Joe Lieberman's Benghazi Connection
Joe Lieberman's Benghazi Connection
Trump's possible FBI chief pick lobbied for a Libyan politican who courted a Benghazi terrorist suspect.
DAVID CORN MAY 19, 2017 4:37 PM
As President Donald Trump escaped Washington on Friday for his first overseas trip, the White House announced that he wasn't yet ready to reveal his pick to replace James Comey, the FBI director he brazenly fired the previous week. But one name on his list appeared to be ahead of the others: former Sen. Joe Lieberman, the onetime Democrat who was Vice President Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential campaign.
Lieberman may not be an odd choice for Trump. He finished up his Senate career as an independent. Perhaps more important, since leaving the Senate in 2013, Lieberman has been a senior counsel at the Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm, which has defended Trump in numerous disputes over the years. But as a member of that law firm, Lieberman also had the unusual job of promoting and representing a Libyan businessman and politician who tried to court an alleged terrorist accused of leading the 2012 attack on the Benghazi compound that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
In Lieberman's final days as a senator, a reporter asked him if he would become a lobbyist. "No, I'm not going to do that," he replied. But in November 2013, as Politico reported at the time, his law firm signed up as a foreign agent for Basit Igtet, a Libyan businessman and activist who was considering running for prime minister in Libya. Igtet made his money through assorted ventures in Switzerland, where his family had sought exile. He married Sara Bronfman, the daughter of Edgar Bronfman, who had been the billionaire chairman of Seagram and the president of the World Jewish Congress. The foreign agent registration form filed at the Justice Department noted that Lieberman would be part of the team handling this $100,000 project that would provide "government relations services" to Igtet.
A Benghazi native, Igtet was a long-shot candidate for prime minister. As Forbes noted, "Igtet believes he's got the technocratic prowess to transform his country of six million people from the brink of civil war into the crown jewel of northern Africa. But skeptics say his status as a longtime expatriate and his lack of national security experience leave him ill-prepared to grasp control of deteriorating relations among warring rebel factions, police and the army." And having a Jewish wife was probably not an asset.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/05/joe-lieberman-benghazi-trump-fbi
