- Trump campaign advisor who allegedly saw classified map works for China lobbying firm: report Salon
- ‘Key figure in indictment revealed’: Susie Wiles identified in Trump’s classified docs case MSNBC
- “She is a potential government witness”: Top Trump campaign official cited in indictment revealed Yahoo News
- Trump aide on classified document tape reportedly identified MSNBC
- Longtime Jacksonville political operative questioned in Trump classified documents investigation. Who is Susie Wiles? WJXT News4JAX
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: lobbying
‘Bedazzled by money’: Democratic ties to Sam Bankman-Fried under scrutiny after FTX collapse
Sam Bankman-Fried’s fall from grace has dealt an unprecedented blow to the crypto industry’s reputation — and some of this infamy may rub off on politicians who took his money, as well as on former regulators and Capitol Hill staffers who took well-paying jobs representing digital-asset companies before Congress.
Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of the crumbling cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was one of the most generous donors to political causes during the 2022 election cycle, doling out $40 million, mostly to Democrats, with a particular focus on buoying crypto-friendly politicians in Democratic primaries.
FTX, like many other crypto firms, also aggressively recruited former federal regulators and Capitol Hill staffers, an often-criticized practice but one that has been common in the financial-services industry for decades.
Jeff Hauser, director of the left-leaning Revolving Door Project, said that Democratic politicians who worked closely with Bankman-Fried will have much to explain to the progressive wing of the party.
“A lot of people in the Democratic party got really close to Sam Bankman-Fried, and it reflects very badly on people who took this guy seriously,” he said. “People who in their past lives have taken on corporate power have been bedazzled by money seemingly being thrown their way.”
Bankman-Fried was the primary funder of the Protect Our Future PAC, which spent tens of millions of dollars in Democratic primaries this year. He also floated the idea of spending upwards of $1 billion in the 2024 presidential election to beat Donald Trump if he were the Republican nominee.
Promises of money on this scale likely tantalized many Democratic politicians, Hauser said, whether or not Bankman-Fried ever planned to go through with those contributions.
The crypto industry has also wielded influence by hiring former Capitol Hill staff and federal financial regulators to lobby and advise them on regulatory matters. The Campaign for Accountability, a nonpartisan anticorruption watchdog, published a report in February that found 240 examples of officials with key positions in the White House, Congress, federal regulatory agencies and national political campaigns moving into and out of the industry.
“The crypto industry is following the standard playbook for advancing special interests in Washington, including using all the levers of the influence industry,” Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of the nonpartisan financial-reform organization Better Markets, told MarketWatch. “One of the most pernicious parts of that is the revolving door, where former officials essentially sell out their public service by using their access and influence on behalf of their private clients.”
Kelleher praised the performance of federal banking and securities regulators who have succeeded in keeping the carnage in the crypto markets segregated from the traditional financial system as popular tokens like bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-1.14%
and ether
ETHUSD,
-1.61%
lost more than 70% of their value over the past year.
Nevertheless, he believes crypto’s influence campaign has convinced lawmakers that what’s needed is to pass legislation that would tailor the financial-regulatory apparatus to be more friendly to the business models of digital-asset companies, rather than increasing funding for market regulators to enforce the regulations already on the books.
A bill put forward in June by Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York would do just that, granting regulatory authority for the most popular cryptocurrencies to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which critics of the bill say is more crypto-friendly than the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Another bipartisan bill from Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, a Democrat, and Sen. John Bozeman of Arkansas, the committee’s ranking Republican, envisions a similar setup.
Kelleher said that these bills are the product of the crypto industry’s intense lobbying efforts, and without that push, lawmakers might see that what is needed is more funding to enforce securities laws that already exist.
“People need to realize that the crypto industry is basically lawless,” Kelleher said, adding that exchanges like FTX could have made the decision to register as a securities exchange with the SEC, whose supervision would have ensured that the company couldn’t engage in the type of activities that led to its downfall.
“The industry made the conscious decision to not comply with the law, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on public officials to get a special law passed so they get special treatment,” he said.
Jury finds Trump friend Thomas Barrack not guilty on all counts in foreign lobbying trial
A New York jury Friday found Trump confidant and billionaire Thomas Barrack not guilty of all charges in his trial on federal foreign lobbying allegations.
Barrack, a 75-year-old investor who was an adviser to former President Donald Trump and chair of his Inaugural Committee, was accused of using his connections to Trump’s administration to try to sway U.S. foreign policy for a client, the United Arab Emirates.
Outside the Brooklyn federal courthouse Barrack lauded the jury and invoked “Lady Justice.”
“The system is amazing. People are amazing. I have no hostility, I’m just proud to be an American,” Barrack said, adding later that he is “done with politics.”
“Let’s stop fighting with each other. Let stop all the politicalization of everything, whoever the president is,” Barrack said to reporters before teens playing music on handheld speakers walked by. Barrack stopped talking briefly, put his hands in the air, and danced.
Prosecutors portrayed Barrack as a businessman “campaigning for cash,” out to use his White House ties to add a lucrative client to his investment portfolio. Barrack’s defense said he was using his ties to the Middle East and the presidential administration to try to mediate disputes in a volatile but crucial region, an attempt to cap off a storied international investment career.
The jurors, impaneled since Sept. 19, deliberated for two days before reaching their verdict.
Barrack pleaded not guilty to charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the UAE, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
Prosecutors showed the jury text messages and emails sent during in 2016 and 2017, during the presidential campaign and the early days of the Trump administration, in which Barrack and an employee of his firm, Colony Capital, appeared to relay talking points related to a “wish list” of UAE priorities. Barrack and the employee, Michael Grimes, communicated through a middleman with Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a sheik who is the UAE’s national security advisor, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Barrack’s and Grimes’ efforts garnered $374 million in new investments from a UAE sovereign wealth fund for their firm. Their defense said there was nothing illegal about their efforts to attract new investments, and noted that figure represented just 1% of the investment portfolio managed by Barrack’s former company, which is now known as DigitalBridge.
Grimes, 29, was also charged in the case. The jury found him not guilty of charges he acted as an unregistered foreign agent.
The alleged middleman, an Emirati citizen who had been living in California, Rashid al Malik, was also charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Al Malik has not been located by authorities.
After the verdict, Grimes said he felt “grateful” to the jurors and his parents, who attended the trial daily and “who stood by me every single day.”
“I’m grateful to live in the United States to have the opportunity to stand before a judge who’s fair and impartial and a jury of my peers who reached the conclusion of what it should be. And that is the truth,” Grimes said.
Asked what’s next, he said, “offense,” without elaborating.
Outside the courtroom, prosecutors walked by without comment.
Barrack spent the final six days of the trial on the stand, testifying in his own defense. He described his communications with UAE officials about the Trump administration as “puffery” and attempts to mediate disputes.
The jury also heard testimony from two Trump administration officials, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, called by Barrack’s defense, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, called by the government.
Jury finds Trump friend Thomas Barrack not guilty on all counts in foreign lobbying trial
A New York jury Friday found Trump confidant and billionaire Thomas Barrack not guilty of all charges in his trial on federal foreign lobbying allegations.
Barrack, a 75-year-old investor who was an adviser to former President Donald Trump and chair of his Inaugural Committee, was accused of using his connections to Trump’s administration to try to sway U.S. foreign policy for a client, the United Arab Emirates.
Outside the Brooklyn federal courthouse Barrack lauded the jury and invoked “Lady Justice.”
“The system is amazing. People are amazing. I have no hostility, I’m just proud to be an American,” Barrack said, adding later that he is “done with politics.”
“Let’s stop fighting with each other. Let stop all the politicalization of everything, whoever the president is,” Barrack said to reporters before teens playing music on handheld speakers walked by. Barrack stopped talking briefly, put his hands in the air, and danced.
Prosecutors portrayed Barrack as a businessman “campaigning for cash,” out to use his White House ties to add a lucrative client to his investment portfolio. Barrack’s defense said he was using his ties to the Middle East and the presidential administration to try to mediate disputes in a volatile but crucial region, an attempt to cap off a storied international investment career.
The jurors, impaneled since Sept. 19, deliberated for two days before reaching their verdict.
Barrack pleaded not guilty to charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the UAE, obstruction of justice and making false statements to the FBI.
Prosecutors showed the jury text messages and emails sent during in 2016 and 2017, during the presidential campaign and the early days of the Trump administration, in which Barrack and an employee of his firm, Colony Capital, appeared to relay talking points related to a “wish list” of UAE priorities. Barrack and the employee, Michael Grimes, communicated through a middleman with Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a sheik who is the UAE’s national security advisor, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Barrack’s and Grimes’ efforts garnered $374 million in new investments from a UAE sovereign wealth fund for their firm. Their defense said there was nothing illegal about their efforts to attract new investments, and noted that figure represented just 1% of the investment portfolio managed by Barrack’s former company, which is now known as DigitalBridge.
Grimes, 29, was also charged in the case. The jury found him not guilty of charges he acted as an unregistered foreign agent.
The alleged middleman, an Emirati citizen who had been living in California, Rashid al Malik, was also charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Al Malik has not been located by authorities.
After the verdict, Grimes said he felt “grateful” to the jurors and his parents, who attended the trial daily and “who stood by me every single day.”
“I’m grateful to live in the United States to have the opportunity to stand before a judge who’s fair and impartial and a jury of my peers who reached the conclusion of what it should be. And that is the truth,” Grimes said.
Asked what’s next, he said, “offense,” without elaborating.
Outside the courtroom, prosecutors walked by without comment.
Barrack spent the final six days of the trial on the stand, testifying in his own defense. He described his communications with UAE officials about the Trump administration as “puffery” and attempts to mediate disputes.
The jury also heard testimony from two Trump administration officials, former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, called by Barrack’s defense, and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, called by the government.
Judge ends DOJ lobbying suit against casino mogul Steve Wynn, who grew up in CNY
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to force longtime casino developer Steve Wynn to register as a foreign agent because of lobbying work it said he conducted at the behest of the Chinese government during the Trump administration.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg did not address in his 20-page order whether Wynn was functioning as a Beijing agent. Instead, he said he agreed with Wynn’s lawyers that the department could not compel him now to register as a foreign agent because any relationship Wynn had with the Chinese government ended in 2017.
The order is a setback for stepped-up Justice Department efforts to enforce a decades-old law known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It requires anyone who lobbies on behalf of a foreign government or entity to register their work with the U.S. government.
“We are delighted that the District Court today dismissed the government’s ill-conceived lawsuit against Steve Wynn,” his lawyers, Reid Weingarten and Robert Luskin, said in a statement. “Mr. Wynn never acted as an agent of the Chinese government and never lobbied on its behalf.”
The Justice Department said in a statement that it “respectfully disagrees with today’s ruling and is considering options in the litigation and more generally,” and remains committed to enforcing the lobbying law.
The department had repeatedly advised Wynn over the past four years to register. It sued him in May to try to force him to do so, describing the suit as the first of its kind in more than three decades.
The complaint alleged that Wynn, a prolific Republican donor and onetime finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, lobbied then-President Donald Trump and members of his administration for several months in 2017 to expel from the United States a Chinese citizen who had been charged with corruption in China and was seeking political asylum in America. Efforts to send the man back to China were ultimately unsuccessful.
According to the complaint, the lobbying effort was conducted on behalf of senior Chinese government officials, including Sun Lijun, the then-vice minister of the Ministry of Public Security who sought Wynn’s help in trying to get the Chinese man’s new U.S. visa application denied.
The lobbying effort also included conversations over dinner with Trump and by telephone, and multiple visits to the White House by Wynn for apparently unscheduled meetings with the issue was discussed.
The complaint said Wynn was motivated to protect his business interests in China. At the time, his company owned and operated casinos in the Chinese territory of Macau. The government in Macau had restricted the number of gaming tables and machines that could be operated at Wynn’s casino, the Justice Department said, and he was scheduled to renegotiate licenses to operate casinos in 2019.
Lawyers for Wynn denied at the time of the suit that he had acted as an agent of the Chinese government or that he had had an obligation to register. They later moved to dismiss the lawsuit, noting that his relationship with the Chinese government had ended in 2017.
Wynn’s team cited a 1987 appeals court opinion suggesting that the obligation to register as a foreign agent terminates once the relationship with foreign entity has ended. In his opinion, Boasberg said that ruling required dismissal of the suit.
“The Court will thus do so without ever considering whether Wynn was a PRC agent or not,” Boasberg wrote, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.
Wynn grew up in Utica and is a 1959 graduate of The Manlius School, which later merged with Manlius Pebble Hill School. He donated $50 million for a new hospital being built in downtown Utica that will be named after him.
Wynn resigned in 2018 as chairman and CEO of the casino and resorts company bearing his name, after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. He has denied those allegations.
Opinion | It’s time to shut down the foreign dictator lobbying racket
When foreign dictatorships try to affect U.S. politics and policy, they often hire former U.S. officials and lawmakers to launder and promote their agenda by petitioning our government, Congress and society writ large. Under the current rules, so long as Americans who are advocating for foreign governments, politicians and corporations disclose these activities, they can legally be paid to work against America’s interests. The theory underpinning the current system was that transparency would lead to accountability, which would in turn protect our democracy.
That system is clearly failing. President Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, one of his top lawyers and his first national security adviser have all been credibly accused of violating the foreign agent registration rules. Tony Podesta, the brother of President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff (who is also a current adviser to President Biden) reportedly was paid $1 million to lobby the Biden administration on behalf of the sanctioned Chinese tech company Huawei. Former GOP House speaker John Boehner works for a lobbying firm that represents the Chinese Embassy. Former Republican senator David Vitter lobbies for a Chinese company called Hikvision that has been accused by the U.S. government of complicity in genocide — as did former senior Democratic senator Barbara Boxer, until she got embarrassed and quit.
Pushing the agenda of the United States’ adversaries is big business in Washington. The huge scale of these relationships became painfully clear after Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked Ukraine, when the U.S. government expanded sanctions against Putin’s cronies, sending the D.C. lobbying industry scrambling. Big lobbying firms such as BGR, Squire Patton Boggs, the Glover Park Group, Mercury Public Affairs and many others have been taking millions from Russian oligarchs, Russian banks or Chinese tech companies to help their clients navigate the risk of U.S. sanctions, try to shape U.S. laws and influence U.S. public opinion.
Follow Josh Rogin‘s opinionsFollow
These U.S. firms will often defend their actions as legal and protected on free-speech grounds. Nobody is arguing that exercising free speech, even on behalf of an anti-U.S. dictatorship, should be illegal. But neither do Americans have an explicit right to profit from working for the United States’ enemies.
That’s the thinking behind the Stop Helping Adversaries Manipulate Everything Act, also known as the Shame Act. The title harks back to a time in Washington when lobbyists had at least a little shame and would stop taking money from despots when they committed atrocities. But if the lobbying industry once had any shame, those days are long gone.
The new bipartisan bill would bar any American from taking money from any foreign adversary of the United States or any of their agents for lobbying, public relations or representational services of any kind. This would also ban Americans from being paid to represent any foreign company that is either directly or indirectly controlled by a foreign adversary.
The legislation would amend both the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the Lobbying Disclosure Act and would apply to all countries on the Commerce Department’s official list of “foreign adversaries,” which currently includes China (including Hong Kong), Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.
Introduced Tuesday, the bill has two Republican and two Democratic co-sponsors: Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks (R-Ind.), Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.).
“D.C. lobbying firms are making millions from our greatest adversaries,” Banks told me. “The American people are taking it from all sides. Nobody is sticking up for them, they’re fed up, and this has got to stop. It’s time to drain the swamp.”
The RSC, a group of more than 150 conservative members, joined with several other organizations to support the bill, including the Helsinki Commission (of which Cohen is co-chairman), the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley’s advocacy group Stand for America, Transparency International and the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
A big part of the foreign malign influence problem is that much of this work is directed at influencing the American people, Cohen told me, through promotion of propaganda and disinformation. The legislation would also apply to celebrities who push the propaganda of foreign adversaries.
“It’s important that we deter all Americans from doing the work of U.S. adversaries,” Cohen said. “We must disincentivize this type of work, and that begins with cutting off the money.”
Of course, these former officials and celebrities could still support whatever tyrant they like — they just wouldn’t be able to charge for it anymore.
“Free speech is a bedrock of our Constitution, but that has never meant massively profiting on the corruption of the likes of the Chinese Communist Party, the terrorist regime in Tehran, war criminal Putin, and mass murderer Bashar al-Assad,” Wilson told me.
Everyone knows why this bill faces an uphill climb in Congress: because so many lawmakers plan to shill for dictators after leaving office. But everyone also knows that containing despotic influence in Washington is the right thing to do — and that it is long overdue. We have to drain the foreign dictator influence swamp, once and for all.
Right-Wing Evangelicals Brag About Lobbying to Influence SCOTUS Cases
Members of evangelical organizations have discussed conservative issues with Supreme Court justices in elaborate dinners, according to reports by Politico and Rolling Stone, pushing right-wing ideas on issues including abortion, LGBTQ rights and gun legislation.
Peggy Nienaber, the vice president of Liberty Counsel — which describes itself as a “nonprofit ministry that operates a pro bono litigation program” — was heard in a video posted to YouTube bragging that her organization prays with sitting justices inside the high court.
“We’re the only people who do that,” Rolling Stone reported Nienaber told a YouTuber at an event celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Though an amicus brief written by Liberty Counsel was cited by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court in its ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade last month, the organization denies close ties to the justices.
“The Rolling Stone article is false. The writers know it is false, but they chose to print the sensational story anyway. Since Liberty Counsel assumed the prayer ministry in 2018, now called Faith & Liberty, there has been no prayer with the Justices,” read a Liberty Counsel statement in response to the reporting. “Faith & Liberty prays for the Justices, not with them.”
In the YouTube video, Nienaber can be heard saying she prays with the Justices “right here on Capitol Hill.”
Representatives for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Similarly, Rob Schenck, an evangelical minister and leader of a group called Faith and Action, told Politico that, between the years 1995 to 2018, he arranged for nearly two dozen couples to fly to Washington to share expensive dinners and evenings of entertainment with Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and the late Antonin Scalia.
The dinner program was called “Operation Higher Court” and Schenck told Politico he would coach the couples on discussing conservative issues with the justices while taking care not to specifically mention current cases.
“We would rehearse lines like, ‘We believe you are here for a time like this,'” Schenck told Politico.
Schenck’s ties to the Supreme Court — as well as “Operation Higher Court” and his attempts to discuss religious and conservative issues with the justices — are well documented. One couple he coached to discuss their conservative views with the justices, Don and Gayle Wright of Dayton, Ohio, went on to form long-term relationships with some of the justices — which were referenced in Don’s obituary.
In a 2001 article with the Christian magazine, Charisma, titled ‘Storming the Capital (sic) with Prayer,’ he detailed a meeting and prayer with the late Justice Scalia just hours after the Supreme Court handed down its decision involving the contested 2000 presidential election.
“The Supreme Court is the most insulated and isolated branch of the US government,” Schenck said in the 2001 article. “They do not interface with the public, so we’ve literally had to pray our way in there each step of the way.”
Retired General Investigated Over Undisclosed Lobbying for Qatar
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have obtained records indicating that John R. Allen, the retired four-star Marine general who commanded all American troops in Afghanistan and now heads a venerable Washington think tank, secretly lobbied for the government of Qatar, lied to investigators about his role and tried to withhold evidence sought by a federal subpoena, according to court documents.
The court records are the latest evidence of a broad investigation by the Justice Department and F.B.I. into the influence that wealthy Arab nations like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia wield in Washington.
The records about General Allen were filed in April in Federal District Court in Central California in an application for a warrant to search General Allen’s electronic communications.
Other filings in the case appear to remain sealed, and the public release of the warrant application may have been accidental. The filing lays out evidence that General Allen joined in the secret lobbying plan along with Richard G. Olson, a former United States ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan, and Imaad Zuberi, a business executive with ties in the Middle East.
Mr. Zuberi is serving a prison sentence for violating foreign lobbying, campaign finance and tax laws, as well as for obstruction of justice. Mr. Olson has agreed to plead guilty for participating in the Qatari lobbying effort in violation of a prohibition on such activity during the first year after leaving diplomatic service.
A spokesman for General Allen, Beau Phillips, said in a statement: “John Allen voluntarily cooperated with the government’s investigation into this matter. John Allen’s efforts with regard to Qatar in 2017 were to protect the interests of the United States and the military personnel stationed in Qatar. John Allen received no fee for his efforts.”
The court documents were reported earlier on Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Federal law requires that anyone lobbying for a foreign government register with the Justice Department. The department has been cracking down in recent years on violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. There is no record of General Allen registering to lobby for Qatar.
Federal prosecutors have signaled a particular interest in potential violations involving Persian Gulf nations, which have developed close ties to business and political figures in the United States. Last month, the Justice Department filed a new indictment in an ongoing case against Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a friend and informal adviser to President Donald J. Trump, for working on behalf of the United Arab Emirates to steer American foreign policy during the Trump administration.
The plan described in the documents involving General Allen unfolded around the beginning of the Trump administration five years ago, after he had left the military and before he became president of the Brookings Institution think tank. Qatar was frantically trying to fend off a pressure campaign and economic embargo by its Persian Gulf rivals, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Rumors were circulating of a possible Saudi ground invasion, Mr. Trump appeared to back the Saudis and Emiratis, and both sides of the dispute were spending heavily to win favor in Washington.
Mr. Zuberi, according to the filing, “viewed the diplomatic crisis as a business opportunity” and began conspiring to sell lobbying services to Qatar. He contacted Mr. Olson, who had recently left government. Mr. Olson in turn brought in General Allen, according to the filing.
“If we can do this we will own half of Qatar,” Mr. Zuberi wrote to Mr. Olson in a WhatsApp message cited in the filing about their proposed plan with General Allen.
The court document gives a detailed account of several weeks in June 2017 when General Allen was recruited by Mr. Olson and Mr. Zuberi to meet with top Qatari and American officials to diffuse the Gulf crisis — and how General Allen saw the money making potential for his involvement.
The document states that he agreed to travel to Doha, the Qatari capital, at Mr. Zuberi’s expense and negotiated a payment of $20,000, which he referred to as a “speaker’s fee.” The document quotes one message from General Allen showing his aim of making more money down the road — to “work out a fuller arrangement of a longer term relationship.”
Other messages cited in the document show that General Allen pursued other business with firms affiliated with Qatar, one of which would have provided him with a commission of over $1 million. The document said the F.B.I. has not determined whether he received this money.
During this period, General Allen met several times with American officials, including members of Congress and H.R. McMaster, the retired three-star general who was then the White House national security adviser. But the document, citing an interview of General McMaster by federal agents, stated that General Allen never informed General McMaster that he was being paid for his work.
The document also described efforts by General Allen to obstruct the investigation by lying to federal agents who asked him about his lobbying efforts during an interview last August, and withholding documents that showed his financial interest in his interactions with Qatari officials.
“Allen’s production was devoid of any documents that revealed his financial interest in the diplomatic crisis and nearly devoid of any documents showing the involvement of Zuberi and Olson,” the search warrant states.
General Allen is a former deputy commander of United States Central Command, which has responsibility for the Middle East and a large base in Qatar.
His time at Central Command helped him cement ties with senior Qatari leaders, including Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the country’s emir. In 2011, he was given a fourth star and took command of all American and NATO troops in Afghanistan until 2013.
In 2016, the year before the court document states his lobbying effort for Qatar began, General Allen was an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and he spoke that year at the Democratic National Convention.
He took over as the president of Brookings in November 2017.
Brookings once had a large campus in Doha. The campus was established years before General Allen became president of the think tank. In September, according to its website, Brookings ended its affiliation with the Doha institute, which is now called the Middle East Council on Global Affairs.
Mr. Olson’s contemporaneous notes on a June 2017 conference call show that Mr. Zuberi agreed to pay the group’s travel expenses and General Allen’s speaking fee but emphasized the need for secrecy.
The filing suggests that General Allen sought other forms of payment as well. An Israeli security company, Fifth Dimension, had agreed to pay him $10,000 a month as well as a 1.5 percent commission on any new business he generated, and he sought credit for persuading Qatar to sign a $72 million contract with the company over the same weekend trip — potentially earning him a fee of more than $1 million.
His endorsement “would likely complete their decision making,” he wrote to the company in an email quoted in the filing.
General Allen also sat on the board of a Texas-based artificial intelligence company, SparkCognition, and appears to have attempted to sell a $30 million contract for its services to Qatar as well. “The brief is in their hands,” General Allen wrote to the chief executive shortly after returning from his visit.
General Allen appeared to acknowledge that he was in effect working as a subcontractor on the lobbying effort, most notably after the Qatari emir and other top officials insisted on excluding Mr. Zuberi from a meeting with the former general and the former ambassador.
“You guys should have stepped in and said no you should stay,” Mr. Zuberi fumed in a WhatsApp message to the ambassador, adding, “Does General Allen know his place or his position?”
In an email to make amends, General Allen, according to the court documents, thanked Mr. Zuberi “for his leadership” and expressed regret at his exclusion. “I think there is a lot of opportunity,” he added.
Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick from New York. Seamus Hughes contributed reporting.
FBI seizes retired general’s data related to Qatar lobbying
The FBI has seized the electronic data of a retired four-star general who authorities say made false statements and withheld “incriminating” documents about his role in an illegal foreign lobbying campaign on behalf of the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.
New federal court filings obtained Tuesday outlined a potential criminal case against former Marine Gen. John R. Allen, who led U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before being tapped in 2017 to lead the influential Brookings Institution think tank.
It’s part of an expanding investigation that has ensnared Richard G. Olson, a former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan who pleaded guilty to federal charges last week, and Imaad Zuberi, a prolific political donor now serving a 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges. Several members of Congress have been interviewed as part of the investigation.
The court filings detail Allen’s behind-the scenes efforts to help Qatar influence U.S. policy in 2017 when a diplomatic crisis erupted between the gas-rich Persian Gulf monarchy and its neighbors.
“There is substantial evidence that these FARA violations were willful,” FBI agent Babak Adib wrote in a search warrant application, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Allen also misrepresented his role in the lobbying campaign to U.S. officials, Adib wrote, and failed to disclose “that he was simultaneously pursuing multimillion-dollar business deals with the government of Qatar.”
The FBI says Allen gave a “false version of events” about his work for Qatar during a 2020 interview with law enforcement officials and failed to produce relevant email messages in response to an earlier grand jury subpoena.
The 77-page search warrant application appears to have been filed in error and was removed from the docket Tuesday after The Associated Press reached out to federal authorities about its contents.
Allen declined to comment on the new filings. He has previously denied ever working as a Qatari agent and said his efforts on Qatar in 2017 were motivated to prevent a war from breaking out in the Gulf that would put U.S. troops at risk.
Allen spokesperson Beau Phillips told AP last week that Allen “voluntarily cooperated with the government’s investigation into this matter.”
Allen, who was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution prior to becoming president, used his official email account at the think tank for some of his Qatar-related communications, the affidavit says.
Brookings did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Qatar has long been one of Brookings’ biggest financial backers, though the institution says it has recently stopped taking Qatari funding.
Olson was working with Zuberi on another matter involving Qatar in mid-2017 when Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries announced a blockade of Qatar over its alleged ties to terror groups and other issues.
Shortly after the blockade was announced, then-President Donald Trump appeared to side against Qatar.
The court papers say Allen played an important role in shifting the U.S.’s response. Specifically, authorities say Allen lobbied then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to have the Trump administration adopt more Qatar-friendly tone.
In an email to McMaster, Allen said the Qataris wanted the White House or State Department to issue a statement with language calling on all sides of the Gulf diplomatic crisis to “act with restraint.”
Federal law enforcement officials say then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did just that two days later, issuing a statement that called on other Gulf countries to “ease the blockade against Qatar” and asked “that there be no further escalation by the parties in the region.”
As part of the lobbying campaign, federal law enforcement authorities say, Olson and Allen traveled to Qatar to meet with the country’s ruling emir and other top officials.
At the meeting, Allen provided advice on how to influence U.S. policy and said the Qataris should “use the full spectrum” of information operations, including “black and white” operations, the affidavit says. “Black” operations are typically covert and sometimes illegal. Qatar has been accused of orchestrating hack-and-leak operations of its critics and rivals during the diplomatic crisis, including one targeting a UAE ambassador. Qatar has denied any wrongdoing.
Before they went to Doha, Allen wanted to “have a chat” with Olson and Zuberi about his compensation, the affidavit said. Allen suggested in an email that he be paid a $20,000 “speaker’s fee” for the weekend trip — even though he wasn’t giving a speech — and then later “work out a fuller arrangement of a longer-term relationship,” the affidavit says.
Zuberi paid Allen’s first-class airfare to Qatar, the affidavit said, but there’s no indication the speaker’s fee was paid. Allen’s spokesman said previously the general was never paid a fee. It’s unclear why. Some of Zuberi’s past business associates have accused him of not honoring his financial commitments.
Allen also had other financial incentives for helping the Qataris and maintaining strong ties to its top leaders, the FBI said.
“At the same time he was lobbying U.S. government officials on behalf of Qatar, Allen pursued at least one multimillion-dollar business deal with the Qatari government on behalf of a company on whose board of directors he served,” the affidavit says.
After returning from their trip to Qatar, Allen and Olson lobbied members of Congress, particularly those who supported a House resolution linking Qatar to terror financing, the FBI said.
Among them was Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat who told law enforcement officials he didn’t recall exactly what Allen said but that his impression was he was there “to support the Qatari officials and their position.”
__
Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/
__
Suderman reported from Richmond, Virginia, Mustian from New Orleans.
Former diplomat Richard G. Olson implicates retired U.S. general John Allen in Qatar lobbying probe
In pre-plea proceedings in federal court in Washington, Olson’s defense counsel said he admitted to the misdemeanor charges — each punishable by up to one year in prison at his sentencing Sept. 13 — and cooperated with federal prosecutors on the understanding that they were also investigating and pursuing criminal charges against retired four-star Marine general John G. Allen. The latter commanded U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan before retiring in 2013. He was tapped in late 2017 as president of Washington’s influential Brookings Institution, to which Qatar agreed in 2013 to donate $14.8 million over four years.
The two men are the latest high-level American officials to be enmeshed in a long-running federal investigation into a ferocious — and lucrative — battle for influence in Washington waged between the wealthy Persian Gulf nation of Qatar and its regional rival the United Arab Emirates, as Donald Trump prepared to take office and engage in new rounds of Middle East diplomacy.
In July 2021, billionaire Thomas J. Barrack, Jr., Trump’s longtime friend and presidential inaugural committee chairman, was criminally charged with obstructing justice and acting as an unregistered agent for the UAE; while American businessman Imaad Zuberi, a major political donor to both political parties, was sentenced in February 2020 to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion, foreign-influence peddling and campaign-finance violations.
In plea papers, Olson acknowledged not disclosing as required in annual ethics forms that he had received a first-class airplane ticket from New Mexico to London and a stay in a luxury hotel in January 2015 worth about $20,000 from a Pakistani American businessman who was not identified by the government but whose description matches that of Zuberi.
Olson admitted meeting with a Bahrain businessman, who would offer him a one-year $300,000 contract for work after he left the State Department.
In June 2017, Olson admitted in plea papers, he contacted an unnamed third person — who his defense identified as Allen — to help “provide aid and advice to Qatari government officials with the intent to influence” U.S. policy during a blockade of Qatar by the UAE and its ally, Saudi Arabia. Zuberi, Olson and “Person 3” traveled to Doha, where the latter pair met with various Qatari officials including its emir, then returned to meet in Washington with members of Congress.
In court filings and a hearing May 27, Olson attorney J. Michael Hannon pressed U.S. prosecutors to say why Allen has not been charged.
Exculpatory evidence about Allen could mitigate Olson’s sentence or invalidate his plea agreement, Hannon argued, saying a decision not to charge the general could mean prosecutors improperly “induced” a guilty plea from the diplomat who relied on government representations that he might be recommended leniency at sentencing for his cooperation.
“If in fact there is no case against general John R. Allen [for allegedly violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act], we think that that is a significant piece of information for sentencing, just as we believe that an inducement to enter into this plea agreement is important to the court,” Hannon told U.S. Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey, who accepted Olson’s plea.
Prosecutor Evan Turgeon with the Justice Department’s national security division, said in the earlier hearing that any communications between Allen and U.S. government officials about the Qatar trip were not exculpatory for Olson, that Allen’s case remained open and that Olson’s signed plea deal contained no promise by prosecutors to recommend leniency in exchange for cooperation.
“We dispute the statement that the government has made a prosecutorial decision as to other persons,” Turgeon said.
He added, “Nothing related to General Allen has any bearing on the false statement the defendant made on an Office of Government Ethics form in May of 2016, and that was a full year before General Allen’s involvement in activities related to Qatar.”
Beau Phillips, a spokesman for Allen, declined to comment on the status of his investigation, but said in a emailed statement Friday: “John Allen voluntarily cooperated with the government’s investigation into this matter. John Allen’s only efforts with regard to Qatar in 2017 were to protect the interests of the United States and the military personnel stationed in Qatar. John Allen received no fee for his efforts.”
Phillips has previously said Trump’s national security adviser at the time, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, “approved the [Qatar] trip and offered the assistance of his staff in preparation.”
Olson, who retired in November 2016, was recognized by then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry as “quite simply one of our most distinguished diplomats, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service who has been on the forefront of our work in the Middle East, Africa and most recently in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
A criminal information charging Olson was filed under seal in federal court March 22, and a plea agreement signed by both sides in January was entered the following day. The case was transferred in April to Washington for a plea and sentencing, when it became public.
In charging papers, the Justice Department said Olson was paid to lobby the Trump administration to help lift the blockade against Qatar — which hosts a key forward operating base of the U.S. military’s Central Command — and mend relations among its Persian Gulf neighbors.
The department has not alleged that Olson or those he worked with violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires Americans to publicly register with the attorney general when they are paid to influence U.S. policy for foreign governments, political parties or politicians. The once nearly dormant law enacted in 1938 to thwart Nazi propaganda has been invoked since 2017 in more than two dozen federal prosecutions aimed at combating foreign interference in U.S. politics, but criminal prosecutions under it can be difficult as they require proof that violations are made willfully.
The law has been a land mine for Trump allies accused of secretly exploiting their insider access to affect U.S. foreign policy and peddling influence to further their own business interests. Barrack, one of his Trump’s closet associates on his road to the White House, pleaded not guilty last summer and was freed on $250 million bond pending trial on charges of conspiring to secretly lobby for the UAE, which invested significantly in his investment firm, Colony Capital.
In October 2020, Elliott Broidy, a Trump fundraiser and former Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman who also received a $200 million security contract with the UAE, pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign agent and accepting millions of dollars to secretly lobby the Trump administration for Malaysian and Chinese interests.
And last month, the Justice Department sued hotel and casino magnate Steve Wynn to compel the Republican megadonor and RNC finance chair with Broidy to register as an agent of China. The department argued that Wynn, former chief executive of Wynn Resorts, leveraged his relationship with Trump and members of his administration to advance Beijing’s interests in 2017.
Wynn’s attorneys have said he never acted as agent of the Chinese government and had no obligation to register under the law. Prosecutors alleged Barrack engaged in a two-year effort from April 2016 to April 2018 to advance UAE’s interests through Trump’s campaign and his presidency, trading in on his friendships and access to the president to influence his campaign, U.S. government officials and the media without disclosing his true allegiances.
Zuberi has appealed his sentence. A prolific donor whose major gifts to Trump, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and members of Congress of both parties gave him elite political status, Zuberi has claimed he was a longtime U.S. intelligence source for the U.S. government, a factor his attorneys say may offset his criminal charges, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Prosecutors called the scope of Zuberi’s scheme unprecedented, in which he solicited foreign nationals and governments to hire him to lobby U.S. officials, arranged illegal campaign contributions and cheated on his taxes. Zuberi lobbied for the Bahraini citizen, as well as the Sri Lanka, Turkey and a Ukrainian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, prosecutors said.