Donald Trump Never Saw 'Top Secret' Iran Video: Campaign
— -- Donald Trump's campaign is admitting that the Republican presidential nominee never saw a video of the U.S. offloading wooden pallets of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies in Tehran, even though he described such a video in full detail yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the American prisoner release in Iran earlier this year coincided with a $400 million cash payment to Iranian officials. According to the Journal, the secret operation was the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the White House reached with Iran over a decades-old dispute stemming from a failed arms deal before Iran's last monarch was deposed in 1979.
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"I'll never forget the scene this morning," Trump told a crowd Wednesday in Daytona, Florida, just after describing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, as a liar. "Iran — I don't think you've heard this anywhere but here — Iran provided all of that footage, the tape of taking that money off that airplane, right? $400 million in cash."
He continued, "Now here's the amazing thing. Over there, where that plane landed, top secret, they don't have a lot of paparazzi. You know, the paparazzi doesn't do so well over there, right? And they have a perfect tape done by obviously a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane, right? That means that in order to embarrass us further, Iran sent us the tapes, right? It's a military tape. It's a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady. Nobody getting nervous because they're going to be shot because they're shooting a picture of money pouring off a plane."
Trump's campaign told ABC News today that Trump was referring to a video he saw on Fox News of the American prisoners released in Geneva. However, a campaign spokesman could not explain why the images Trump described did not match the Fox News video.
Some have speculated that Trump may have seen a classified video, since he described it as "top secret." But intelligence officials said that they don't know of any such video and that neither Clinton nor Trump has yet received a general intelligence briefing.
Speaking at a news conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, today, Secretary of State John Kerry said he didn't know of such a video's existence.
"I obviously haven't seen it if I am not aware if it," he told reporters.
Trump also previously claimed to have seen a video of "thousands and thousands" of Muslims cheering on rooftops in New Jersey after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. No video matching that description has ever surfaced.
ABC's John Santucci contributed to this report.
