Fun stuff in the New York Times about the practice of government in the United States! The regime of Congolese leader Joseph Kabila, under threat of being sanctioned for human rights violations and corruption, threw a big, fun party on the roof of a hotel in Washington, D.C. in July. One of the people at the party happened to be the president’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who says he was there because he was trying to impress a lady:
In an interview in September, he initially said he stopped by the reception for a half-hour to “say hello to people” and to impress a woman with whom he had been dining by taking her “to the top of the Hay-Adams to see a Washington party” with a “great view.”
In an classic mix-up, the Congolese ambassador to the U.S. seems to have ended up with the impression, which he conveyed in an interview with the Times, that Giuliani had been at the party because he was working with the Congo to “let us know” when and how to hold new elections that would convince the Trump administration not to impose sanctions. The Times notes that no further sanctions have, in fact, been imposed since Kabila’s government announced that there would be an election in December.
In an even crazier coincidence, it turns out that Giuliani is now working on a deal to get paid to do “consulting” for Congo:
Someone familiar with Mr. Giuliani’s business affairs said that one of his companies has recently been negotiating a consulting deal to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo … In text messages on Sunday, Mr. Giuliani said that “if I do it, it would only be security consulting” similar to what he does in other countries, not lobbying.
Giuliani is ostensibly working pro bono for Trump, a generous arrangement that gives him regular access to the president at the same time he continues to work for clients in Brazil, Colombia, Iran, Ukraine, and now possibly Congo, all of which is hopefully, at the least, very impressive to the woman Giuliani was at dinner with before the hotel party, assuming it was an actual woman and not just a stack of dollar bills that had been arranged into a human shape and stuffed inside a cocktail dress.
Giuliani’s defense of his behavior, per a Washington Post piece linked above, is that he doesn’t have any conflicts of interest because he doesn’t formally lobby Trump on his clients’ behalves. Meanwhile, a number of recently proposed laws that would “toughen” or overhaul the regulation of foreign money and the definition of foreign lobbying have stalled in Congress, Politico and Roll Call have reported, after encountering resistance from … uh … foreign corporations and lobbyists. So, things are fine. It’s fine.
