October 2019
Turkey’s Lobbyists Had Deep Access to Trump White House
Reported by @CourthouseNews
courthousenews.com/turkeys-lobbyi…
Turkey’s Lobbyists Had Deep Access to Trump White House
Reported by @CourthouseNews
courthousenews.com/turkeys-lobbyi…
Ballard Partners, the firm dubbed “the Most Powerful Lobbyist in Trump’s Washington,” ended its years-long contract with Turkey’s state-run Halkbank last week, the day after that bank’s indictment in a record-breaking money-laundering scheme. 
Halkbank’s prosecution comes amid the precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria following a phone call between President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Kurdish forces had controlled a territory in Syria’s northeast until two weeks ago when an invasion by Turkish troops began pushing them south.
It was four years ago meanwhile that the U.S. president whose brand adorns Trump Towers Istanbul admitted to having something of a “conflict of interest” in Turkey. Public records show Turkish interests run deeper than his corporate empire.
Ballard Partners, run by Trump’s top Florida fundraiser Brian Ballard, spent more than two years and made roughly $2 million representing the Turkish government and Halkbank.
Ballard bundled $295,000 this past quarter to Trump Victory, a political action committee, and has donated tens of thousands of dollars more to Trump’s campaign and associates.
Records disclosed under the Foreign Agents Registration Act show that Turkey’s payments to Ballard came with high-ranking access to Trump’s State Department, Treasury Department and White House, at critical moments for the U.S.-Turkish relationship.
Ballard Partners landed its $125,000-per-month contract with the Turkish government on May 11, 2017, less than two months after Halkbank executive Hakan Atilla was charged with helping to funnel billions of dollars to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.
Halkbank signed a separate contract with Ballard for the same amount in August, a couple of months before trial in that case began, but Ballard Partners announced Wednesday it would no longer represent the state-run bank that had been indicted in New York a day earlier.
🔥🔥➡️ It is not the only Trump-tied firm to keep some distance. Last Friday, as U.S. prosecutors sought to serve Halkbank with its indictment, the law firm King & Spalding claimed to have no authorization to accept service for the bank it has represented for the past two years.
🔥🔥➡️➡️ King & Spalding is also an erstwhile employer of FBI Director Christopher Wray as well as a longtime adviser to President Donald Trump’s real estate empire. 🤔🤔
The firm did not return a request for comment after a hearing Tuesday where U.S. prosecutors declared the bank a “fugitive.”
Before Ballard severed ties, it had led the lobbying campaign that assigned three of the firm’s other top figures to work on Turkey’s behalf: former U.S. Congressman Robert Wexler, ex-Clinton State Department official Jamie Rubin and Syl Lukis, a managing partner at the firm.
The next year, an article boasting of the firm’s outsized influence in the Trump administration ran in Politico, where Rubin serves as a contributing editor.
Rubin told Courthouse News in a phone interview that the firm had tried to make sure U.S. agencies would be aware how charges against Halkbank could affect international relations with a NATO ally.
*Side Note: It sure is convenient that they can justify and hide this criminal operation behind Turkey’s alleged status as a NATO ally.
https://twitter.com/stringwallapp/status/1441481250317869064
“Once the indictment was brought down, we had been reduced in our work for Halkbank as the matter was basically in judicial channels,” Rubin said, explaining why the firm ended its contract. “We concluded that there was little more that we could do.”
Public records indicate that Rubin himself had limited contacts related to the Turkey and Halkbank contracts, which show the diplomat-turned-lobbyist placed two phone calls with Matthew Palmer, a deputy assistant secretary at the State Department.
On May 11, 2017, the day Ballard Partners signed Turkey as a client, Wexler spent more than $8,000 of the Turkish government’s money on travel expenses.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had his first Oval Office summit with Trump five days later, as Erdoğan’s bodyguards assaulted peaceful protesters on the streets of Washington.
The White House remained silent about the incident and, roughly two months later in July 2017, Ballard called Trump’s deputy Sean Cairncross for reasons undisclosed in public records.
A little more than a year would pass before Ballard landed an in-person meeting with Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff Nick Ayers on July 24, 2018.
Two days after that powwow, Pence threatened sanctions against Turkey if it did not release U.S. Pastor Andrew Brunson, whom the Turkish government jailed in what critics called “hostage diplomacy.”
*Side Note: I tweeted about this hostage diplomacy in the thread that never ends.
https://twitter.com/StringwallApp/status/1448925493718302721
In that thread, I argued (apparently unnecessarily) that Brunson’s arrest was a ransom request by Erdogan to demand an end to the Zarrab/Halkbank investigation. I based this assessment partly on Erdogan’s public comments about Gulen…
https://twitter.com/StringwallApp/status/1449057243060744196
…partly on the fact that Erdogan seems to label anyone who he perceives to be linked to the investigation of his corruption as “terrorists”…
https://twitter.com/stringwallapp/status/1449114255064698894
…but mostly on the fact that the Brunson saga involved a mobster named Korkmaz (NOT the police investigator mentioned above), James Woolsey, and Woolsey’s then-wife Nancye Miller…
https://twitter.com/stringwallapp/status/1450526449476247561
…with Woolsey and Miller being extremely intertwined with the Nowruz Commission, whose members include Bijan Kian, Ekim Alptekin, and Ahmet Calik, all of whom are connected to the Reza Zarrab’s cash for gold scheme.
https://twitter.com/StringwallApp/status/1450531814351724557
Also in the never-ending thread, I noted the timing. Brunson had been detained by Erdogan’s government just a few months after Zarrab was arrested in Miami.
https://twitter.com/StringwallApp/status/1450549584158248960
But apparently none of that analysis was necessary, because this story suggests that the negotiations between VP Mike Pence’s office and Ballard Partners was even more explicit.
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