Whistleblowers said former United States Secretary of State John Kerry used an e-mail alias (SESTravel1@state.gov) during his time in the Obama administration, Fox News reported on Monday. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson are demanding that records from that e-mail address be made public.

Grassley and Johnson wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday, saying:

We want to know whether then Secretary Kerry properly complied with all federal records laws and regulations with respect to his official e-mail communications and whether responses to relevant Freedom of Information Act requests have properly included that e-mail address in productions to requesters.

The Iran deal: In May, Grassley and Johnson were informed by whistleblowers that during negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal, Kerry repeatedly blocked arrest warrants issued for Iranian terrorists.

Grassley and Johnson wrote to Blinken in May:

[W]hile the Obama-Biden administration publicly committed to “prevent[ing] Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons by raising the cost of Iran’s defiance of the international community,” then Secretary of State John Kerry actively interfered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) executing arrest warrants on individuals in the U.S. illegally supporting Iranian efforts, including financial efforts, to develop weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program.

One example involved fbi e-mail records from Aug. 25, 2017, showing instances when the fbi, the Department of Justice (doj) and the U.S. government “could have moved forward with the cases but the State Department chose to block them.”

• In six instances, “the fbi lost the opportunity to arrest the main subject.”
• The State Department blocked another arrest “while the subject was midflight and the subject was forced to leave the U.S. immediately upon arrival.”
• Another “returned to Iran.”
• Two targets were arrested “only after ‘state lifted their block … since the new [Trump] administration took office.’”

The records provided to our offices show that the Obama-Biden administration’s State Department, under the leadership of John Kerry, actively and persistently interfered with fbi operations pertaining to lawful arrests of known terrorists, members of Iranian proliferation networks, and other criminals providing material support for Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The records also show that doj and fbi leadership apparently allowed it to happen until the Trump administration altered course.
—Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson

Aliases: Government officials typically use e-mail aliases as a way of getting around official requests for information when they have something to hide. It remains to be seen whether Kerry used the e-mail for official business as the whistleblowers claim. But the allegations are something to keep an eye on.

To learn why the Iran deal cannot be trusted, read “Revealed: A Deal Founded on Lies.”