Saudi Arabia -- or -- We Picked the Right Week to Discuss Foreign Lobbying

Justin Wm. Moyer at The Washington Post

The alleged killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi is putting pressure on Saudi Arabia’s formidable lobbying corps in Washington, with at least one firm dropping its representation of the country and others warily monitoring the crisis.

The Harbour Group — which had received $80,000 a month to advise Saudi Arabia on communications, foreign policy and government relations — said it had severed its ties with the kingdom.

“We are terminating our relationship,” Richard Mintz, managing director of the Harbour Group, said in an interview Friday.

The Saudis plowed $27 million into lobbying in Washington last year, making them one of the highest-spending countries seeking to influence U.S. policy, according to public records.

Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington, called the nearly three dozen Washington lobbying and law firms retained by the kingdom a “Saudi machine.”

See data from Open Secrets

But at Marketplace, Victor Reklatis writes:

The outcry also could spur the Middle Eastern kingdom to ramp up its already-powerful lobbying and public-relations efforts in Washington, D.C., said Ben Freeman, author of “The Foreign Policy Auction” and director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, a think tank.

“What we’ve seen in the past from a lot of countries, when it comes to their spending on lobbying and PR in D.C., is they actually tend to spend more when relationships sour in Washington,” Freeman told MarketWatch.

One example of that came last year, when Saudi Arabia and its Mideast allies had a falling out with Qatar. “After that, we really saw a lobbying blitz from both sides, with the Saudis and Emirates adding lobbying firepower in the summer of 2017, and the Qataris doing the same thing,” Freeman said.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia nearly tripled its spending on registered foreign agents to influence American policy and opinion, according to Freeman, who analyzed Foreign Agents Registration Act filings. The country spent $27.3 million, up from just under $10 million in 2016. This year’s total could be higher as Saudi Arabia has been increasing the number of lobbying firms that it works with, he added.

These totals don’t include donations to American universities and think tanks, which don’t have to disclose such contributions. Saudi Arabia’s overall 2017 spending on influencing the U.S. easily could amount to double that $27.3 million figure when such outlays are included, Freeman said.