[ad_1]
Google pays two contract lobbyists who have worked as lawyers on the Republican staff of the House Judiciary Committee. One of the lawyers, Sean McLaughlin, also served as Assistant Deputy Attorney General to President George W. Bush.
"After conducting congressional investigations, Sean can advise clients on how to react from the outside," reads McLaughlin's biography on his firm's website, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, who paid $ 50,000 to Google. lobby Congress during the first three months of the year, according to lobbying records.
The Washington office of Amazon, whose chief executive, Jeff Bezos, has been regularly criticized by Trump, is headed by a former Federal Trade Commission official, Brian Huseman. And his list of outside lobbyists includes three former Democratic members of Congress – Norm Dicks of Washington, Vic Fazio of California and Kendrick B. Meek of Florida – as well as two former lawyers from the Department of Justice.
One of them, Seth Bloom, was a lawyer in the antitrust division of the department in the late 1990s, before dealing with antitrust issues for Democratic staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He then lobbied for Amazon, particularly with regard to the purchase in 2017 of the Whole Foods grocery chain, which required a review of competition issues by the Federal Trade Commission. Amazon paid Mr. Bloom's company $ 30,000 to lobby the Congress on "competition-related issues in the technology industries" in the first three months of the year.
During this period, Amazon also paid $ 70,000 to the lobbying company of one of Trump's largest fundraisers, Brian Ballard, to lobby Congress and the administration. Leading lobbyists in Washington can earn millions of dollars a year.
One of the lobbyists on Mr. Ballard's company account, Daniel F. McFaul, was part of Trump's presidential transition team and then briefly as chief of staff to Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida. Mr. Gaetz is a member of a House Judiciary Subcommittee that is planning a series of hearings, testimonials from corporate executives and subpoenas for internal documents at the same time. business.
[ad_2]
Source link