By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
Former FBI Director Louis Freeh has teamed up with controversial defense attorney Alan Dershowitz to register to lobby the U.S. government on behalf of an Israeli billionaire with a sketchy past, according to a registration form reviewed by CNBC.
The Trump administration sanctioned the international businessman, Dan Gertler, for making “hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of opaque and corruption mining and oil deals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” the Treasury Department said in December 2017.
Dershowitz, an outspoken supporter of Trump, said he’s an attorney for Gertler.
“I am acting as a defense lawyer, not a lobbyist. But the rules require registration if you present a defense to a non-judicial agency,” he told CNBC.
Dershowitz and Freeh are lobbying the Treasury Department, which froze Gertler’s assets two years ago.
Freeh’s security team was hired by Dershowitz to investigate claims that he sexually assaulted a woman who later alleged she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein. In 2016, Freeh said his independent investigation “found no evidence to support the accusations of sexual misconduct.”
