Richard Burt
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-campaign-lobbyist-russian-pipeline-229264
A Republican lobbyist was earning hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote one of Vladimir Putin’s top geopolitical priorities at the same time he was helping to shape Donald Trump’s first major foreign policy speech.
In the first two quarters of 2016, the firm of former Reagan administration official Richard Burt received $365,000 for work he and a colleague did to lobby for a proposed natural-gas pipeline owned by a firm controlled by the Russian government, according to congressional lobbying disclosures reviewed by POLITICO.
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Burt’s lobbying work for New European Pipeline AG, the company behind the pipeline known as Nord Stream II, began in February. At the time, the Russian state-owned oil giant Gazprom owned a 50 percent stake in New European Pipeline AG. In August, five European partners pulled out and Gazprom now owns 100 percent.
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This spring, Burt helped shape Trump’s first major foreign policy address, according to Burt and other sources. Burt recommended that Trump take a more “realist,” less interventionist approach to world affairs, as first reported by Reuters. Trump’s April 27 speech sounded those themes and called for greater cooperation with Russia.
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The Russian ambassador to the United States broke the diplomatic norm against attending campaign events to sit in the front row.
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In addition to helping shape Trump’s speech, Burt attended two dinners this summer hosted by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who had been named chairman of Trump’s national security committee.
Burt was invited to discuss issues of national security and foreign policy, and wrote white papers for Sessions on the same subjects, according to Burt and another person with knowledge of the situation.
According to a person with direct knowledge of the situation, one of the papers was about “key foreign policy themes” and another was about “national security decision-making and structure;
relationships between Defense, State, [the National Security Council] and so on and how to sort of think about the transition.” According to a second person with knowledge of the situation, Sessions was “very impressed” with the latter paper.
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All the while, Burt continued to be paid for his Nord Stream II lobbying work, which is ongoing.
Asked about the simultaneous lobbying and advising, both sides downplayed the relationship.
“We have no knowledge of this,” wrote Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks in an email. “In fact, our team cannot verify his self-proclaimed contributions to Mr. Trump's speech and, I don't believe Mr. Trump or our policy staff has ever met Mr. Burt. To our knowledge he had no input in the speech and has had no contact with our policy team.”
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Burt said that while he has discussed Trump with Russian officials,
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According to congressional disclosures signed by Burt and another member of the firm, the lobbying work consists of “monitoring and supplementing Washington discussion of EU energy security.”
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But in August, he told a POLITICO reporter that he had advised Sessions and sent him white papers: “I’ve sent him some papers and given him some ideas and sent him some people. I won’t name them but they’re Washington types,” Burt told POLITICO in August.
This week, Burt acknowledged, “I did write a one-pager on national security organization but it was for a think tank. I also attended two dinners, each with 8-10 people, to discuss foreign policy issues and Sessions was present. But it was made clear that this was designed to discuss foreign policy substance not campaign issues. In fact, one participant in the dinners later endorsed Hillary.”
Burt said he delivered his written advice for the Trump campaign through an intermediary whom he declined to name, and that he has not had contact with Sessions or anyone else working with the campaign since the dinners this summer.
Burt’s connections to Russia go back many decades. In 1989, former President George H.W. Bush appointed Burt to negotiate the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the USSR, which was concluded in 1991.
In recent years, the 69-year-old Burt said he has advised Russia’s Alfa Bank, and he continues to work with the bank’s co-founder, Mikhail Fridman.
Burt has also registered for recent lobbying work on behalf of the Ukrainian construction firm TMM, the Polish government-owned airline LOT and the Capital Bank of Jordan.
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In recent years, the Kremlin has made influencing Western think tanks a more prominent component of its soft power strategy.
“He’s [Burt] a tremendously sophisticated operator. He comes across as a tremendously polished, knowledgeable doyen of the foreign service,” said a person who witnessed Burt sell the pipeline at a meeting at the Atlantic Council last month and spoke on the condition of anonymity because the session was meant to remain private. “
“If we want to speak to people in the United States, he helps us set up meetings with people,” said Jens Mueller, a spokesman for the pipeline project, who said the meetings were with “the normal stakeholders involved in the debate: think tanks, embassies.”
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Said Burt of the apparent attempts to subvert the election, “It does appear to be a lot of suspicious activity on the part of the Russian government.”
Ben Schreckinger
bschreckinger@politico.com
@SchreckReports
Julia Ioffe
webin@politico.com
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