WASHINGTON _ As the White House and Hillary Clinton faced questions Thursday about a $400 million cash payment to Iran early this year, there was a bit of shared incredulity that it has suddenly become an issue in the presidential campaign.
After all, the White House's spokesman noted, President Barack Obama publicly announced the payment last January as part of the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal.
The money was described as the return of Iranian funds from a dispute dating back to the 1970s.
"I don't know how much more transparent the president of the United States can be than to call all of you into the Roosevelt Room ... on live national television, and announce the fact that we have reached an agreement with Iran," Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday.
The impetus for renewed questions about a publicly announced settlement was a Wall Street Journal account of the transaction, which included at least one fascinating new detail: the $400 million was "converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane," as the paper described it.
The existence of the deal itself was indeed disclosed and reported in real time, covered by the Los Angeles Times and others.
But what's old can still be news, especially given the pace of the modern news cycle. Put it in the midst of a presidential campaign and all bets are off.
At a campaign rally in Florida, Donald Trump claimed to have seen video provided by Iran "taking that money off that airplane."
His campaign later told CBS News that the video was actually footage of the Americans landing at Geneva.
Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump's campaign, still insisted that "nothing less than a full investigation is required."
"This administration has embarrassed our country as no administration has before, going so far as to fund Islamic terror through cash payments to Iran," he said in a statement.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., raised concerns over whether the report confirmed suspicions that the money was in fact ransom for the release of several U.S. citizens, including journalist Jason Rezaian, held by Iran.
Iran said it was owed the money from an unfulfilled contract for American military equipment that the previous U.S.-backed government had purchased. The equipment was never delivered after the shah of Iran was deposed in the 1979 revolution.
Ryan said if it were a ransom payment, it would "mark another chapter in the ongoing saga of misleading the American people" to sell the international agreement with Iran to limit the development of its nuclear program.
Earnest and other White House officials flatly denied that the money was paid as ransom.
"The United States does not pay ransoms," he said. "The only people who are making that suggestion are right-wingers in Iran who don't like the deal, and Republicans in the United States that don't like the deal."
Clinton, who stepped down as secretary of state several years before the payment was made, bluntly described it as "old news" in an interview with a Colorado television station.
"So far as I know, it had nothing to do with any kind of hostage swap or any other tit for tat," she said.
Republicans were only reviving the issue "because they want to continue to criticize the (nuclear) agreement, and I think they are wrong about that."
"I have said the agreement has made the world safer, but it has to be enforced. And I've spoken out very strongly about how I will enforce this agreement," she added. "I will hold the Iranians to account for even the smallest violation, and that's exactly what I think needs to happen."
