Just about every hour a new revelation is made about the facts and circumstances of the terrorist-leader-for-deserter swap engineered by our commander in chief. We’ve known for a while that Barack Obama had agitated for the release of these five particular prisoners since 2011, I don’t know if they are distant relatives or what. Now FoxNews is reporting that  that there were active negotiations for Bergdahl’s release in December 2013 for an undisclosed amount of cash and no prisoners:

The Obama administration largely bypassed the intelligence community to green-light the risky swap of five Taliban leaders for American Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, officials tell Fox News, as new details emerge about concerns with the deal at the highest levels of President Obama’s team.

A military intelligence source also confirmed to Fox News that a second option — involving the payment of a cash ransom for Bergdahl’s freedom — was pursued as late as December 2013.

The source said the goal was to reach out to Pakistan leadership with direct ties to the Taliban, and float the possibility of trading cash, instead of prisoners, for Bergdahl. That option, though, was put “on hold” in December when it was made clear the administration intended to pursue a prisoner swap.

Intelligence officials confirmed to Fox News that the Bergdahl prisoner swap was then on an accelerated track, and no formal assessment of the entire intelligence community was conducted. This made the opportunity to push back against the transfer extremely limited.

This confirms the emerging narrative that the release of these five prisoners was desired by Obama for some time. He ignored military and intelligence assessments, abandoned a promising effort to retrieve Bergdahl by the tried and true method of ransom, and made no attempt to obtain the release of three other American hostages.