Trump rented office space to Iranian bank tied to terrorism

Donald Trump once rented office space to an Iranian bank that was linked to sponsoring terrorist groups, a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Public Integrity has found. Bank Melli, a state-controlled Iranian bank, paid as much as half a million dollars a year in rent to Trump during the time they were a tenant in his GM Building, between 1998 and 2003.

U.S. officials claim Bank Melli moved money between 2002 and 2006 to a portion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that funded terrorist attacks; the bank was also used to get a hold of materials for the nation's nuclear program.

The legality of Trump taking rent from Bank Melli is also at question, since at the time the U.S. forbid Americans from doing business (and taking rent) from Iranian companies. Some Iranian organizations had special licenses for some transactions, and "if the payments were licensed, it may have been legally difficult for the Trump Organization to evict the bank," NBC News reports. But the Treasury Department does not publicly disclose that information, and Trump's campaign and Bank Melli both declined to answer any questions.

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Still, critics of Trump see his ties to Bank Melli as proof of his conflict of interests. "It's a pretty hypocritical position to take," Richard Nephew, who spent almost a decade contributing to Iran sanctions for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told ICIJ. "It suggests that [Trump's] principles are pretty flexible when it comes to him getting paid."