Foreign Influence Update

David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell at The Washington Post:

Lobbyists representing the Saudi government reserved blocks of rooms at President Trump’s Washington, D.C., hotel within a month of Trump’s election in 2016 — paying for an estimated 500 nights at the luxury hotel in just three months, according to organizers of the trips and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

At the time, these lobbyists were reserving large numbers of D.C.-area hotel rooms as part of an unorthodox campaign that offered U.S. military veterans a free trip to Washington — then sent them to Capitol Hill to lobby against a law the Saudis opposed, according to veterans and organizers.

At first, lobbyists for the Saudis put the veterans up in Northern Virginia. Then, in December 2016, they switched most of their business to the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington. In all, the lobbyists spent more than $270,000 to house six groups of visiting veterans at the Trump hotel, which Trump still owns.
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“It made all the sense in the world, when we found out that the Saudis had paid for it,” said Henry Garcia, a Navy veteran from San Antonio who went on three trips. He said the organizers never said anything about Saudi Arabia when they invited him.

He believed the trips were organized by other veterans, but that puzzled him, because this group spent money like no veterans group he had ever worked with. There were private hotel rooms, open bars, free dinners. Then, Garcia said, one of the organizers who had been drinking minibar champagne mentioned a Saudi prince.

“I said, ‘Oh, we were just used to give Trump money,’ ” Garcia said.

Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco at The Daily Beast:

Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican politico whose Russian girlfriend is in jail on charges she acted as a covert foreign agent, has been informed that he may face similar accusations. The Daily Beast reviewed a “target letter” that federal investigators sent Erickson’s lawyer, which said they are considering bringing charges against him under Section 951 of the U.S. code—the law barring people from secretly acting as agents of foreign governments.

The letter also said the government may bring a conspiracy charge against Erickson, who is the boyfriend of accused foreign agent Maria Butina. The letter, which was sent in September by investigators working out of the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, does not accuse Erickson of any crimes or guarantee that he will face charges.

Eric Tucker, Desmond Butler, and Chad Day at AP

Spinning off from the special counsel’s Russia probe, prosecutors are ramping up their investigation into foreign lobbying by two major Washington firms that did work for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, according to people familiar with the matter.

The investigation had been quiet for months since special counsel Robert Mueller referred it to authorities in Manhattan because it fell outside his mandate of determining whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia.

But in a flurry of new activity, Justice Department prosecutors in the last several weeks have begun interviewing witnesses and contacting lawyers to schedule additional questioning related to the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs, the people familiar with the inquiry said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing work.

Armin Rosen at Tablet:

The lobbyists that Qatar hired to improve the emirate’s image among American Jews were earning far more from their relationship with Doha than previously known. These were the same figures who managed the fallout of a still-unaired but much whispered-about undercover documentary produced by Al-Jazeera about pro-Israel groups in Washington, D.C.

The new details about the lobbyists’ payment came out on Oct. 26 when Nick Muzin, a former senior staffer for Republican Sens. Tim Scott and Ted Cruz-turned lobbyist for Qatar, filed a disclosure under the Foreign Agents Registration Act reporting $3.9 million in additional payments related to his work for Doha. Muzin, as Tabletreaders will recall, was first retained by Qatar in September of 2017. The payments listed on Muzin’s FARA filing come from Blue Fort Public Relations LLC, “a private firm that is incorporated in Qatar with offices in London, U.K., and Washington, D.C., to foster commercial and international investment-related outreach opportunities for private companies and investors from Qatar into the United States,” according to the filing. Of that $3.9 million, $2.3 million was paid to Lexington Strategies, a firm owned by Joey Allaham, a kosher restaurateur with business links to prominent Qataris who later joined Muzin in lobbying on Qatar’s behalf. According to the filing, the payments from Blue Fort came in September and October of 2017.