In its lawsuit, the watchdog group accused the Defense Department of intentionally slow-rolling its request for internal documents and communications.
By Matthew Xiao, The Washington Free Beacon
A government watchdog group is suing the Biden-Harris administration for obstructing a yearlong investigation into senior Pentagon employee Ariane Tabatabai, the outed member of a secretive pro-Iran influence group operated by the hardline regime’s government.
America First Legal, a nonprofit oversight group run by former Trump administration officials, filed its lawsuit against the Pentagon on Tuesday, accusing the agency of stonewalling its probe into Tabatabai and other senior U.S. officials for the past year, according to a copy of the filing obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The organization originally requested a trove of internal documents from the Pentagon and State Department as part of an investigation into Tabatabai’s relations with a host of pro-Tehran advocates, including one of her close associates, former Iran envoy Robert Malley, who is under investigation for mishandling classified information.
The probe was launched amid mounting concerns that Tabatabai, Malley, and other senior Biden-Harris officials were conducting back-channel diplomacy with Iran, hoping to strengthen relations with the hardline regime.
The Biden-Harris administration appears to be unbothered by those concerns. Tabatabai was recently promoted to deputy assistant secretary of defense within Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s office, where she leads its force education and training division.
She was offered the position last month, shortly before the explosive leak of classified U.S. intelligence on Israel’s preparations for an upcoming strike on Iran.
In addition to the lawsuit, America First Legal provided the Free Beacon with a cache of newly filed Freedom of Information Act Requests seeking details about who may have leaked that intelligence.
The leak, which included top-secret documents from the U.S. intelligence community, is believed to have been motivated by a desire to handicap the Jewish state ahead of November’s election.
Together, the joint lawsuit and FOIA campaign could help unearth previously unknown details about the Biden-Harris administration’s private discussions on Iran and Israel, the ongoing Middle East conflict, and behind-the-scenes efforts to restart diplomacy with Tehran during the Democratic administration’s four years in office.
“The Biden-Harris administration has appointed pro-Iranian apologists and influence agents to sensitive positions in the departments of defense and state,” said Reed Rubinstein, America First Legal’s senior vice president.
“Our lawsuit and most recent round of investigative demands should shine useful light on the role that these individuals may have played in leaking or sharing U.S. intelligence with the mullahs.”
In its lawsuit, the watchdog group accused the Defense Department of intentionally slow-rolling its request for internal documents and communications, including encrypted text messages, sent between Malley, Tabatabai, and any individual inside the Iranian government.
The initial request for this information was sent in October 2023, just after it was revealed that Malley had been suspended from his post amid a probe into his handling of classified information.
It also followed reports that Tabatabai, a former State Department employee who now works on classified matters at the Pentagon, served as a member of the Iran Experts Initiative, a vast influence network created by Iran’s government and alleged to include two other Malley associates.
The watchdog group’s search parameters included the keywords “Robert Malley,” “IEI,” “Hamas,” “Hezbollah,” “Iran,” “Zionist,” “clearance,” and “TS/SCI,” referring to information marked classified.
The Pentagon was legally mandated to respond within 20 days to the organization’s FOIA request but blew past this deadline, claiming that a “complex processing queue” and “unusual circumstances” prevented it from producing the relevant documents, according to emails exchanged between the Defense Department and American First Legal in 2023.
In its latest batch of FOIA requests, meanwhile, American First Legal petitioned the Pentagon, Office of Director of National Intelligence, State Department, and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to hand over documents detailing all internal communications officials have engaged in since the classified intelligence pertaining to Israel became public.
The top-secret intelligence originally appeared on a pro-Iran Telegram channel before spreading online, reportedly forcing Israel to delay its attack on Iran to stop it from making defensive preparations.
While the identity of the leaker or leakers is unknown, outside groups like America First Legal suspect that any number of Biden-Harris administration figures could have released the information to thwart Israel’s counterstrike, payback for Tehran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack on the country.
The Pentagon denied this week that Tabatabai was involved in the leak or is a person of interest in the investigation.
America First Legal is asking that each agency release all records related to “Iran,” “Israel,” “leak,” “investigation,” and “Telegram”—a broad request that could shine light on the administration’s private reaction to the dissemination of highly classified documents.