Congressional sources are telling the Washington Free Beacon that Congress will investigate the Obama administration's efforts to thwart a decade-long investigation into the massive criminal activities of the terrorist group Hezb'allah. 

A report in Politico earlier this week exposed the White House's interference in and eventual killing of a wide-ranging investigation by dozens of federal law enforcement agencies into Hezb'allah's billion-dollar drug trade in Latin America, as well as other illegal enterprises that included weapons-smuggling and human trafficking.  The profits from these illegal activities – including drugs smuggled into the U.S. – were used to fund Hezb'allah terrorist activities around the world as well as their military actions in the Middle East, including assisting President Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq.

Senior law enforcement officials who were involved in the investigation say that the probe was stopped "at the top" – meaning the White House.  The reason the investigation was halted was to curry favor with Iran and clear the way for an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program.

Congress is now taking steps to formally investigate the reports, which multiple sources described to the Free Beacon as part of a larger Obama administration effort to overlook Iran's global terror operations in order to cement the nuclear deal.

Rep. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.), a member of the House Oversight Committee and chair of its National Security Subcommittee, told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday that he and other top lawmakers are examining evidence that could implicate top former Obama officials, including National Security Council official Ben Rhodes, the architect of the former administration's self-described pro-Iran "echo chamber."

"I've long believed that the Obama administration could not have done any more to bend over backwards to appease the Iranian regime, yet news that the Obama administration killed the investigation into a billion dollar drug ring that lined the terrorist group Hezbollah's pockets in order to save its coveted Iran deal may very well take the cake," DeSantis said.

"Hezbollah is a brutal terrorist group with American blood on its hands and it would be unconscionable for American policy to deliberately empower such a nefarious group," he said.

Lawmakers will be paying particular attention to whether Rhodes or other senior officials accused of misleading Congress and the American public about the Iran deal played a role in thwarting the Hezbollah investigation.

You may recall that Ben Rhodes bragged to the media about how he manipulated foreign policy experts to advance talking points on the Iran deal that the administration wanted advanced.  Many of those talking points were fiction, and Rhodes knew it.

"Congress will be investigating this thoroughly and my National Security subcommittee will be particularly interested in how such a decision came about and whether it was driven by key Iran deal architects such as Ben Rhodes," DeSantis said.

Congressional investigators are already preparing letters to various U.S. government agencies in order to obtain greater information about the alleged interference, according to those with knowledge of the matter.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.), a chief national security voice in the House who fought against the nuclear accord, told the Washington Free Beacon that Congress must investigate the Obama administration's actions and work to increase pressure on Hezbollah.

"The report alleging the Obama Administration turned a blind eye and allowed Hezbollah to pump drugs into the United States to fund its terror campaigns in the Middle East is not surprising," Roskam said. "Hampering the DEA's investigation of Hezbollah would be emblematic of the previous administration's fixation to strike a nuclear accord with Iran at any costs."

"This blind eye imperiled our efforts to combat Iran and its proxies' malign behavior and left us with a cash-flush Iran on the warpath across the Middle East with a nuclear program legitimized by the JCPOA," Roskam said, using the acronym for the nuclear deal's official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. "Congress needs to investigate this report and do what the Obama Administration refused to do, severely increase pressure on Hezbollah and hold the terrorist group, and its benefactor Iran, accountable for their crimes."

The Obama administration lied about the Iran deal.  It lied about what was in it.  It lied about what it was supposed to do.  It lied about the nature of the Iranian regime. 

In fact, it's amazing that administration flunkies were able to keep most of those lies straight – except they were expert liars and hoodwinked not only the American people, but Congress as well.

Democratic senators who were inclined to vote against the deal were convinced otherwise by lies.  Some organizations who might have been expected to oppose the nuclear deal were convinced to support it because of lies. 

The lies have been proved.  And the story about groveling before the Iranians, trying not to offend them by busting open their proxy Hezb'allah's criminal enterprises, is absolutely shocking in its implications.  Any future attack on U.S. citizens by Hezb'allah will have been funded by the profits from criminal activities that were enabled by an American administration.

Today, this story has disappeared from most major media news sites.  The Daily Beast has a story about the capture of a Brooklyn man who has been charged with aiding the terrorists, but it mentions the Politico story only in passing and without comment.  Other than that, mostly silence.  A story with massive implications for U.S. security and the safety of U.S. citizens has disappeared down the rabbit hole because it tarnishes the reputation of liberal icon Obama.

I hope Congress exposes Ben Rhodes and nails him for what Lee Smith writing in the Weekly Standard last year described so aptly:

For the last seven years the American public has been living through a postmodern narrative crafted by an extremely gifted and unspeakably cynical political operative whose job is to wage digital information campaigns designed to dismantle a several-decade old security architecture while lying about the nature of the Iranian regime. No wonder Americans feel less safe – they are.

Indeed.