The government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has asked the oversight official known as an inspector general at both the State and Treasury Department to investigate the decision as the Trump administration ended to lift restrictions Trump himself previously placed on assets held by billionaire Dan Gertler.
The watchdog organization named then-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in their requests, since they said both were involved in the turnaround. Although Gertler was lobbying for the reversal before authorities implemented it, Noah Bookbinder, who serves as president at CREW, argued the Trump administration never provided a reason for later doing so. Lawyers with connections to Trump were involved in lobbying for Gertler to see a restoration of access to his assets.
CREW cited potential violations in Gertler temporarily regaining access to his U.S. assets of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, a legislative initiative that provides for sanctions against figures involved in intrusions upon human rights. Gertler, who is Israeli, was involved in huge mining deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and was close associates with a past president of the country. His personal wealth has been publicly estimated at over a billion dollars as recently as this year. The Biden administration eventually reimposed restrictions on Gertler’s access to his U.S. assets. The original measures covered the entirety of his wealth in the U.S.
“Granting Dan Gertler access to his assets in the waning days of the Trump Administration raises serious questions as to whether former Secretaries Mnuchin and Pompeo violated an important law or made this decision for improper reasons, especially because the Trump Administration never provided a justification for issuing the licenses,” CREW President Noah Bookbinder said. “In order to restore the legitimacy of U.S. anti-corruption efforts, the Treasury and State Departments’ Offices of Inspector Generals must investigate Mnuchin and Pompeo’s actions and whether they violated the law.”
All of these developments mirror recently expressed concerns about presidential pardons issued to two ranchers convicted of arson on federal land and each sentenced to several years in prison. After an assistant to Arizona developer Mike Ingram was in touch with the Interior Department about the case, an ally to Trump then serving in Congress made what available evidence indicates was the first public indication Trump was considering pardons. Ingram also made a $10,000 donation to a Trump super PAC in the days before Trump pardoned the convicted ranchers. Ingram also privately met over breakfast with a then-official at the Interior Department, who subsequently directed that a federal agency determination pointing to concerns about negative environmental impacts from a development Ingram wanted to build be reversed. He and associates of his also made large, pro-Trump donations around that time. The total of those donations, which were made to the Trump Victory Fund, reached nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
