The Justice Department is highly praised by a House Republican who is also leading a strict task force against the financing of the terrorists. The DOJ was appreciated for its attempt, on Thursday, to assemble a team that is going to investigate the drug trafficking cartels from the Hezbollah militant group – with Iran’s backing.
Robert Pittenger – Republican Representative has always been voicing his criticism against the former President Barack Obama and is even more vocal now, as the Obama administration had silently pulled apart an operation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration against the Hezbollah’s cocaine smuggling into the U.S. in fear of ruining diplomatic relations with Iran as they moved forward with a nuclear deal with them.
On Thursday, Robert said that the Trump Administration stands right to restart the DEA program against Hezbollah and the drug traffickers – a program that was called Cassandra. Although he was aware that the network and systems on which the drug trafficking was operated on had changed.
“There’s no question we’ve lost an enormous amount of momentum and success capability by the Obama administration clearly impeding this process,” Pittenger had said in an interview.
The latest team assembled by the DOJ called the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team would be bringing select prosecutors, and investigators to first assess the available evidence that was previously collected by Project Cassandra and then ensure all the investigations are finalized properly.
Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General went on to say that the team would begin with the prosecutions intended to stop the flow of the money going to the terrorist groups and to intercept the international drugs smuggling operations. He further added that the DOJ would be ensuring that the Project Cassandra and all the other investigations are used for this purpose to their full capacity.
“The Justice Department will leave no stone unturned in order to eliminate threats to our citizens from terrorist organizations and to stem the tide of the devastating drug crisis,” Sessions said in a statement.
The head of DEA’s Special Operations Division and the supervisor for Project Cassandra – Derek Maltz had been holding this position for almost a decade and had taken retirement in 2014, also praised the efforts put in by Jeff Sessions in order to fight the nexus between the terrorists and the criminal network that is supporting it in monetary manner.
He also encouraged the DOJ to closely monitor the successes and failures of Project Cassandra, which according to him fell apart because of the strong competing interests of the country’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
“Let me make this clear, the fact that [the Trump administration] engaged on this immediately is a step in the right direction,” Maltz had said in a statement on Thursday. “But unless they are going to put the right leadership together and not try to reinvent the wheel, it has the potential to become another turf battle.”
“We have a track record of taking down the biggest, baddest threats to our country. We’re not starting from ground zero,” he continued saying. “Now, we just need more support, more resources, and better interagency cooperation.”
