News: Foley adds House Natural Resources aide — Novo Nordisk hires Christie — Egypt staffing up for Biden administration

Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Foley adds House Natural Resources aide — Novo Nordisk hires Christie — Egypt staffing up for Biden administration

Nov 11, 2020

With Daniel Lippman

FOLEY ADDS HOUSE NATURAL RESOURCES STAFFER: Bill Ball, a deputy staff director for Republicans on the House Natural Resources Committee, has joined Foley & Lardner LLP as a public affairs director in its D.C. office, the firm announced today. Ball has spent nearly a decade on the Hill, including five years with the Natural Resources Committee and five on Sen. Susan Collins' legislative team. Ball will focus on renewables, and energy and infrastructure permitting.

CHRISTIE SIGNS NOVO NORDISK: Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk has hired former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's nascent lobbying firm, according to a disclosure filed this week. A close ally of President Donald Trump and a onetime GOP presidential candidate, Christie and his former chief of staff Rich Bagger will lobby on "prescription drug coverage guidance for Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D," according to the disclosure.

— Christie registered to lobby for the first time in June, and quickly tapped into a lobbying boom stemming from coronavirus relief packages signed into law earlier in the year. Disclosures show Christie 55 Solutions pulled in $330,000 last quarter from clients ranging from New Jersey hospital systems to a Tennessee addiction center and Puerto Rico's troubled electric utility. And while business picked up some for Christie over the past three months, it's unclear whether the former governor, who at least once appeared to tout his ties to the president in a pitch to a prospective client, will garner such high demand once Trump leaves office in January.

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Happy Wednesday, and welcome to PI. Sending any memos to clients about the Biden agency review teams? Send them my way: coprysko@politico.com. And follow me on Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

EGYPT STAFFS UP FOR BIDEN ADMINISTRATION: The Egyptian government has assembled a team of lobbyists that includes former House Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce and a former top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's swearing in, according to Foreign Lobby Report's Julian Pecquet and FARA registrations filed this week.

— "Egypt's ambassador to the United States, Motaz Zahran, signed the $65,000-a-month contract with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck on Monday Nov. 9, the first weekday after Joe Biden delivered his victory speech on Saturday."

— "Nadeam Elshami, the former chief of staff to Pelosi and a 25-year veteran of Capitol Hill, is expected to supervise work on the account along with Royce. Elshami was born in the United States but spent his early childhood in Egypt. Two of the firm's partners, veteran Republican lobbyist Marc Lampkin , who manages the firm's Washington, D.C. office, and leading Democratic fundraiser Alfred Mottur, are also registered on the account. They are joined by policy director Douglas Maguire. The firm will 'provide government relations services and strategic counsel on matters before the US Government,' according to its filing with the US Department of Justice. The contract is for an initial term of one year and will be re-evaluated after that."

— The contract is yet another sign that world leaders are not waiting for Trump to concede to Biden, and a signal that Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whom Trump once called "my favorite dictator" and congratulated after his controversial reelection is expecting more scrutiny under a Biden administration. ( Biden tweeted over the summer following the release of an American from Egyptian prison that there would be "no more blank checks for Trump's 'favorite dictator.'") It also "comes as Cairo is dreading a return to power of some of the same US players that they blame for the Arab Spring uprising and the fall of Hosni Mubarak," Pecquet notes.

TIKTOK'S LIMBO: TikTok on Tuesday asked a federal appeals court to intervene after the video platform said it hasn't heard anything from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ahead of tomorrow's deadline to sell its U.S. assets, The Verge's Sam Byford reports.

— TikTok parent company ByteDance reached a preliminary deal in September for Walmart and Oracle to oversee its U.S. operations, after the Trump administration accused the Chinese company of posing a national security risk. The president said at the time the deal had his approval, and CFIUS gave ByteDance 90 days to divest its U.S. operations, but China has yet to issue its approval. Late last month a judge issued a preliminary injunction to block Trump's attempt to shut down the app, and TikTok said it had asked for a 30-day extension from CFIUS as well.

— "For a year, TikTok has actively engaged with CFIUS in good faith to address its national security concerns, even as we disagree with its assessment," TikTok told the Verge. "In the nearly two months since the President gave his preliminary approval to our proposal to satisfy those concerns, we have offered detailed solutions to finalize that agreement – but have received no substantive feedback on our extensive data privacy and security framework."

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TRUMP FUNDRAISING OFF ELECTION FOR LEADERSHIP PAC: Trump's supporters have been deluged with fundraising pleas to support his campaign's legal efforts to challenge his defeat in last week's election. But a closer look at the fine print in the request shows that more than half of eager supporters' cash would go toward the president's leadership PAC set up this week, The Washington Post's Michelle Ye Hee Lee reports.

— The PAC, called Save America, was registered with the FEC on Monday and is affiliated with Trump and the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising PAC between the president and the RNC. The leadership PAC, which can accept up to $5,000 per donor per year from an unlimited number of donors and which will allow Trump to maintain influence in the GOP once he's out of office, was first reported by The New York Times.

— "Such appeals mislead donors into thinking they are responding to Trump's appeal for funds to 'stop the fraud,' but they probably do not realize the bulk of their money is being used for something else, said Brendan Fischer , who directs the federal regulatory work at the Campaign Legal Center, which supports greater restrictions on the role of money in politics," the Post writes. "'Small donors who give to Trump thinking they are financing an official election defense fund are in fact helping pay down the Trump campaign's debt or funding his post-presidential political operation,' Fischer said."

Jobs Report

— Mark Heilbrun has joined Rimon Law as a partner in its D.C. office. Heilbrun was most recently the owner and manager of Harlan Bradley LLP and has served as counsel for both the U.S. Intelligence Community and Senate committees, serving as general counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee.

— Firehouse Strategies has hired Nick Pasternak as a vice president. Pasternak was previously a speechwriter and communications coordinator for Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.). Firehouse also promoted Samantha Azzarelli to vice president and Scott Bembenek to project director.

— Scott Jacobs is now a senior manager on Amazon 's Americas public policy team, focused on international issues. He previously was a vice president at Albright Stonebridge Group.

New Joint Fundraisers

None

New PACs

Democratic Majority Action (Super PAC)

Every Voice America PAC (PAC)

Georgia Safe and Strong, Inc. (Super PAC)

Grassroots Moderates (PAC)

Keep America America Fund (Super PAC)

Pinnacle International Property Services PAC (PAC)

Revitalizing Our American Dreams PAC (Super PAC)

Save America (Leadership PAC)

Steer PAC (Leadership PAC)