Politics

McConnell Says Obama’s Plan To Close Guantanamo Bay Is ‘Illegal’ [VIDEO]

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Steve Guest Media Reporter
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Sen. Majority Leader [crscore]Mitch McConnell[/crscore] says “it would be illegal under current law to transfer foreign terrorists at Guantanamo into the United States.”

Speaking on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, McConnell argued that “President Obama seems to remain captured on one matter by a campaign promise he made way back in 2008” that he would close Guantanamo Bay.

McConnell argued that it is an “ill-considered crusade to close the security detention facility at Guantanamo. Today we received the descriptions of where the president would like to detain terrorists within the United States, though not any actual proposed locations, despite the fact that it would be illegal under current law to transfer foreign terrorists at Guantanamo into the United States.”

“This isn’t a case where the president can even try to justify the use of some pen-and-phone strategy which claiming Congress failed to act,” McConnell claimed. “To the contrary, Congress acted over and over and over again in a bipartisan way to reject the president’s desire to transfer dangerous terrorists to communities here in the United States.”

Obama “signed all these prohibitions and his attorney general recently confirmed that it is illegal — illegal — for the president to transfer any of these terrorists into the United States. So we’ll review President Obama’s plan, but since it includes bringing dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he should know that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed against that proposal.”

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