Fact check: Did Trump see "money pouring off a plane" in Iran?
In Daytona Beach, Florida on Wednesday, Donald Trump spoke in detail about seeing video of "money pouring off of a plane" in Iran, referring to the $400 million cash payment the U.S. sent to Tehran. The video, he said, was shot in Iran by the Iranian government and released as a ploy to embarrass the U.S. He described it as shot at a "perfect angle, nice and steady," and that it could only be the work of Iranian state media.
"I'll never forget the scene this morning and remember this, Iran -- I don't think you've heard this anywhere but here -- Iran provided all of that footage, the tape of taking that money off that airplane, right, $400 million in cash. How does a president do that? How do you do that?" Trump said.
Then, he went on to describe the video itself, that he said showed the arrival of the money.
"Now here's the amazing thing. Over there where that plane landed, top secret, they don't have a lot of paparazzi, you know the paparazzi doesn't do so well over there, right, and they have a perfect tape done by obviously a government camera, and the tape is of the people taking the money off the plane, right," Trump continued. "That means in order to embarrass us further Iran sent us the tapes, right. It's a military tape. It's a tape that was a perfect angle, nice and steady. Nobody getting nervous because they are going to be shot, because they are shooting a picture of money pouring off of plane."
And then, Trump said, that Iran had released the tape "so that we will be embarrassed."
CBS News asked several U.S. government sources to point us to the video. None knew of any such video. Did he see it in his first intelligence briefing?
No, he did not. Trump has yet to start receiving intelligence briefings. "[T]hose security briefings haven't started yet," his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort told Fox News' "Happening Now."
CBS News then asked the Trump campaign to identify the video Trump was talking about. A spokesperson pointed us to a clip that had aired on Fox News earlier in the day and said "He was referring to the B-roll footage in almost every broadcast."
Here is the video released by the Associated Press:
The video, from Geneva, Switzerland, was shot on Jan. 17, and it shows Americans who had been held in Iran stepping off a Swiss plane after being freed. They were flown from Tehran to Geneva before continuing on to Germany and eventually to the U.S. This is Associated Press footage recorded in Switzerland.
The footage does not show pallets of cash. Nor is it the work of Iranian state TV shot in Tehran, as Trump claimed.
Sopan Deb and Adam Aigner-Treworgy contributed to this report.