Tag: lobbying
As Attorney General, Laxalt Aided Top Clients Of Sister's GOP Lobbying Firm

As Attorney General, Laxalt Aided Top Clients Of Sister's GOP Lobbying Firm

Nevada Republican Senate nominee Adam Laxalt, who served as the state's attorney general from 2015 to 2019, frequently aided the clients of a lobbying firm, founded by a political adviser, that employed Laxalt's sister.

Laxalt is challenging Democratic Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto in the midterm election that ends on Nov. 8.

Throughout his political career, Laxalt has relied on Robert Uithoven, a registered lobbyist and Republican strategist, for strategic advice. Uithoven managed Laxalt's successful 2014 campaign for attorney general; served as president of his Morning in Nevada state PAC; and has worked as a consultant to Laxalt's current Senate campaign in his current position with the Republican political consulting firm Axiom Strategies.

Uithoven founded the lobbying firm j3 STRATEGIES and served as its president from 2007 to 2021. During Laxalt's time as attorney general, j3 employed Laxalt's younger sister, Therese Laxalt, known as Tessa. She began as an intern and was later promoted to lobbyist and associate.

According to state lobbying disclosure records, both Uithoven and Tessa Laxalt represented the Las Vegas Sands corporation and its owner, the late billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and his family during Adam Laxalt's time in office.

Adam Laxalt aided Adelson, according to a 2017 report by the Nevada Independent, by asking A.G. Burnett, the chair of Nevada's Gaming Control Board, to have the board intervene on Adelson's behalf in a civil lawsuit in 2016. The board did not intervene.

Adam Laxalt also co-authored a December 2015 letter from eight state attorneys general to congressional committee leaders urging them to enact restrictions on Internet gambling. Adelson, through his Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, pushed the bill. He called competition to his casino businesses "a threat to our society — a toxin which all good people ought to resist." The U.S. Senate did not act on the bill.

The National Rifle Association paid Tessa Laxalt, Uithoven, and the j3 team to lobby on its behalf during that time. The NRA put Uithoven in charge of its unsuccessful effort to defeat a 2016 statewide ballot initiative to strengthen background checks of gun purchasers.

Laxalt starred in an ad for the NRA's Nevadans for Freedom campaign against the background checks proposal — the spot was still visible on the j3 Strategies website as of Thursday — and then refused to enforce the new law after voters approved it in August 2017.

Laxalt also aided two fossil fuel industry groups represented by j3.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a trade association for the coal industry, opposed the 2015 Clean Power Plan regulations promulgated by the EPA under President Barack Obama. In February 2016, Laxalt filed a friend of the court brief in support of a multistate lawsuit challenging the rules as beyond the agency's authority.

The Retail Energy Supplier Association, which represents electricity and natural gas providers, promoted a 2018 Nevada Energy Choice ballot initiative to allow consumers to select from multiple electricity companies. Laxalt publicly endorsed the effort, which was heavily bankrolled by Adelson's Las Vegas Sands, saying, "I hope choice will make our state dynamic and give people more options." Voters rejected their proposal 67%-33%.

A Laxalt campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to an inquiry for this story.

Asked about his firm's relationship with the former attorney general, Uithoven responded by emailing an emoji of a clown.

Cortez Masto has been endorsed for reelection by the Nevada Conservation League, the Sierra Club, the NRDC Action Fund, and Everytown for Gun Safety.

She has prioritized efforts to address climate change and favors "commonsense measures to reduce gun violence and prevent mass shootings like the one at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in my hometown of Las Vegas."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Struggling NRA Gave Big Raises To Executives

Struggling NRA Gave Big Raises To Executives

The National Rifle Association has had a bad couple of years, hemorrhaging membership, money, and public support. But that did not stop the group from giving its top officials huge pay raises last year, including a 57 percent increase to chief executive Wayne LaPierre.

The numbers, disclosed in the gun lobby giant’s latest tax filings, were reported by the Washington Post on Tuesday night. Between 2017 and 2018, compensation for the NRA’s top officials increased by 41 percent as the group’s spending on its core programs dropped significantly.

Perks for top officials, the disclosures revealed, include charter and first-class jet travel for the leadership and their guests, as well as memberships at health and social clubs, plus housing expenses.

LaPierre received overall compensation in 2018 of nearly $2.2 million, even as the NRA reported a $55 million decline in income, and its 2018 campaign spending was less than half of its totals for 2014 and 2016 congressional races. It was reportedly so cash-strapped that it even slashed spending on free coffee for its employees.

Meanwhile, its revenue from membership dues have been dropping for years, declining by $35 million in 2017 alone. Dozens of its corporate partners have fled in response to online pressure, and it was forced to shut down its failed NRATV streaming service earlier this year.

Despite its major financial struggles, the NRA reportedly considered buying LaPierre a $6 million mansion in a gated Dallas-area golf club to protect him from potential attacks after a 2018 mass shooting left 17 people dead at a high school in Parkland, Florida.

That shooting — and the NRA’s fierce opposition to any meaningful action to prevent similar future attacks — began a sea-change in public opinion. For the first time since 1999, polling has found more Americans view the NRA unfavorably than favorably. A Fox News poll in August, taken after two more horrific mass shootings, found just 42 percent support for the group, versus 49 percent disapproval. Even among gun-owning households, the group’s support dropped to 56 percent from 67 percent a year earlier.

Still, the group continues to maintain a stranglehold over Donald Trump and congressional Republicans. After initially expressing support for universal background checks and red flag laws in the wake of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio over the summer, Trump quickly caved to LaPierre’s demand that he “stop the games” and get back to blocking gun legislation.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

‘We Need Some Money’ Says Rudy In Butt-Dial Call To NBC Reporter

‘We Need Some Money’ Says Rudy In Butt-Dial Call To NBC Reporter

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

In a truly cartoonish incident that seems to be perfectly calibrated for modern politics, Rudy Giuliani accidentally left a voicemail to an NBC News reporter on October 16 — a voicemail that was surprisingly revealing. That “butt-dial” resulted in three minutes worth of audio in which President Donald Trump’s attorney — the former New York City mayor! — can be heard discussing a need for cash with an unidentified man.

Giuliani and the NBC News reporter spoke on October 16, discussing Giuliani’s ties to a fringe Iranian opposition group. And Giuliani called the reporter again at 11:07 p.m. EST — only that time, Giuliani didn’t make the call on purpose. When the reporter (who had gone to bed) woke up the next morning and checked his voicemail, he found a three-minute message in which Giuliani can be heard speaking to the unidentified man. Giuliani, during the conversation, didn’t seem to know that he had accidentally called the NBC reporter and that the conversation was being recorded.

NBC News’ Rich Schapiro reports that it isn’t clear what all Giuliani and other man were talking about during their conversation, but Giuliani can be heard mentioning someone named “Charles” and someone named “Robert” (who the other man notes is “in Turkey”). Schapiro doesn’t know “Charles” is, although he points out that Giuliani “is known to have worked closely with a Robert who has ties to Turkey. His name is Robert Mangas, and he’s a lawyer at the firm Greenberg Traurig LLP, as well as a registered agent of the Turkish government.”

When the other man in the conversation notes that “Robert” is in Turkey, Giuliani replies, “The problem is we need some money.” After a nine-second pause, Giuliani adds: “We need a few hundred thousand.”

Giuliani says of “Charles” — whoever that is —“would have a hard time with a fraud case ‘cause he didn’t do any due diligence.”

According to Schapiro, October 16 wasn’t the first time Giuliani accidentally “butt-dialed” a journalist. Giuliani had previously inadvertently called an NBC News reporter on September 28, resulting in about three minutes of audio left in the reporter’s voicemail. In that recorded conversation, Giuliani can be heard railing against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden — saying that he was being attacked for going up against prominent Democrats.

“I expected it would happen,” Giuliani is heard saying. “The minute you touch on one of the protected people, they go crazy. They come after you.”

Giuliani is also heard saying of Joe Biden, “It’s a sad situation. You know how they get? Biden has been, been trading in on his public office since he was a senator.”

Giuliani goes on to say, “When he became vice president, the kid decided to go around the world and say, ‘Hire me because I’m Joe Biden’s son.’ And most people wouldn’t hire him because he had a drug problem.”

“Butt-dials,” it should be noted, don’t necessarily occur when a cell phone is placed in one’s back pocket. They can also occur when cell phones are in one’s front pocket and pressure is exerted.

Giuliani goes on to say, “When he became vice president, the kid decided to go around the world and say, ‘Hire me because I’m Joe Biden’s son.’ And most people wouldn’t hire him because he had a drug problem.”

“Butt-dials,” it should be noted, don’t necessarily occur when a cell phone is placed in one’s back pocket. They can also occur when cell phones are in one’s front pocket and pressure is exerted.

 

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
‘Staggering’: Trump Hired Four Times As Many Lobbyists As Obama

‘Staggering’: Trump Hired Four Times As Many Lobbyists As Obama

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

At the halfway mark of President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration has hired a lobbyist for every 14 political appointments made, welcoming a total of 281 lobbyists on board, a ProPublica and Columbia Journalism Investigations analysis shows.

With a combination of weakened rules and loose enforcement easing the transition to government and back to K Street, Trump’s swamp is anything but drained. The number of lobbyists who have served in government jobs is four times more than the Obama administration had six years into office. And former lobbyists serving Trump are often involved in regulating the industries they worked for.

Even government watchdogs who’ve long monitored the revolving door say that its current scale is a major shift from previous administrations. It’s a “staggering figure,” according to Virginia Canter, ethics chief counsel for the D.C.-based legal nonprofit Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. “It suggests that lobbyists see themselves as more effective in furthering their clients’ special interests from inside the government rather than from outside.”

We tracked the lobbyists as part of an update to Trump Town, our database of political appointees. We’ve added the names of 639 new staffers with the administration and the financial disclosures of 351 political appointees who have filled different positions over the past year, and we tracked the careers of 338 who departed government during the same period.

The full extent of the lobbying industry’s influence is hard to measure because federal agencies decline to share details of recusals granted to officials who disclose potential conflicts with their new government roles.

Consider Colin Roskey. Days after leaving a two-decade career as what one former employer called the “smartest” health care lobbyist, he joined the Department of Health and Human Services in January. As deputy secretary for legislation for mandatory health, he headed the portfolio that he tried to influence for most of his career.

HHS declined to reveal any recusals he signed while appointed. A spokesman said that “all employees are expected to abide by the ethics rules.”

Just days before joining HHS, Roskey listed among his clients major dialysis providers that receive federal payments through Medicare, including Fresenius Medical Care — an industry juggernaut, with more than 330,000 patients in thousands of dialysis clinics in the U.S. A third of the company’s billion-dollar revenue comes from Medicare. A recent revamp in the dialysis industry ordered by Trump, expected to shift millions of dollars from dialysis centers to cheaper home-based options, put Roskey’s office at the heart of regulating how much profit or loss some of his former clients will see in coming years. Roskey said in an interview that he recused himself from this matter.

Public records show that Roskey lobbied for at least 27 clients between January 2017 and December 2018 on an array of issues other than dialysis involving public health care programs, from prescription drugs to palliative care.

In early October, Roskey stepped out of government and went straight back to work for his old lobbying firm, Lincoln Policy Group, which specializes in health care policy. “Spending time at HHS will make [Roskey] even more valuable to our team — and we are so excited to have him back,” the lobbying firm announced in a statement.

Roskey said he had no knowledge of how the new kidney care regulations will be implemented.

After his monthslong stint with the Health Department, Roskey said he plans to lobby the legislative branch, which is not prohibited by the current ethics rules. “While working with the government I gained knowledge and background, intellectually and professionally, and I intend to unapologetically utilize those skills for my employer and clients,” he said.

The senior-level appointment of a key lobbyist raises concerns for ethics experts like Canter. “There’s no way [he would’ve been hired under Obama] because Trump dropped a key provision of the Obama ethics pledge,” she said.

Indeed, an Obama-era ethics pledge clause absent in Trump’s prevented registered lobbyists from seeking or accepting employment with any executive agency that they lobbied the two years prior.

Federal laws forbid government employees who have served as registered lobbyists in the two years prior to their appointment from handling the particular matters or the specific issue areas that they used to lobby. Similarly, after leaving the government, all appointees-turned-lobbyists are barred from seeking to influence their former agencies and engaging in behind-the-scenes work with other senior officials across the administration.

The revolving door, of course, has been spinning since well before the Trump administration. In 2009, after President Barack Obama took office, ProPublica built a smaller version of Trump Town. During his administration, government watchdog groups also decried the conflicts of interest brought by some political appointees, and The Washington Post tallied 65 lobbyists among Obama’s ranks in five years.

One Obama-era alum, for instance, has gone on to lobby for the nation’s largest pharmaceutical industry trade group, according to public records. Bridgett Taylor, who occupied Roskey’s position until Trump took office, left the government to lobby Congress and federal agencies on matters related to those she oversaw at HHS. Taylor declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Taylor’s employer, said that “her lobbying contacts have been confined to Congress,” and that she has not lobbied HHS in her new role.

If it’s certainly not new, the enforcement of ethics provisions has lagged under Trump. In governmentwide surveys conducted by the Office of Government Ethics, federal agencies reported only 106 registered lobbyists who joined the administration. In their answers, ethics officers argued that they “don’t know” how many registered lobbyists had been hired or that they didn’t “track the number of individuals who fell into this category.” When asked about referrals for further enforcement of ethics violations, an officer admitted that they “don’t maintain a centralized database of the bases of proposed disciplinary actions.”

Jeff Hauser, who heads the Revolving Door Project at the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research, contends that “Trump has organized the executive branch as a mechanism to reward allies and their political power. Lobbyists are hired not because they’re great at the specific matter that they lobby for but because their specialty is delivering political results.”

Corporations also see value in hiring former government staffers, as they bring connections within the agencies and exceptional knowledge about regulation. Among the staffers who recently left their administration positions, 29 went to work for K Street firms — as registered lobbyist or not. At least 59 former employees have done so over the past three years.

One is Laura Kemper, a former HHS senior official who, within days of leaving her post in March, was hired by Fresenius. Now vice president for government affairs, Kemper heads the company’s policy group.

According to lobbying records, she is listed among the in-house lobbyists who have visited Congress, the White House and HHS since March, pushing everything from reimbursement for dialysis services to home dialysis. The records show Fresenius shelled out more than $2.2 million for lobbying activities during the first half of the year.

Kemper had also spent years lobbying Congress and federal agencies on behalf of health care companies before joining HHS in March 2017.

Her pass through the revolving door tests the boundaries of ethics rules. Indeed, Trump’s pledge prohibits staffers-turned-registered lobbyists from advocating for the special interests of their corporate bosses before the agencies where they used to work for at least five years. It also restricts former employees from behind-the-scenes lobbying with any senior federal official for the remainder of Trump’s presidency. Kemper signed that pledge.

Kemper declined to comment. In a statement, Fresenius said Kemper “has strictly followed her legal and ethical obligations and has not been involved in lobbying the administration or anything related to the Executive Order.” Disclosure forms filed by Fresenius “cite the general activity of a team and do not ascribe any particular lobbying activity,” according to its statement.

Recently, during an earnings call to investors, Fresenius CEO Rice Powell said that the company has talked to the “appropriate people in Washington,” without naming any particular Fresenius or government staffer. “We are in the midst of commenting and asking questions” with HHS officials, he added.

As ProPublica has reported, political appointees who return to lobbying have found ways to tiptoe around ethics rules. Some register as lobbyists but limit their interactions to Congress, leaving colleagues to lobby the executive branch. Ethics restrictions don’t apply to congressional lobbying.

One such case is Geoffrey Burr, a lobbyist who joined the Labor Department early in the Trump administration. More recently, he was chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. He left the Transportation Department in January and soon became policy director at one of the nation’s largest lobbying firms.

According to records, Burr now lobbies for clients with a stake in transportation issues, including The Northeast MAGLEV, the company behind what would be the first high-speed train in the U.S. A January press release announcing his hiring praised Burr’s “high-level involvement with Transportation and Labor [that will] provide clients with the strategic guidance they need to navigate business issues with the administration.”

Burr signed the ethics pledge and, according to records, lobbies only Congress, abiding by the rule of not contacting the executive branch. Other partners at his firm lobby the Transportation Department and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Transportation Department didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Burr declined to talk.

There are also former Trump administration staffers who go back to K Street but don’t register as lobbyists — the Lobbying Disclosure Act only requires those who spend 20% or more of their time lobbying to register.

Rebecca Wood and Brooke Appleton held senior Trump administration positions for more than a year at the Food and Drug Administration and the Agriculture Department, respectively. Both left the administration and returned to their former employers — this time, in more senior positions.

Wood now leads the food and drug practice at Sidley Austin, a powerful law and lobbying firm in Washington, where her colleagues lobby the FDA for various clients. Appleton went from being director to vice president for public policy for the National Corn Growers Association; she leads at least six people lobbying the Agriculture Department and other federal agencies.

Appleton declined to comment. Wood said she “advises clients on FDA-related issues and, in doing so, complies with all applicable ethics requirements.”

There is nothing illegal about returning to an old employer or being hired by a new one. Nor is there anything wrong with having colleagues who lobby the federal government. But the revolving door does present the possibility of conflicts of interests.

“The most important commodity in D.C. is information,” Hauser said. “Former insiders have rare access to strategic intelligence, which is of significant value to corporate entities, and they can do so without registering as a lobbyist.”

With the new data just released, Trump Town grew to include 3,859 names, 2,319 financial disclosures and hundreds of other records for Trump’s staffers. Our original goal remains intact: shining a light on the people in charge of running the government and how their career histories might influence their decisions.