(Headline USA) Congressional Republicans announced that they were investigating Vice President Kamala Harris’s national security adviser for alleged ties to the Iranian regime.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., sent a letter to Harris, who is now the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, demanding answers about Philip Gordon’s role with her campaign.
Gordon, who served under the Obama administration and played a key role in the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal, joined Harris’s office in 2022. He has close ties to two aides in the Biden administration who were found to be involved in an Iranian influence campaign: Iran special envoy Robert Malley and Pentagon aide Ariane Tabatabai.
In 2020, Gordon co-authored a piece with Tabatabai arguing against imposing additonal sanctions on Iran. In another op-ed, they claimed sanctions could lead to new Iranian efforts to “lash out with attacks on its neighbors, and on Americans and American interests in the MIddle East.”
These claims were “wrong” and obviously “biased in favor of Tehran,” Stefanik and Cotton argued.
“Mr. Gordon was also closely associated with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), another Iranian influence organization that allegedly collaborates with Tehran,” they added, pointing to the adviser’s speaking engagements at the group’s 2014 and 2016 leadership conferences.
Tabatabai remains employed by the Defense Department as a chief of staff to the assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low intensity conflict. But Malley was suspended without pay in 2021, and his clearance was pulled.
Stefanik and Cotton asked Harris’s office to explain whether Gordon still has a security clearance, and whether he was similarly investigated after the ties between Tabatabai, Malley and Iran came to light.
“The Biden–Harris Administration policy of appeasing Iran and abandoning Israel will only worsen if Kamala Harris and her Iranian apologist staff are elevated,” Stefanik said in a statement. “I am proud to join Senator Cotton to demand accountability.”
