A registered lobbyist who serves as a foreign agent for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia has already raised at least $32,400 in campaign cash for the presidential campaign of former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), according to newly released campaign filings.
Bush reported to the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday that his Jeb 2016 presidential campaign had received $228,400 worth of bundled contributions obtained by registered lobbyists. Among them was DLA Piper Government Affairs Practice Group Co-Chair Ignacio E. Sanchez.
According to mandatory filings with the U.S. Department of Justice, Sanchez and his firm were retained in March to represent the interests of the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia on “national security interests” before the U.S. government.
Sanchez, who served in a similar volunteer fundraising role for 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, also notes on the filing that he continues to represent the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates “on a broad range of legislative, regulatory, and government relations matters.”
Sanchez previously served as a registered foreign agent for the campaign of former president of the Dominican Republic, Hipolito Mejia, who had been seeking to reclaim the job he held from 2000 to 2004 and lost in a landslide defeat amid a national economic crisis and financial near-collapse. In 2012, while Sanchez represented Mejia, the former Dominican president told a gathering of New York clergy that President Obama “came from Africa and grew up over there.” He and 31 of the 32 Senators in the Dominican Republic’s Congress sent a letter to Obama apologizing for their former president’s comments.
Both the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are monarchies and have been criticized by Human Rights Watch for multiple human rights violations.
Bush said earlier this month that he differed from his brother, former President George W. Bush, in that he would not prioritize democracy in the Middle East as president. “It has to be tempered with the realization that not every country is immediately going to become a little ‘d’ democratic country.”
A spokeswoman for Bush did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for comment.