During the time of the alleged fraud, Sanberg and AlHusseini had been trying to take Aspiration public through a “SPAC” with a
A career Department of Justice prosecutor on January 21 dismissed a criminal case against a major Democrat donor alleged to have engaged in a $150 million fraud involving a green-energy firm, The Daily Wire has learned. The dismissal came one day after President Donald Trump took office, but before he could install his own U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.
Ibrahim AlHusseini, who has fashioned himself an environmentalist star and Hollywood playboy, gave more than $300,000 to Democrats and was a lead investor in a “socially conscious” finance firm backed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio called Aspiration Inc. The longtime CodePink board member had been heralded as proof that “reversing the climate crisis can be profitable.” But the FBI said AlHusseini falsified financial documents to inflate their value by nearly $200 million.
AlHusseini was arrested at the Los Angeles airport on October 7 and held in jail due to the “serious risk [the] defendant will flee” after his alleged victim said he’d transferred $300 million to his native Saudi Arabia. He was released in December because wealthy environmentalists, including the co-founder of CodePink, Jodie Evans, put up their homes as his bail.
But Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph McNally used the window between the resignation of Joe Biden’s U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California and the installation of Trump’s replacement, which has not yet occurred, to make the case go away without explanation.
A one-paragraph filing said “the Acting United States Attorney having moved for a dismissal of the complaint by the presentment of this Order, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that said Complaint be dismissed as to defendant IBRAHIM AMEEN ALHUSSEINI only without prejudice and that … bond, if any, be exonerated.”
On January 10, a New York judge found AlHusseini in contempt of court after he showered donations on Democrat politicians instead of paying his debts.
Without prejudice means that Trump’s Justice Department could resurrect the charge. But ending the bond means AlHusseini could leave the country first — without causing prominent left-wingers to lose their homes. Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, where AlHusseini recently claimed an address, do not have extradition treaties with the United States.
Connor Williams, a spokesman for McNally, would not explain why charges were dropped, saying “We have no comment at this time.”
A lawyer for AlHusseini, John Lambert, told The Daily Wire in a letter that the Justice Department had gone even further, claiming that “our client’s record has been dismissed pursuant to court order and all records related thereto have been destroyed.” Lambert did not respond to a request for elaboration.
The Daily Wire asked AlHusseini whether he was still in the United States and whether he would return if charged again while abroad. AlHusseini referred to his criminal lawyer, Jessica Nall, who said “I can’t comment other than to say that, as Mr. AlHusseini’s counsel, we are pleased that the case has been dismissed.”
The dismissal by McNally undermines the narrative that career prosecutors are nonpartisan. Several have resigned this month over their unwillingness to carry out directives from Trump officials, though they did not do so when the Biden Justice Department engaged in politically-tinged investigations. In this case, even Biden’s prosecutor appeared unwilling to dismiss the case against the Democrat donor, but McNally did.
The FBI’s criminal complaint provided substantial evidence that AlHusseini committed large-scale fraud. It included a table of 24 purported financial statements that he used to secure a funding deal, compared to what the FBI said were real bank documents. For example, a February 2023 statement claimed an account contained $181,582,018.43, when it actually contained $14,726.29. All 24 of the statements had balances ending in 43 cents, suggesting it was a sloppy cut-and-paste job.
Relying on those financial statements, an investment firm entered into a deal resulting in “losses in excess of $150 million, including interest and penalties, and AlHusseini personally received more than $12 million in ill-gotten gains,” the FBI said. “There is probable cause to believe that AlHusseini has committed securities fraud.”
FBI complaint
Even as the high-profile tycoon sat in jail, prosecutors kept the case quiet and dragged their feet charging him. On October 31, AlHusseini waived “prosecution by indictment and consent[ed] that proceedings may be by information rather than by indictment.” The Justice Department did not issue a press release, and only The Daily Wire noticed that the arrest had occurred.
The alleged fraud emerged in a civil lawsuit in New York involving Aspiration Inc., a carbon-credit and “socially conscious” finance company backed by actors Robert Downey Jr. and Leonardo DiCaprio and co-founded by Joe Sanberg, a California progressive activist. AlHusseini was on the board of Aspiration and a main investor.
According to civil and criminal court documents, Sanberg defaulted on a $145 million loan for which Aspiration stock was collateral. Part of the deal involved a promise by AlHusseini to buy the stock from the lenders in the event of a default, since Aspiration was not publicly traded. AlHusseini refused to follow through, and discovery in the resulting civil case suggested that his bank documents were fake.
Joe Sanberg announces a donation of COVID face masks from himself and Aspiration Inc. (Photo by Presley Ann/Getty Images)
The lender, called Clover Private Credit Opportunities, sued in New York state court, which in November 2023 entered a judgment against AlHusseini for $78 million. By then, he was acting suspiciously, according to filings by Clover, firing his lawyer and changing his address to Lebanon.
Clover also sued in Los Angeles’s Beverly Hills Courthouse to lock up his assets, saying that just as the loan was defaulting, AlHusseini transferred $300 million to Saudi Arabia. Immediately after the judge ruled against him in New York, he transferred ownership of his Venice, California mansion to his brother Faisal, to “render himself judgment proof.”
Acting U.S. Attorney McNally’s decision to drop the criminal case on January 21 is particularly remarkable because it came days after a series of signs that the situation was only getting more suspicious.
On January 7, Jodie Evans, the influential progressive and CodePink founder who put up her house as bail, didn’t show up to a deposition to which Clover had subpoenaed her. Evans said in court papers that she thought “Mr. Husseini’s attorneys had taken care of” it and she did not need to appear.
On January 8, AlHusseini failed to appear for his own court-ordered “debtor examination” in the California civil case, leading to a bench warrant, according to court papers.
On January 10, the New York judge found AlHusseini in contempt of court after Clover said that, instead of paying the judgment, AlHusseini has since “transferred at least US $907,356.08 in violation of the Restraining Notice to pay for, inter alia, accommodation at luxury hotels and donations to United States political candidates.” It said he “donated at least US $22,100.00 to United States political candidates” and spent $16,000 at the Four Seasons hotel in Greece and $10,000 on Gucci clothes in New York. “Meanwhile, AlHusseini has persuaded other persons to put up their assets as collateral for his bail of $3,000,000,” Clover wrote.
His political donations focused on “the Squad,” the cadre of far-left Democrats who have advocated for a Green New Deal that would pump billions of dollars into environment-focused businesses.
During the time of the alleged fraud, Sanberg and AlHusseini had been trying to take Aspiration public through a “SPAC” with a $2.3 billion valuation. Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2021 say “Ibrahim AlHusseini is a member of Aspiration’s board of directors and co-founder and managing partner of Social Impact Finance, LLC. Entities affiliated with Social Impact Finance hold more than 5% of Aspiration’s capital stock.” The next month, it announced $315 million in funding from investors including former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. But the SPAC deal collapsed in August 2023.
Although Sanberg and Aspiration were not charged with wrongdoing in the criminal case, it adds to a mass of questions about them. Aspiration used progressive messaging to attract customers with slogans like “do well by doing good” and “clean rich is the new filthy rich.” But the company may have been misleading people about both its environmental impact and its financial viability.
Bloomberg reported last January that “the Justice Department and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are looking into whether Aspiration misled customers about the quality of carbon offsets it was selling.” ProPublica reported in 2021 that Aspiration said it had “5 million passionate members” when it actually had half a million active customer accounts.
Another Bloomberg investigation in July suggested that Sanberg sought to inflate the company’s value through dubious deals as it sought to go public. Millions of dollars in purported income from customers were traced to an LLC called Day 12 that was once registered to Sanberg. In another case, a nonprofit was purportedly going to pay Aspiration 10 times its annual revenue. Yet another deal appeared to have a Colombian model pay $50,000 a month to Aspiration, then a company tied to Sanberg would pay her the same amount.
Aspiration and Sanberg did not answer inquiries from The Daily Wire, including whether AlHusseini is still on the board or owns stock. (The terms of AlHusseini’s bail prohibited him from contact with any Aspiration board member.) They also would not say what happened to the $145 million that Sanberg borrowed.
But the timeline raises questions about how much Sanberg knew about AlHusseini’s allegedly false finances, and if they extended to the company, too. If AlHusseini claimed to have no assets in the United States in order to avoid paying the New York judgment, then he must have sold his stake in Aspiration. But the reason for AlHusseini’s involvement in the loan in the first place was that, since Aspiration was privately held, selling such a large stake would be difficult to do — particularly without Sanberg’s knowledge.
Actress and activist Jane Fonda embraces Ibrahim AlHusseini at a Champions of our Planet’s Future gala in 2016 in Beverly Hills. (Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)
The FBI criminal complaint also said that Sanberg, who it described but did not name, wired $5 million to an AlHusseini relative in Saudi Arabia.
On December 2, Aspiration’s other co-founder, former Bill Clinton speechwriter and Arizona congressional candidate Andrei Cherny, filed a lawsuit against the company that lashed out at Sanberg. It said that on October 12, 2022, the board exited Cherny as CEO and agreed to pay him $535,000 plus additional payments and stock options and that “The Company, the Company’s Board members, major shareholders and officers will not publish or disseminate, directly or indirectly, any statements regarding Executive’s separation being due to Executive’s performance or misconduct.”
It said Sanberg “has made clear through his conduct that he intends to harass, threaten, and disparage Mr. Cherny, notwithstanding the execution of the Agreement.” Cherny dismissed his suit on January 3.
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