On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” columnist Charles Krauthammer said that the payment of $400 million to Iran as four Americans were released from the country back in January will go “straight to” terrorists, and wasn’t only a “quid pro quo.” It was also “money laundering.”

Krauthammer said, “It was illegal. It isn’t only the optics. It isn’t only that they are just looking ridiculous in denying that it was a quid pro quo. Obviously, it wasn’t a coincidence. The reason that it was objected to by Justice, there is a statute that prohibits us from engaging in Iran dealing with dollars. So, they had to print the money here, ship it over to Switzerland, turn it into Swiss francs and euros and ship it over to Iran. If a private company had done this, this is called money laundering. The CEO would be in jail right now.”

He added, “The reason it was concealed is because it’s illegal. That’s why Congress wasn’t notified, because it’s scandalous for the administration to explicitly defy a law that says you can’t deal in American currency. And the second thing is, it isn’t only that it encourages terrorism in the future, it’s that the money is in cash. Why in cash? Because that you can’t trace it. It’s going to go straight to Hezbollah, straight to Hamas, straight to terrorists in Iraq.”

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