The Justice Department launched a new task force Thursday to investigate alleged drug-trafficking and money-laundering schemes tied to Hezbollah following a damning report that claimed former President Barack Obama’s administration failed to prosecute or advance the probes in order to ink the Iran nuclear deal.
The Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team will focus on “evidence in existing investigations,” as well as Project Cassandra, the department said in a press release.
The project was initially started in 2008 by the Drug Enforcement Administration, with the help of 30 other U.S. and foreign agencies, and reportedly discovered a $1 billion per year operation that included weapons, drug trafficking and money laundering used to fund Hezbollah, according to Politico last month.
hile pledging resources and proper attention to the probe, Sessions added: “The team will initiate prosecutions that will restrict the flow of money to foreign terrorist organizations as well as disrupt violent international drug trafficking operations.”
Following the damning Politico report, Sessions announced Justice would review Project Cassandra.
Acting Assistant Attorney General John Cronan will head up the task force, which includes prosecutors experienced in terrorism, organized crime and drug trafficking cases.
Former Obama administration officials pushed back on Politico’s report, asserting the Iran nuclear deal was separate from how the administration dealt with Hezbollah.
“The Obama administration said time and again that the nuclear negotiations with Iran were confined exclusively to that narrow issue,” former National Security Council spokesman Ned Price told The Washington Post last month. “We did not make concessions in other arenas, and we most certainly did not curtail or attempt to influence any active investigations, including by the Drug Enforcement Administration. To the contrary, we aggressively countered Hezbollah’s terrorist plotting and other malign activities before and after the Iran deal came to fruition and while it was being negotiated. ”
Signed in July 2015, the Iran nuclear deal offered to lift crippling economic sanctions previously placed on the Middle East power in exchange for deterring its nuclear weapons programs.