Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
One of the Qatari government lobbyists in Washington has been greasing the wheels with donations to members of Congress who agreed to meet with high-ranking Qatari officials.
New Foreign Agent Registration Act filings for the firm Ogilvy Government Affairs show that Moses Mercado, the firm’s chairman, spent much of the summer seeking sit-downs with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus—in particular members from Texas, where the Qatari government just announced plans to open a $10 billion liquified-natural-gas terminal.
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Ogilvy signed the Qatari embassy on June 5, and a few weeks later Mercado met with Rep. Filemon Vela (D-TX) about arranging a congressional delegation to the Gulf nation.
In early July, Mercado decided to speed things along, and donated to another member he’d soon lobby on his client’s behalf. He donated $1,000 to the re-election campaign of another Texas Democrat, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez.
Throughout July, Mercado courted Gonzalez, Vela, and Rep. Reuben Gallego (D-AZ), pitching them on a meeting with the Qatari ambassador in late July. The meeting finally ended up happening on July 24, when Amb. Meshal bin Hamad Al-Thani sat down with Gonzalez and Vela at Fiola, an upscale Italian restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Three days later, Mercado donated to Vela’s and Gonzalez’s campaigns.
Mercado donated to Vela’s campaign once again in October, along with that of Rep. Jimmy Gomez, whom Mercado had been pitching on a dinner with the ambassador the previous month. That dinner doesn’t appear to have happened, but in late November, after Vela was re-elected, he visited Qatar to meet with the country’s emir. A week later, he sat down with the Qatari ambassador in Washington.
Lobbyist contributions to the policymakers they’re lobbying isn’t exactly novel, the synchronicity with which Mercado went about it is certainly a stark case.
Get the data:
