Washington briefing: Ex-Speaker Hastert hired by Turkish lobby

by Emil Sanamyan

Published: Friday April 17, 2009

Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the House, is a lobbyist for Turkey. AP

Washington - The firm of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) will receive $35,000 a month to lobby for the Turkish government, the Hill newspaper reported on April 10 citing public filings made to the Department of Justice as part of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).

Mr. Hastert was the Speaker of the House of Representatives between 1998 and 2006. In 2000, Mr. Hastert initially pledged to bring an Armenian Genocide resolution to a House vote after it passed in committee. Just as the resolution was to come to a vote - and pass - he deferred to the Clinton administration, and pulled the resolution off the agenda.

In August 2005, Vanity Fair magazine published a story referring to a federal investigation that looked into payments that Turkish diplomats allegedly discussed making to then-Speaker Hastert and others in U.S. government in an effort to prevent the Genocide resolution from passing in 2000.

While the speaker's staff denied any knowledge of the matter, in December 2005 Mr. Hastert shed himself of $70,000 in "tainted" campaign contributions, directing them to an unspecified charity, the Village Voice reported at the time.

Last February, Mr. Hastert's firm Dickstein Shapiro agreed to take on a sub-contract of Turkey's main government lobby DLA Piper, which is in turn led by former Democratic and Republican House leaders, Dick Gephardt (D.-Mo.) and Dick Armey (R.-Tex.)

DLA-Piper took up the main Turkey contract in May 2007, replacing the lobby of another former senior member of Congress, Bob Livingston, a Republican from Louisiana, who led the Turkish lobbying effort for nearly a decade before that, before Democrats swept the congressional election.