Free Republic

Former Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Wednesday joined Husch Blackwell Strategies, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm with close ties to the veteran GOP senator. Blunt will lead a newly launched strategic advisory practice at the firm, which is run by Gregg Hartley, Blunt’s former chief of staff in the House, and Andy Blunt, his son. Blunt will also reunite with Stacy McBride, his chief of staff in the Senate who joined the firm last month. Blunt recently retired from Congress after 26 years in office. He held several prominent roles, chairing the Senate Rules Committee and Senate Republican Policy Committee...

Kroger is contracting with former Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) in a lobbying push to win approval of its proposed merger with Albertsons, the company said in a press release. Boehner, who works for law and lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, will “provide strategic counsel” to Kroger executives and won’t register to lobby. Squire Patton Boggs’ Tommy Andrews and David Schnittger, two former Boehner aides, and Caren Street, former chief of staff to then-Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, will lobby on Kroger’s behalf. Kroger is hiring several well-connected lobbyists as it seeks to dissuade...

In 2020, Foreign Policy published a report describing the many ways in which Chinese tech companies were helping China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) to process stolen data — much of it stolen from U.S. citizens: China has, to date, stolen the data of 80% of Americans. One of the companies mentioned in the extensive report was Alibaba, the e-commerce giant headquartered in the ancient Chinese city of Hangzhou. Answerable ultimately to the Chinese Communist Party, the multinational retail and tech colossus was recently accused of conducting espionage for the CCP by a Belgian minister. Alibaba isn't just processing stolen...

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said on Sunday he is requesting “at least $12 billion” in aid for Ukraine in a stop-gap spending bill. Schumer said during a press conference on Sunday, “Ukraine has made significant advances against Russia in the war, the vicious war that Putin has waged against the Ukrainian people.”

Behind the closed doors of an unassuming philanthropic consultancy in Washington, D.C., is one of the most powerful lobbying forces in the United States. The Atlantic has called it “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money.” The Washington Post believes its potent lobbying arm is reason enough for Congress to enact forced donor disclosure laws, while Politico labelled it a “dark-money behemoth.” “The system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors, is known as dark money,” wrote The New York Times, “and Arabella’s network is a leading...

Emails on Hunter Biden's laptop show that his role on the Burisma Board of Directors was to lobby high-ranking US government officials to use their influence to persuade the Ukraine government to shut down all criminal charges against the company. This objective was achieved by none other than then Vice-President Joe Biden when he threatened to withhold a billion-dollar US aid package to Ukraine unless the prosecutor pursuing charges against Burisma was fired. The prosecutor was fired within a few hours—an outcome the VP publicly boasted about afterward. "A lot of people were saying that my son was unqualified for...

Retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen, is on administrative leave from his role as president of the Brookings Institute D.C. think tank after the FBI seized his electronic data on suspicion of lying to investigators and withholding evidence about his role in secretly lobbying for the government of Qatar. As a general, he commanded all U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan in the Obama administration. The court records, which were unsealed Tuesday, are the latest public evidence showing the FBI and Justice Department are conducting a large-scale investigation into the stateside influence of wealthy Arab nations including Qatar, Saudi Arabia...

President Joe Biden is urging Congress to quickly pass Ukraine aid in a move that would prioritize assistance for Kyiv over new Covid relief funding for the U.S. "I call on Congress to pass the Ukrainian Supplemental funding bill immediately, and get it to my desk in the next few days," Biden said in a statement Monday. His decision to separate the two bills should help clear the way for congressional approval of nearly $40 billion in funding for Ukraine, but it leaves in limbo a $10 billion pandemic relief bill that Biden and Democrats have said was a top...

An analysis of FARA filings shows they contacted members of Congress and others over 10,000 times. ------------- AS TENSIONS WITH Russia reach a boiling point, lobbyists from Ukraine are working feverishly to shape the U.S. response. Firms working for Ukrainian interests have inundated congressional offices, think tanks, and journalists with more than 10,000 messages and meetings in 2021, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, filings for a forthcoming report from the Quincy Institute. To put this extraordinary campaign into perspective, the Saudi lobby — known for being one of the largest foreign lobbies in D.C....

The Justice Department is investigating Hunter Biden for foreign lobbying violations related to his overseas business dealings - likely in places such as China, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan - in addition to scrutinizing his taxes, according to a new report. Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss is known to be leading a federal investigation into President Joe Biden's adult son, who denies any wrongdoing, and the New York Times reported Wednesday that the investigation, which began as “a tax inquiry” during the Obama administration, then “widened” in 2018 to encompass “possible criminal violations of tax laws, as well as foreign lobbying and...

Tony Podesta made $1 million lobbying the White House on behalf of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, public disclosure forms show. Podesta earned $500,000 lobbying the "Executive Office of the President" on "Issues related to telecommunication services and impacted trade issues" in the fourth quarter of 2021, the New York Post reported, citing public disclosure forms released last week. He pulled in another $500,000 from Huawei to lobby the "White House Office" on "Issues related to telecommunication services and impacted trade issues" in the third quarter of 2021.

Republicans and Democrats alike are now working for the Big Pharma lobby Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent vaccine rollout, pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer and Moderna have substantially increased their lobbying efforts, a National Pulse investigation has revealed. The lobbying apparatuses at both vaccine-reliant companies – in terms of the number of lobbyists hired and the overall budget deployed to influence government officials – have seen dramatic increases since 2019

As resident Biden said in an April speech, “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century. We’re at a great inflection point in history.” He’s right: The stakes are big. So why do we allow China, a hostile foreign communist government that wants to replace the US as the global superpower, to buy influence in our political system--including hiring well-connected former Members of Congress? Chinese lobbying has increased dramatically, according to OpenSecrets. In 2016, the Chinese government and corporate interests spent about $10 million. In 2020, that figure ballooned to $65 million. The Chinese are...

Chinese telecom giant Huawei is hiring Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta to try and 'warm relations with the Biden administration,' according to Politico which cites two people familiar with the matter.Podesta will work to advance a variety of the company’s goals in Washington, according to one of the people. He declined to comment. A spokesperson for Huawei also declined to comment.Huawei faces a host of challenges in Washington. In February 2020, the Justice Department charged the company with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO — a key DOJ tool for going after organized crime. DOJ alleged that...

The biggest boondoggle in the history of the world will get even more expensive for U.S. taxpayers unless members of Congress finally decide enough is enough. When the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program launched in 2001, it was hailed as a “high-performance, low-cost stealth aircraft.” Now, $1.2 trillion later, it has proven to be anything but. Despite being the most expensive military program by any country ever, F-35 fighter jets have proven defective, dangerous and largely a useless waste of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. And Congress’ nonpartisan watchdog agency agrees. Last week, the Government Accountability Office released a recommendation to...

Some of the world's biggest chip buyers, including Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google, are joining top chip-makers such as Intel Corp (INTC.O) to create a new lobbying group to press for government chip manufacturing subsidies.

By the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, and sections 3301 and 7301 of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:Section 1. Revocation. Executive Order 13770 of January 28, 2017, “Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Appointees,” is hereby revoked, effective at noon January 20, 2021. Employees and former employees subject to the commitments in Executive Order 13770 will not be subject to those commitments after noon January 20, 2021.Sec. 2. General Provisions....

Re: Foreign registered agents From:jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com To: re47@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-04-17 01:38 Subject: Re: Foreign registered agents Take the money!! Sent from my iPhone On Apr 16, 2015, at 9:44 PM, Robby Mook wrote: Marc made a convincing case to me this am that these sorts of restrictions don't really get you anything...that Obama actually got judged MORE harshly as a result. He convinced me. So...in a complete U-turn, I'm ok just taking the money and dealing with any attacks. Are you guys ok with that? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Dennis Cheng Date: Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 6:13 PM Subject:...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has put a crackdown on Washington’s lobbying industry at the heart of her 2020 candidacy, arguing that she couldn’t enact much of her liberal legislative agenda as president unless she first curbed the influence of lobbyists and corporations. Running against Washington is a longstanding campaign strategy employed by Republicans and Democrats. But the Massachusetts Democrat has put forth a unique and sweeping set of new rules, including a tax on companies that spend heavily on lobbying, as well as restrictions to keep people from cycling between certain public-service jobs and the influence world. It is a vision...

A heads up for patriots. I received a notification from the offices of NC pols Richard Burr, Thom Tillis, and Virginia Foxx that they had received and would soon reply to correspondence from me. I had NOT (this time) created the correspondence. Turns out a group called “Seniors Speak Out” (SSO) and “Voter Voice” (VV) had forged my name and email address to the correspondence delivered to Burr, Tillis, and Foxx. I found the administrator of SSO “Nona Bear” and SSO’s blog, twitter, and Linkedin accounts. None of the direct message functions allowed contact. Turned out that VV had a...