Democrats prepare to take Congress with corruption allegations aimed at Trump
President Trump said Thursday that the United States doesn’t need a deal with Iran and told Vice President JD Vance to turn his attention from negotiations to investigating cities and states run by Democrats, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“I have asked Vice President Vance to focus his complete and total attention on the Massive Corruption and Crime taking place in Democrat run Cities and States throughout the U.S.,” Trump posted on social media. “We don’t need a deal with Iran. Those days have long since passed. We’ve got their money, Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and we’ve got their Strait!”
The post marked a sudden reversal. In recent days, Trump had told top aides and counterparts that he was open to Vance restarting talks with Iran and had empowered him to negotiate, the Journal reported. A spokesman for Vance didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the post.
Vance had opened a communications channel with Mohsen Rezaei, the hard-line secretary of Iran’s top security body, and had considered face-to-face talks with him. U.S. officials were at the early stages of discussing in-person meetings aimed at ending the conflict, which has led to higher prices for fuel and consumer goods.
Vance had been the administration’s top Iran negotiator for months, but his role took on added urgency after he blamed the war for Republicans’ midterm losses. Even before the conflict began, Vance argued internally that the United States should pursue a diplomatic solution to rid Iran of its nuclear program rather than join Israel in an all-out bombing campaign.
The announcement scrambles an Iran strategy that has already changed course several times since Trump launched the war in February. In recent days he had been weighing three options: resuming airstrikes, maintaining the blockade on Iranian trade, or making a deal. He chose to tighten the blockade while allowing Vance to pursue an agreement to end the war.
For now, the president — who has claimed victory against Iran many times — appears willing to continue the military operation indefinitely with no diplomatic process in place, the Journal reported. “We won,” Trump said Wednesday during a Veterans Day address. “Now the question is when we want to end. We must have a total victory, not a 93% victory. It’s going to be total.”
Vance also leads an antifraud corruption task force that Trump chose him to head earlier this year. He has investigated allegations of fraud in the immigration and healthcare systems, and the task force said it has uncovered hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud in the government.
Trump’s domestic directive lands as Democrats are poised to take control of the House and Senate in the next Congress. Democrats have put Trump at the center of their own corruption allegations, pointing to the extraordinary growth of his wealth since he took office — including $1.4 billion he earned last year from crypto ventures — and promising investigations into his efforts to get large companies to cut checks for his projects, such as his White House ballroom.