New disclosures filed in the past few weeks by Egypt's lobbying team in Washington shine a light on the activity the country took last summer and fall to block the discussion and passage of a resolution calling on the United States to support human rights in Egypt and demand an end to the emergency law. These were two key demands of the protesters who, last week, toppled former President Hosni Mubarak
.http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-sr586/show
While only two of the three lobbying firms working for Egypt have filed their reports for the second half of 2010, the pattern of contacts reported so far shows a high level attention paid to the Senate Resolution (S. Res. 586) introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) on July 20. Seventy-seven of the 129 lobbying contacts made by The Livingston Group and The Podesta Group were to senators. Fifty-two of these contacts explicitly mention the Resolution, while many more contacts are undoubtedly related.
Click here to view the Socrata database for all contacts reported by the Podesta and Livingston Groups from January to December 2010 (the most recent reports available). (We will add contacts reported by they Moffett Group when they are disclosed.)
Under U.S. law, foreign lobbyists must register and disclosure their contacts with government and NGO officials. The Sunlight Foundation and ProPublica have digitized and made these filings searchable at http://foreignlobbying.org/.
At the Sunlight blog, Paul Blumenthal uses the database he compiled of contacts made by Podesta's and Livingston's lobby shops to show how the vote on the pro-democracy resolution was influenced by their outreach to members of Congress.
The most contacted Senate office was that of Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS)...According to the report filed by The Livingston Group, Wicker did not simply talk with Livingston about the Resolution, he was the lobbying firm's chief contact on Capitol Hill on the Resolution. Livingston Group lobbyists contacted Wicker's office twenty times after the Resolution was introduced. Seventeen of those contacts listed the Resolution as the reason for the contact.
Read the full post: http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2011/02/16/egypts-lobbyists-worked-to-block-pro-human-rights-democracy-resolution/
I'd be happy to put you in touch with Paul or any of our foreign lobbying experts.
Best,
Gabriela
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Gabriela Schneider
Communications Director
Sunlight Foundation
gschneider@sunlightfoundation.com
202-742-1520 x236
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