NYT: It is a trial tailor-made to grab the attention of this city’s power brokers: In a federal courtroom this month, one of Washington’s most prominent lawyers — a former White House counsel and attorney to global statesmen and other … Continue reading
Category Archives: lobbying
NYT: Not long before Christmas 2012, Paul Manafort, then a foreign lobbyist, congratulated Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer, on the release of a report that Mr. Manafort had commissioned to help Ukraine’s pro-Russian president polish his image in … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: Among New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s donors to his presidential campaign is a vice president of a leading pharmaceutical company. The senior vice president of Comcast who oversees the company’s lobbying efforts hosted a fundraiser for former vice president Joe … Continue reading
NYT: As Donald J. Trump was preparing to deliver an address on energy policy in May 2016, Paul Manafort, his campaign chairman, had a question about the speech’s contents for Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a top campaign fund-raiser and close … Continue reading
Politico: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and other leading Democratic presidential candidates have sworn off contributions from Washington lobbyists as a way to insulate themselves from those who might try to shape their agendas if elected.But they’re hardly walling … Continue reading
WaPo: Ocasio-Cortez tweeted an analysis from the watchdog group Public Citizen that found nearly 60 percent of former members from the last Congress who have jobs taken outside of politics are lobbying or influencing federal policy in some way, including Joseph … Continue reading
See the opinion in Schickel v. Moellman here. Some rejections were on standing grounds and some on the merits. … Continue reading
NYT: Pete Buttigieg, whose upstart presidential campaign has benefited from an early surge of donations and national attention, will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, his campaign said Friday, bowing to pressure from fellow Democrats who want to reform … Continue reading
NYT: Lawyers for Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel in the Obama administration, expect him to be indicted in the coming days on charges related to his work for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine.The case against Mr. Craig, 74, … Continue reading
NYT: A long-running federal investigation into a former White House counsel in the Obama administration is reaching a critical stage, presenting the Justice Department with a decision about whether to charge a prominent Democrat as part of a more aggressive … Continue reading
IFS: The Institute for Free Speech today published a first-of-its-kind survey of campaign speech regulations and grassroots lobbying laws that implicate First Amendment freedoms.The survey looks at state laws in twelve distinct policy areas, ranging from electioneering communications statutes to … Continue reading
DOJ announces a step up in enforcement of statutes regulating foreign influence, including the Foreign Agents Registration Act … including a new team headed by a former Mueller prosecutor. And a useful thread here explaining the import. … Continue reading
Press release via email: The Institute for Free Speech applauds the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ significant and unusual decision to rehear Calzone v. Missouri Ethics Commission. The case concerns a Missouri law that forces unpaid citizen activists to comply with … Continue reading
WaPo: The political war over prescription drug practices is spawning a frenzy of activity by outside lobbying groups, some with names that mask their ties to industry and one that has gone to great lengths to disguise its origins. The … Continue reading
David Dayen: Few have paid much attention to Kyl, who is wrapping up one of the strangest and — to his critics — one of the most corrupt tenures in the modern history of the Senate. Kyl was a registered … Continue reading
KC Star: Ron Calzone has been walking the hallways of the Missouri statehouse for years, meeting with lawmakers and their staffs, testifying before legislative committees and advocating for the conservative causes he holds dear. But he swears he’s not a … Continue reading
Open Secrets: Foreign lobbyists and agents acting on behalf of foreign interests have reported hundreds of millions of dollars in payments since January 2017, an analysis of OpenSecrets’ exclusive new Foreign Lobby Watch data reveals. Today we’re making available, for the first … Continue reading
CPI reports. … Continue reading
The Atlantic reports. … Continue reading
Quite a story in the WSJ. … Continue reading
Raymond Fisman writes. … Continue reading
Ellen Aprill oped in the Hill: As a result of these changes, estimates of the percentage of taxpayers who will itemize has fallen to somewhere between 5 percent and 10 percent. The vast majority of taxpayers will benefit more from taking the standard deduction. Those … Continue reading
ProPublica: When the Trump administration took office early last year, hundreds of staffers from lobbying firms, conservative think tanks and Trump campaign groups began pouring into the very agencies they once lobbied or whose work they once opposed. Today we’re … Continue reading
CPI: By law, corporations and organizations that lobby the federal government must disclose certain charitable contributions to nonprofits, including ones such as the Orrin G. Hatch Foundation that are intimately tied to lawmakers. They also must disclose spending to “honor” lawmakers and … Continue reading
Roll Call reports. … Continue reading
Fredreka Schouten for USA Today. … Continue reading
The Hill reports. … Continue reading
Fredreka Schouten for USA Today. … Continue reading
Bloomberg Businessweek. … Continue reading
Legbranch.com reports. … Continue reading
What a lede on this NYT story; Vanessa Alarid was a lobbyist in New Mexico when she asked a lawmaker over drinks one night if she could count on his support for a bill that appeared to be coming down … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: The threat of serving hard time for failing to disclose foreign lobbying work is rattling Washington’s multi-billion dollar influence industry following Monday’s 12-count indictment against Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates. And although the charges … Continue reading
NBC: The sources said the investigation into Podesta and his company began as more of a fact-finding mission about the ECMU and Manafort’s role in the campaign, but has now morphed into a criminal inquiry into whether the firm violated … Continue reading
From the Miami New Times. … Continue reading
Roll Call: A recent panel discussion about alleged governmental corruption in Ukraine, organized by lobbyist and former Rep. Connie Mack, has raised questions about the appropriate uses of meeting rooms under the House speaker’s jurisdiction. It also offers a glimpse into … Continue reading
NYT: The sweeping tax rewrite unveiled by President Trump and Republican lawmakers this past week leaves many of the details to Congress, but two sentences in the nine-page framework have Washington lobbyists salivating over a payday that some industry experts … Continue reading
Nick Confessore has this piece for the NYT magazine, with the subhead: “”His presidency has changed the rules of influence in the nation’s capital — and spawned a new breed of lobbyist on K Street.” … Continue reading
NYT: About a week after leaving his old firm, Mr. Lewandowski started a new consulting business, according to corporate filings. And now, as he takes on an increasingly broad role as an unofficial White House adviser, he is building a … Continue reading
What could go wrong? … Continue reading
Roll Call: If you bemoan lobbyists or the revolving door that spins between government service and K Street, blame Congress. The shift on Capitol Hill to centralize much of the major policymaking in leadership offices, as opposed to committees, along … Continue reading
Politico: At least a half-dozen former lobbyists are working in President Donald Trump’s White House even though they haven’t received waivers from the administration’s ethics rules, raising questions about how much the rules do to prevent conflicts of interest. … Continue reading
Matea Gold for WaPo. … Continue reading
Eric Lipton for the NYT: The White House unexpectedly backed down Friday in a confrontation with the government’s top ethics officer, announcing it will publicly disclose waivers that have been quietly handed out since January to let certain former lobbyists … Continue reading
Interesting project. … Continue reading
NYT: The federal government’s top ethics officer is challenging the Trump administration’s issuance of secret waivers that allow former lobbyists to handle matters they recently worked on, setting up a confrontation between the ethics office and President Trump. The move … Continue reading
WaPo: Industries from around the world spent nearly $1 billion to lobby the federal government during the first quarter of this year, according to a new analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics — the highest in five years. The uptick … Continue reading
New GAO report. … Continue reading