By Robert Windrem, NBC News Producer
With 8,000 Russian troops still on their territory, Georgian officials are looking for whatever help they can get, including hiring lobbyists from both U.S. political parties to push through needed military and other aid.
A search of records on the Justice Department’s Foreign Agents Registration Act list shows the contracts can be lucrative. The Georgians have paid two U.S. lobbying firms more than a million dollars since 2004. And the principals of both firms are well-known advisors to presidential campaigns.
One of the lobbying contracts is well known. Since 2004, Georgia has paid Orion Strategies $800,000 for lobbying. Orion was founded by Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, a former aide to Sen. Trent Lott. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from Orion and made a big deal about halting his work for Georgia earlier this year.
But on April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. Under terms of the contract, Orion gets about $25,000 a month.
The contract is quite clear on what the goals of the lobbying are: “advice and consulting services concerning Georgia’s full integration into Western institutions, including its candidacy for membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”
McCain, of course, has warned Russia that its actions in Georgia could cost it "the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world," and he has called for the deployment of international peacekeepers in the region. McCain’s staunch defense of Georgia has led to questions about a possible conflict of interest for Scheunemann.
In spite of those questions, there is little to suggest that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili needs any lobbyist to open doors to McCain. McCain has long been enamored of Saakashvili, as Newsweek reports this week.
Starting in the mid-90’s, the relationship between the two has grown and flourished. They met in 1995, when Saakashvili was 28 and about to return home after getting his bachelor’s degree from Columbia University and a law degree from George Washington University.
“Senator McCain I first met many, many years ago,” Georgian President Saakashvili told NBC’s Brian Williams Tuesday. “Back in mid-'90s I was a young parliamentarian. He was already an important Senator. And he was very much interested in our judicial reforms, legal reforms-- and we kept in touch with him over-- ever since then. He visited Georgia many times.”
But Saakashvili wants to cover all bets. So bring on the Democrats, too.
The Glover Park Group is a new addition to Georgia’s lobby. The group, which has close ties to the Clintons, got its contract on August 22. That was two weeks after the Russian invasion, as troops closed in on the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The Georgians are paying Glover Park $100,000 a month for “communications and media strategy.” The contact expires at the end of October but can be renewed.
One of Glover Park’s partners is Howard Wolfson, who served as Senator Hillary Clinton’s communications director. Among the other principals in Glover Park: Joe Lockhart, former White House press secretary under President Clinton, and Carter Eskew, chief strategist for Gore 2000.
