Joe Biden refunds campaign donations from lobbyist for Qatar, Morocco
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has refunded a donation from a lobbyist for the embassies of Qatar and Morocco that violated the former vice president's policy against accepting lobbyist cash.
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign has refunded two donations from a lobbyist for Qatar and Morocco that violated the former vice president’s policy against accepting lobbyist cash.
Biden received a total of $2,800 from Jay Footlik, an American lobbyist registered as a representative of the countries’ embassies, according to a report his firm filed with the Department of Justice last month. The money came just days after he launched his White House bid in late April.
Biden’s campaign website notes that the former vice president does not accept donations from federal lobbyists, including those like Footlik who are registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
In an interview, Footlik said that Biden’s campaign had refunded the money and he didn’t know about the policy when he made the online contributions. A Biden spokesman declined to discuss the contributions but said that the campaign would reject donations that violate its policies. The candidate’s first fundraising report will be released next month.
Footlik is a business partner of Richard Smotkin, who attracted scrutiny after arranging a December 2017 trip to Morocco for former Trump EPA Secretary Scott Pruitt. A few months after the $100,000 taxpayer-funded trip, Smotkin inked his $40,000-a-month contract with the Moroccan government. Pruitt resigned last year under a cloud of ethics investigations. Footlik joined Smotkin’s firm, ThirdCircle, in January.
The duo also represent the Kazakhstan ministry of culture and sports, and have previously represented the embassy of Turkey, the embassy of Serbia, Azerbaijan’s state oil company, a Sudanese bank and the government of Timor-Leste.
The refunds come amid growing scrutiny of the influence of foreign lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and of lobbyists’ place in the political system. Nearly a dozen Democratic presidential contenders have publicly rejected lobbyist money so far, although not all of them have specifically discussed foreign lobbyists. In March, Sen. Kamala Harris also refunded two donations from registered agents for the governments of Jordan and Bermuda.
Meanwhile, Biden has still held fundraising events with corporate executives who oversee lobbying but aren’t registered lobbyists themselves.
“Lobbyists are almost an unavoidable part of the system at this point, unless candidates take a stand against that,” said Anna Massoglia, an analyst with the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains a database of foreign lobbyist registrations. “There’s a lot of ways to skirt the pledge against direct contributions from lobbyists to campaigns.”
Federal law requires anyone who works for a foreign government, political party or organization in a “political or quasi-political capacity” to register as a foreign agent with the Department of Justice and regularly report their political donations. They’re only allowed to make campaign contributions with their own personal money — donations from foreign citizens or entities are not allowed.