House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Friday that Rob Malley, the Iran envoy for President Joe Biden, may have committed “treason,” leading to his suspension from his post.
As Breitbart News has reported, Malley — long accused of being overly friendly to the Iranian regime and Islamic terrorists in general — was suspended last month amid allegations of mishandling classified materials.
McCaul criticized the State Department for failing to inform Congress when Malley was suspended and lost his security clearance. On Friday, he expanded that criticism in an interview with Morgan Ortagus of News Nation:
I asked Chairman of @HouseForeignGOP, @RepMcCaul, about the ongoing investigation into Iran Envoy Rob Malley. McCaul told me he is deeply concerned about the possibility of an act of treason.
Listen in⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Ylzj3ZfF4U
— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) July 21, 2023
McCaul said:
What’s very disturbing is that we tried to get [Malley] to testify before our committee, to come and give us classified briefings, [and] conveniently he would not appear. Now we know why he didn’t show up. What I’m deeply concerned about is because he had access to these very high-level and sensitive documents and information, that if he turned that information over to a foreign nation adversary, like say Iran or Russia, as you know, that really would constitute an act of treason. And it’s very disturbing that the man we’re relying on for information about the Iran deal, and what the Iranians are telling him, could be in violation of his security clearance.
Malley was one of the architects of the 2015 nuclear deal that President Donald Trump abandoned. He was sent to Vienna as soon as President Biden took office in a vain attempt to persuade Iran, with which the U.S. does not have diplomatic relations, to re-negotiate. Iran appears simply to have played for time, while enriching uranium, though there is talk of a tacit “mini-deal.”
Trump left the 2015 deal partly because it allowed Iran to emerge as a nuclear power after about a decade, while giving it billions of dollars in cash, along with sanctions relief, with few safeguards against violations. Shortly before that, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed an intelligence trove showing that Iran had never given up its ambition to develop nuclear weapons.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.