money. And we have banking laws. White House spokesman Josh Earnest claimed these laws, along with sanctions, prevented the Obama administration from making the payment to Iran through a bank, or having the US Treasury wire the funds.

US financial firms face thousands of pages of regulations still being developed in Dodd-Frank that have hamstrung growth, and should have thwarted this $400 million payment.

The Obama administration and the then-Democratic-led Congress put the screws to the banking and finance industry, passing a painful and partisan growth-restricting set of rules under Dodd-Frank. And never championing an industry in which America still leads the world, at least for now: banking.

While Dodd-Frank was undeniably designed to punish bankers, it also destroyed any meaningful growth prospects for our economy by choking off the flow of capital.

In America there is an antimoney laundering act, also known as the Bank Secrecy Act. Under it, all cash transactions of $10,000 or more must be reported to authorities.

It was enhanced under the Patriot Act after 9/11 in order to track the flows of funds and keep them out of the hands of terrorists.

So even if a small business took out $5,000 in the morning and $5,000 in the afternoon, the aggregate of $10,000 would set off alarm bells.

So much for the rigorous new banking laws, which choke off growth by not allowing Wall Street firms to invest their cash into new businesses.

It is painfully obvious for all to see in Earnest’s comments that the Obama administration chose to pay cash in order to get around the laws and sanctions. Something that would probably land bankers behind bars.