How a Champion of Democracy Became a Manafort Flack
amp.thedailybeast.com/how-a-champion-of-democracy-became-a-manafort-flack
In the middle of the 2012 presidential race, Mitt Romney’s campaign had an unusual moment. The Republican billed himself as a foreign policy hawk who would stand up to the Kremlin. But on May 9, 2012, one of his foreign policy advisors, lobbyist Vin Weber, signed a little-noticed contract with a man in Vladimir Putin’s wider orbit. It was a deal that would reverberate for years to come.
Weber spent twelve years in Congress, where he worked alongside Newt Gingrich, did a stint in Republican leadership, and built relationships on both sides of the aisle. Then headed to K Street, where he became one of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists. From 2001 to 2009, he was chairman of the board at the National Endowment for Democracies, which boosts human rights and democracy activists around the world.
While Paul Manafort was scouring the globe for dictators to represent, Weber was sailing to the top of Washingtonian magazine’s Top 50 Lobbyists list.
But their paths crossed. One year, Weber was a hero for democracy. The next, he was (unwittingly, per his firm) a Putin ally’s flack.
And now, Weber and his firm have been roped into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Team Trump and the Kremlin. A spokesperson for Weber’s firm said they are cooperating with Mueller’s probe, and confident they didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s a particularly unusual situation for Weber, who was chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for a time. NED is a non-profit –– largely funded by Congress –– that makes grants to support pro-Democracy efforts, including media outlets, labor groups, and human rights organizations. After years of working in Russia, Putin banned it from the country.
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