Daniel Dale Shreds Trump’s Claim That He Got Persecuted Christian Released: ‘Freed During the Obama Administration’

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In an article published on Friday, top CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale refuted President Donald Trump’s claim that he freed persecuted Christian Mariam Ibrahim from a Sudanese prison with “one phone call,” noting that she was “freed during the Obama administration.”

Speaking on Thursday morning at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump discussed the case of Ibrahim, who was unjustly imprisoned and sentenced to death over her faith in 2014. After a global uproar, she was released the same year.

Dale noted that while the president appeared to have prepared remarks on the subject, he then seemed to go off the cuff, claiming he was solely responsible for freeing her.

“I did that. I did that. I did that with one phone call, actually,” he said. “And she had such support, it was so easy. And when I explained it to the powers that be: ‘Yes, sir, we will do it right away.’”

“Ibrahim was released in 2014, during the Obama administration,” wrote Dale on Friday, crediting Religion News Service’s Jack Jenkins for first raising doubts about the president’s story. “There has never been the slightest indication that a private citizen in the US, a businessman and celebrity at the time, was the person who convinced Sudanese authorities to let her out of prison.”

“When Ibrahim met Trump at the White House in 2019, at an event with fellow survivors of religious persecution, he did not publicly display familiarity with the case or tell the story about how he had supposedly singlehandedly secured her release,” he continued. “A member of his administration briefly summarized Ibrahim’s story for him, and Trump then told her, ‘We got you out, that’s good, that’s great.'”

Notably, Dale made sure to mention his prior coverage of Trump telling “fictional stories that feature unnamed people referring to him as ‘sir,'” quipping, “This was another one.”

When CNN requested a comment from the White House on Friday about the president’s claimed involvement in Ibrahim’s release, they never received a response.

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