Fact-checking the second GOP debate

WASHINGTON – The GOP White House hopefuls sometimes exaggerated or overstated the facts Wednesday in the nationally televised debate. Here’s a look at some of what was said:

• Trump’s contributions to Democrats

Republican rivals, particularly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, jumped on front-runner Donald Trump for giving money to Democratic candidates. Trump’s rivals are correct that he has given generously to the opposition party’s candidates and organizations, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($25,000 each in 2004 and 2008), Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. ($2,000 in 2003 and $2,400 in 2009), and Hillary Rodham Clinton ($1,000 in 2002), according data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

But Trump has also given to Republicans over the years, including $25,000 to the Republican National State Elections Committee in 1998 and $5,000 to conservative Republican John Bolton’s Super PAC in 2014. An analysis of Trump’s contributions by PolitiFact, The Tampa Bay Times fact-checking arm, found that he gave $497,690 to Republicans and $584,850 to Democrats between 1989 and 2011.

From 2012 to the present, Trump has contributed $463,450 to GOP candidates and organizations and $3,500 to Democrats.

• Iran nuclear deal

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee asserted that Iran will gain more than $100 billion in cash frozen in foreign accounts when it is relieved of international sanctions under the nuclear deal.

“This deal, on its face, will send over $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khamenei, making the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism,” Cruz said.

The Treasury Department puts the figure at about $50 billion, because Iran has obligated more than $20 billion to infrastructure projects with China, while tens of billions more consist of non-performing loans to the Iranian energy and banking sectors.

Cruz also asserted that President Barack Obama has broken the law by failing to submit to Congress two “side agreements” that the International Atomic Energy Agency signed with Tehran on resolving allegations that Iran researched a missile-borne nuclear warhead until late 2003.

He was referring to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015. It required the administration to submit to a 60-day congressional review of the text and all related materials and annexes to the deal designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

The side agreements were concluded between Iran and the IAEA and were not part of the more than two years of negotiations that resulted in the deal that Iran concluded with the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

And like the bilateral agreements the IAEA signs with its members, including the United States, the accords it reached with Iran are confidential.

U.S. officials have said they are familiar with the contents of the side agreements and have briefed lawmakers on them, including denying reports that they allow Iran to “self-inspect” a site at a military base where it is suspected of once conducting nuclear weapons research.

Still, Cruz and several Republican opponents of the nuclear deal in the House of Representatives contend that the White House is withholding information on the deal and argue that the 60-day congressional review period hasn’t begun because they haven’t received all materials related to the deal.

• Immigration

Trump repeated his contention that America has “a lot of really bad dudes in this country from outside,” alluding to the case of an undocumented immigrant charged in the shooting death of a San Francisco woman.

Several studies show little evidence that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans. A study by professors at Florida International University in Miami and the University of Akron, among others, show that immigrants are less crime-prone than natives or have no effect on crime rates.

Tribune News Service