Imaad Zuberi, who donated lavishly to Clinton, Obama and Trump, faces 12 years in federal prison.
According to legal documents, Zuberi is claiming that his former CIA handler was involved in one of his lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill.
If the allegations are true, they could violate rules governing CIA conduct on US soil.
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A jet-setting superdonor to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump now claims he was actually a CIA asset recruited to provide foreign intelligence acquired during his travels, legal documents reviewed by Insider show.
The documents also allege that the donor, Imaad Zuberi, worked with his former CIA handler on a domestic lobbying campaign that he undertook on behalf of a foreign government — one that prosecutors have described as “paid political efforts to mold the opinion of members of Congress and Obama administration officials.”
If true, the lobbying effort might have violated long-standing rules that limit CIA activities on American soil. “It is against the law for the CIA to run ops in this country,” said Robert Deitz, a former senior counsel to the agency’s director. If a CIA handler was attempting to covertly influence US officials, it could have explosive consequences on Capitol Hill. Agency operatives are strictly forbidden from “hobnobbing with American politicians” without their knowledge, added Deitz, who emphasized he wasn’t familiar with Zuberi or his legal case.
Zuberi, who faces 12 years in prison for campaign-finance violations, declined to comment on the documents, which are part of an effort to withdraw his guilty plea in the case and appeal his conviction. His lawyers have also filed two formal complaints with the CIA, asking the agency’s inspector general to open an investigation into the allegations.
Zuberi, the founder of a small venture-capital firm called Avenue Ventures, pleaded guilty in 2019 to making illegal campaign contributions, falsifying lobbying records, and tax evasion. Federal prosecutors accused Zuberi of serving as an illegal straw donor for the Clinton campaign, and of funneling money from foreign sources into Obama’s campaign and inauguration. Zuberi was reimbursed for the donations by the true donors, many of whom were foreigners prohibited from contributing to American candidates.
As part of his sentence, Zuberi paid $17.4 million in tax restitution and penalties. Lee Goodman, a former chair of the Federal Election Commission, has called the punishments “some of the highest on record” for lobbying and campaign-contribution violations.
Imaad Zuberi leaves a federal courthouse in Los Angeles. He now faces 12 years in prison and is attempting to withdraw his guilty plea.
Brian Melley/AP
A California businessman who speaks five languages, Zuberi knew his way around the places where money and geopolitics intersect. He would fly from his home in Los Angeles to meet contacts in Paris, Geneva, and Abu Dhabi, making deals in technology and real estate. A pre-sentencing report put his net worth at $32,370,084 and his monthly income at $83,963, mostly from rental properties. He was rich, but not Forbes 400 rich.
But inside the murky world of campaign donors, where checks are swapped for photo ops and luncheons, Zuberi was a rock star, a masterly networker who could connect wealthy strivers with the political candidates who needed their cash. He started fundraising for Obama early, in 2008, and later arranged for some of his overseas contacts to have their pictures taken with then-Vice President Joe Biden. In 2015, while he was serving as a top-tier “Hillblazer” for Hillary Clinton, a detailed exposé revealed that Zuberi had failed to properly register as a lobbyist and had stiffed many of the subcontractors who worked for him. That story reached the in-box of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, who went ahead and made plans to meet with Zuberi anyway. “Take the money!” a Clinton staffer wrote in an email thread debating whether to accept contributions from Zuberi.
After Clinton lost, Zuberi abruptly changed sides. He donated $900,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee and was photographed beside Michael Cohen inside the elevator at Trump Tower. Also on the elevator was the head of Qatar’s $320 billion sovereign wealth fund, who later said that he had had dinner at the Peninsula Hotel with Cohen and Zuberi. (A spokesperson told reporters that Zuberi had no recollection of the meeting.)
Imaad Zuberi and Michael Cohen in a Trump Tower elevator during the 2016 transition. Zuberi donated $900,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee.
Kathy Willens/AP
By that time federal prosecutors were already looking at Zuberi, and their interest sharpened as they dug into the possibility that Trump’s inauguration had illegally accepted contributions from foreign donors. In February, after pleading guilty to a host of charges, Zuberi was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He now alleges that he is innocent of the charges he pleaded guilty to, arguing that all the contributions he made to the Clinton campaign were properly credited to the true donors. On June 7, a federal district judge in Los Angeles ordered Zuberi to report to prison as scheduled, on June 18, while he awaits the outcome of his appeal.
The lobbying violation that Zuberi pleaded guilty to stemmed from a $8.5 million contract he had signed with the government of Sri Lanka. On the surface, it was a fairly straightforward agreement to provide his client with advice on US policy matters and “effectuate Sri Lanka’s commercial and diplomatic objectives.” But documents reviewed by Insider show that Zuberi’s legal team now claims that Zuberi worked on the Sri Lanka project with a man who had served as his handler at the CIA.
The project was already underway when the alleged handler got in touch with Zuberi and asked to be involved. Emails and other documents Insider obtained indicate that the man played a major role in setting up meetings for the Sri Lankans in Washington with several senators and members of Congress, as well as a reception at the Sri Lankan embassy.
As with many lobbying efforts, the Sri Lankan project never amounted to much. Lobbyists and lawyers who worked as subcontractors on the project told Insider that Zuberi’s team did not appear to have much experience and that invoices went unpaid. In addition, they recalled, the alleged CIA handler behaved awkwardly and seemed nervous around elected officials.
It’s possible, of course, that the allegations of CIA misconduct are nothing more than an attempt by Zuberi to avoid going to prison. If the alleged handler was neither working for nor acting on behalf of the CIA, his only transgression would have been an apparent failure to register as a lobbyist.
But the documents reviewed by Insider, combined with interviews and public records, make it hard to dismiss Zuberi’s connection to the CIA outright. In exchanges with colleagues, the alleged handler referred to himself as a consultant who has worked with several US agencies, including the CIA. His LinkedIn profile says that he once worked for the State Department, and a former member of the intelligence community told Insider that the profile “rang some bells” with colleagues with experience in counterterrorism.
In 2002, the Congressional Record listed the alleged handler as a State Department diplomat. That same list includes a person known to have served in the CIA’s operations division, which sometimes works under diplomatic cover to recruit assets overseas. (The State Department said it had no record of the alleged handler’s employment.)
Zuberi’s legal team also has ties to the CIA. Robert Eatinger, the agency’s former deputy general counsel, serves as one of Zuberi’s attorneys. And José Rodriguez, the CIA’s former head of operations, has filed a sealed affidavit arguing for a lenient sentence for Zuberi.
A spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment on Zuberi’s allegations, as did attorneys for Zuberi. Insider has chosen not to name the alleged CIA handler at this time, in part because attempts to reach him by email, phone, and through his business associates and family were unsuccessful.
It is unclear whether the CIA’s inspector general has opened an investigation into Zuberi’s complaints. The agency rarely takes that step: In recent years, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, inspectors general in the intelligence community have typically opened investigations into only one of every six complaints.
But if the allegations stand up to further scrutiny, members of Congress may grow concerned that the CIA violated rules prohibiting it from taking part in domestic operations. “We absolutely do not want intelligence agencies attempting to shape US policy,” said Steven Aftergood, who runs the Government Secrecy Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Any involvement in a domestic lobbying effort “would breach that principle.”
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