Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton likens the Obama administration's airlifting to Iran a $400 million cash payment to the subversive actions of a "drug cartel."
In an interview aired Sunday on CBS News' "Face The Nation," Cotton charged the administration "has consistently stonewalled Congress and the American people."
"We didn't know that it was paid for with bills that could be easily laundered and used for terrorism… We didn't know that the Department of Justice opposed it," he said in remarks posted by The Hill ahead of the program's airing.
"I think it's really shocking to most Americans that the United States government was acting like a drug cartel...stacking cash on a pallet and wrapping it in cellophane and flying it in an unmarked aircraft to give to the world's worst state-sponsored terrorism."
The cash airlift arrived the same day four American prisoners were released, and GOP critics have blasted it as a ransom payment.
President Barack Obama denied the money was ransom.
"It doesn't really matter though what President Obama says," Cotton said.
"It matters what the Iranians think and it matters what dictators, terrorists and gangsters all around the world think and they clearly think that this was a ransom payment."
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