Gertler a special license was based in part on an assertion that there was a “national security interest” for the United States in Mr. The Treasury Department’s decision to grant Mr.
Treasury rules generally prohibit people under sanctions from spending money on lobbyists in the United States. Dershowitz, who was instrumental in winning clemency from Mr. Gertler tested the limits of federal law by hiring lawyers who also worked as lobbyists in Washington to push his case, including Mr. Only last year, some American diplomats and members of Congress in both parties were seeking to expand the sanctions on Mr. Gertler much of what he wanted defied Treasury Department norms, according to three former agency lawyers, effectively rolling back sanctions with no public documentation justifying the move and without broadly consulting officials at the State Department or the National Security Council. Gertler was extraordinary in a number of ways, an investigation by The New York Times found. Gertler’s use of high-powered connections in Israel, including people with ties to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and an effort to win support from the U.S. Trump’s last-minute grants of clemency to political and personal allies and people with connections to him, including the involvement of Mr. Gertler managed to pull it off - and whether it can be reversed. Gertler had been accused years earlier by the United Nations and other groups of working with the then-ruling family on deals that looted the nation’s mineral wealth and propped up a corrupt regime.Īnd it has left the Biden administration scrambling to determine how Mr. The decision stunned and angered American diplomats in Washington and Africa and government officials and human rights activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Mr. banks and allowed him once again to do business with financial institutions worldwide. Gertler much of what he wanted, signing off, without any public announcement, on a one-year arrangement that gave him access to money frozen in U.S. Trump’s term: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin granted Mr. The response came in mid-January, with only days left in Mr.