Welcome to Foreign Lobby Report’s end-of-the-day roundup, where you’ll find all our latest stories plus links to related Washington news.
TOP STORY
Puerto Rico ex-governor lobbies for Dominican presidential candidate accused of graft
The presidential candidate for the Dominican Republic’s ruling party has retained Washington law firm Steptoe and Johnson to help schedule meetings and “build relationships” with key audiences.
The pro-bono agreement was reached on June 1 with Dominican Liberation Party candidate Gonzalo Castillo, according to a new lobbying filing with the US Department of Justice. The filing is signed by former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortuno, a Steptoe and Johnson partner who has registered as a foreign agent on the account along with fellow partner Douglas Kantor.
Castillo faces candidate Luis Abinader of the opposition Modern Revolutionary Party on July 5 in a tight race marked by allegations of corruption against Castillo harking back to his time as public works minister from 2012 to 2019. Spring polling had shown Abinader in the lead before the election initially scheduled for May 17 was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Read more here.
NEW IN LOBBYING
MIDDLE EAST
Former Michigan GOP chair wrangled state Republicans for Qatar
The former head of the Michigan Republican Party helped wrangle GOP state lawmakers for a Qatari government-funded trip to the Gulf emirate last year, new lobbying filings reveal.
Saulius Anuzis‘ Coast to Coast Strategies disclosed its consulting work on behalf of the Qatar-America Institute this week after the Department of Justice required the institute to register as an agent of the Qatari government, as Foreign Lobby Report first reported last week. In the new filing, Anuzis reveals that the institute agreed to pay his firm almost $190,000 in 2019 to assist in “recruiting, organizing, escorting and making arrangements” for a Qatar-America Leadership Exchange delegation to Doha.
Anuzis himself was expected to be paid $123,000, according to his personal filing. He described the trip simply as a “cultural, people to people exchange” in an email to Foreign Lobby Report.
Even so, it came with a heavy dose of geopolitics. Doha spends millions of dollars each year to push back against attacks from right-wing media and Qatar’s Gulf rivals over the country’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran (the Qatar-America Institute in its own filing last week said it paid Coast to Coast $219,000 for the Doha trip in October 2019).
Additional lobbying filings show that seven people participated in last year’s delegation: Oklahoma House Majority Floor Leader Jon Echols; Nebraska sate senators Andrew La Grone and Julie Slama; former Nebraska Republican Party Chairman Mark Fahleson; Arizona state representative Ben Toma; National Young Republican Federation Chairman Jason Emert; and Bradley Ellison, a city councilman from Oakland Township in Michigan. The delegates notably toured cultural sites as well as government offices, Al Jazeera headquarters and Al-Udeid, home to the largest US military base in the Middle East.
During the visit, the delegates learned that Qatar is an “open and diverse country” and a “strong military partner of the United States” that “works closely with its allies to combat terrorism and terrorism financing” and is a “regional leader in protecting workers’ rights,” especially those building stadiums and accommodations for the 2022 World Cup, according to Anuzis’ filings. All of those assertions have come under increasing scrutiny as the Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have launched campaigns to tarnish Qatar’s reputation in Washington and across the country since launching an embargo against the tiny energy-rich state in June 2017.
The trip appears to have paid dividends.
Soon after returning from the delegation, the National Young Republican Federation’s Emert appeared on former Donald Trump campaign official John Fredericks‘ radio show to tout the US-Qatari partnership. The Qatar-America Institute promptly posted the interview on its web site. In yet another twist in Qatar’s multi-pronged influence campaign, it turns out that the institute paid Fredericks’ show $180,000 to promote pro-Qatar content, the Daily Beast reported last week.
CHANGING PLACES
Ousted Lott led losing fight against Saudi lawsuit bill
A senior lobbyist and former Senate leader who left one of Washington’s biggest influence firms this week had helped lead the unsuccessful fight to prevent one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest policy reversals.
Squire Patton Boggs ended ties with former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, on Monday. Lott co-chaired the firm’s public policy practice. The Hill, a congressional newspaper, linked Lott’s departure to his past support for segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina amid the national debate over racial discrimination.
“We have decided that it is the right time to make a change in the leadership of our industry-leading public policy practice,” Squire Patton Boggs CEO Mark Ruehlmann said in a statement. “As a global law firm, we are obliged to constantly evaluate and tailor our professional offerings to not only respond, but also anticipate the issues and concerns of an evolving marketplace and the clients we serve.”
The Hill, a congressional newspaper, linked Lott’s departure to his past support for segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina amid the national debate over racial discrimination.
“We have decided that it is the right time to make a change in the leadership of our industry-leading public policy practice,” Squire Patton Boggs CEO Mark Ruehlmann said in a statement. “As a global law firm, we are obliged to constantly evaluate and tailor our professional offerings to not only respond, but also anticipate the issues and concerns of an evolving marketplace and the clients we serve.”
But Lott told CQ Roll Call on Tuesday that he was fired after word got back that he and former partner John Breaux, a former Democratic senator from Louisiana, were looking to leave and start their own firm.
“Word got back to the firm,” Lott said, “and they decided to try to undermine our ability to get clients.”
Saudi Arabia’s royal court hired Lott and Squire Patton Boggs in September 2016 in a last-ditch effort to prevent passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which opened up the kingdom to lawsuits from the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. A lobbying filing from that period shows Squire Patton Boggs agents frantically called and emailed dozens of Senate offices over the course of a few days in the second half of 2016 to warn them that US companies might suffer blowback if Washington challenged Saudi Arabia’s sovereign immunity.
“Many foreign entities have long-standing, intimate relations with US financial institutions that they would undoubtedly unwind, to the further detriment of the US economy,” Trott emailed Senate legislative directors on Sept. 26, 2016, Politico reported at the time. “American corporations with interests abroad may be at risk of retaliation, a possibility recently expressed by GE and Dow.”
The gambit failed, and two days later the Senate voted 97-1 to override President Barack Obama‘s veto of the legislation. JASTA became law on Sept. 30, 2016. In March 2017, 1,500 injured survivors and 850 family members of victims of the attacks filed a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia under the law.
Squire Patton Boggs last reported political activity on behalf of Saudi Arabia three years ago. Still, its Sept. 2016 contract with the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court remains active: Riyadh paid the firm $974,000 in November 2019, while Bret Boyles, Ludmilla (Savelieff) Kasulke and Edward Newberry are still registered to lobby on the account.
During his time at Squire Patton Boggs, Lott also lobbied for the governments of Turkey, South Korea and Cyprus as well as the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.
ODDS AND ENDS
NEW FOREIGN LOBBYING FILINGS (FARA)
United Kingdom: Boston law firm Fish & Richardson has registered 13 people as foreign agents on its subcontract for the British Department of International Trade via British law firm Linklaters. Read our overview of all the legal firms working for the British on the US-UK free trade deal here.
Haiti: Jose Antonio Garcia and Christopher Murphy have joined 11 other lobbyists on Mercury Public Affairs‘ recently renewed contract with the presidency of the Republic of Haiti. Mercury last week withdrew newly hired Adam Bramwell, a former chief of staff for Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), just two days after adding him to the account.
South Korea / India: Cornerstone Government Affairs associate Morgan McCord is now working for the governments of South Korea and India. McCord’s work for the South Korean Embassy in Washington involves promoting to members of Congress and their staff “a professional visa initiative for Korean nationals to work in the United States.”
NEW DOMESTIC LOBBYING FILINGS (LDA)
Mexico: Covington & Burling has registered to lobby for California-based communication technology company Poly. Former Undersecretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs Alan Larson and a former Pentagon official Zachary Mears are listed as lobbyists on the account. They plan to lobby on the “alignment of Mexican and US policies on maintaining supply chain continuity.” The filing lists Mexican company Plamex S.A. de C.V. — Poly’s Mexico manufacturing facility — as an associated foreign entity.
China / Chile: Charlotte, N.C.-based chemical company Albemarle Corporation reported spending $20,000 in the first quarter of 2020 on “US-China Tariff Changes” and “anti-dumping.” Albemarle also lobbied Congress and the Treasury Department regarding the US-Chile Tax Treaty. Finally the company lobbied Congress, the Department of Energy and the Defense Logistics Agency regarding the Donald Trump administration’s 2019 report on critical minerals.