Alexander Strategy Group was an American lobbying firm involved in the K Street Project. The firm was founded by Ed Buckham, a former chief of staff to House Majority Leader Tom Delay, and his wife Wendy. The firm openly promoted its access to DeLay. Its chief lobbyist was Paul Behrends, who became Dana Rohrabacher's aide.
In January 2006, the firm was shut down. Buckham said that it was fatally damaged by publicity about the ongoing federal investigation into the actions of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. [1]
In 2004 the firm had US$8.8 million in revenues, with prominent clients such as Amgen, BellSouth, Eli Lilly and Company, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, R.J. Reynolds, Koch Industries, Microsoft, Time Warner, Enron, and the United Parcel Service. [2]
Other notable clients included Blackwater Security Services, the employer of the contractors killed in Fallujah during the Iraq War in 2004, and PerfectWave, the defense contracting firm owned by Brent R. Wilkes, under investigation for bribing Duke Cunningham. [3]
The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians were clients of the firm at the same time that they employed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
ASG was paid more than $1 million by the U.S. Family Network, a nonprofit organization that Buckham helped create in 1996 while he was still working for DeLay. The non-profit's total revenue during its existence (it closed in 2001) was $3.02 million, most of which came from clients of Jack Abramoff.
From August 30 to September 4, 2001, Buckham joined (at his own expense) a trip funded by The Heritage Foundation to Malaysia. Also on the trip were U.S. Representatives Tom DeLay, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) and their spouses, as well as Edwin Feulner and his wife Linda Feulner, and Ken Sheffer. The Feulners and Sheffer were principals of both The Heritage Foundation and the lobbying firm Belle Haven Consultants.
On September 27, 2001, Belle Haven hired ASG to represent Malaysian interests. According to U.S. Senate lobbying records, Belle Haven paid ASG $620,000 over two years "on behalf of unspecified Malaysian business interests seeking to present a positive image of their country in the United States". ASG did not register as a foreign agent, as the contract was not explicitly on behalf of the Malaysian government. At the end of 2004, Belle Haven, representing the government of Malaysia, signed a contract with ASG for $840,000 over ten months. ASG filed as a foreign agent.
Virtually all of the money ASG reported receiving from Belle Haven related to the Malaysian advocacy. In addition, the US-Malaysia Exchange Association also hired ASG for support "enhancing the bilateral relationship between Malaysia and the US." Malaysia Exchange directly paid Alexander Strategy less than $20,000 a year, according to Senate records.
The Heritage Foundation, Belle Haven, and ASG shared the same office in Hong Kong.
The firm employed several former Tom DeLay aides, including Karl Gallant and former DeLay deputy chief of staff Tony Rudy, who pleaded guilty for conspiracy involving Jack Abramoff. It also employed Brian Darling, the former legal counsel to Republican Senator Mel Martinez of Florida; Darling resigned after admitting he was the author of the Schiavo memo.
ASG paid Christine DeLay, Tom DeLay's wife, $115,000 during the period from 1998 to 2002, as a consultant, and paid Linda Feulner (see Belle Haven, above) as a consultant, and hired Julie Doolittle, wife of Congressman John Doolittle, to do bookkeeping for a nonprofit group that Buckham created called the Korea-U.S. Exchange Council. Julie Doolittle received a subpoena from the grand jury investigating Jack Abramoff.
One of the partners in ASG, Edward Stewart, purchased Belle Haven Consultants from Edwin Feulner and his wife Linda in late 2001.
Thomas Dale DeLay is an American author and retired politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives. A Republican, DeLay represented Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1985 until 2006. He served as House majority leader from 2003 to 2005.
John Taylor Doolittle, is an attorney and an American politician. Elected to Congress in 1990, he served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 2009, representing California's 4th congressional district. In the 109th Congress, he held a leadership role as the Deputy Whip for the Republican party in the House. He was succeeded in the House of Representatives by Tom McClintock. Before being elected to Congress, he had served in the California State Senate from 1984 to 1991.
Amy Moritz Ridenour was president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a Washington, DC conservative think tank. Ridenour held this post from the organization's founding in 1982 until her death. She wrote a syndicated op-ed column from 1997 and was a frequent radio and television guest.
Ralph Eugene Reed Jr. is an American political consultant and lobbyist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He sought the Republican nomination for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election on July 18, 2006, to state Senator Casey Cagle. Reed started the Faith and Freedom Coalition in June 2009. Reed and his wife JoAnne Young were married in 1987 and have four children. He is a member of the Council for National Policy.
Jack Allan Abramoff is an American lobbyist, businessman, film producer, writer, and convicted felon. He was at the center of an extensive corruption investigation led by Earl Devaney that resulted in his conviction and 21 other people either pleading guilty or being found guilty, including White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and congressional aides.
Edwin John Feulner Jr. is a former think tank executive, Congressional aide, and foreign consultant who co-founded The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in 1973 and served as its president from 1977 to 2013 and again from 2017 to 2018.
Michael Scanlon is a former communications director for Rep. Tom DeLay, lobbyist, and public relations executive who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He is currently assisting in the investigation of his former partners Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed by separate state and federal grand jury investigations related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials.
The Jack Abramoff Indian lobbying scandal was a United States political scandal exposed in 2005; it related to fraud perpetrated by political lobbyists Jack Abramoff, Ralph E. Reed Jr., Grover Norquist and Michael Scanlon on Native American tribes who were seeking to develop casino gambling on their reservations. The lobbyists charged the tribes an estimated $85 million in fees. Abramoff and Scanlon grossly overbilled their clients, secretly splitting the multi-million dollar profits. In one case, they secretly orchestrated lobbying against their own clients in order to force them to pay for lobbying services.
David Hossein Safavian is an American former lawyer who worked as a congressional aide, lobbyist, and later as a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration. A Republican, he served as Chief of Staff of the United States General Services Administration (GSA). He is a figure in the Jack Abramoff lobbying and corruption scandal, having worked with the lobbyist on the Mississippi Band of Choctaw account. After serving with Abramoff as a lobbyist, in 1997 Safavian co-founded lobbying firm Janus-Merritt Strategies with Republican activist Grover Norquist.
The monetary influence of Jack Abramoff ran deep in Washington, as Jack Abramoff spent millions of dollars to influence and entertain both Republican and Democratic politicians. Abramoff had a reputation for largesse considered exceptional even by Washington standards. In addition to offering many Republican members of Congress expensive free meals at his restaurant, Signatures, Abramoff maintained four skyboxes at major sports arenas for political entertaining at a cost of over $1 million a year. Abramoff hosted many fundraisers at these skyboxes including events for Republican politicians publicly opposed to gambling, such as John Doolittle. Abramoff gave over $260,000 in personal contributions to Republican candidates, politicians, and organizations, and funded numerous trips for politicians and staffers and gave none to Democrats.
"Team Abramoff" is the team of lobbyists assembled by Jack Abramoff when he worked at Greenberg Traurig, primarily of former aides to prominent Congressional politicians. Their work is embroiled in the Jack Abramoff scandals.
The Internet Gambling Prohibition Act (IGPA) was a 1999 bill in the US Senate to ban Internet gambling.
Tony Charles Rudy is an American politician. He served in the office of U. S. Representative Tom DeLay (R-TX) from approximately 1995 to 2001, and rose to be his deputy Chief of Staff.
Belle Haven Consultants was a for-profit organization founded in 1997 by former Heritage Foundation president Edwin Feulner and Heritage Foundation Asia policy expert Ken Sheffer. Feulner's wife, Linda Feulner, later took her husband's place as a partner and paid senior advisor until 2001.
Kevin A. Ring is a former American attorney and congressional staffer; he served Republicans in both the House and the Senate, including U.S. Representative John T. Doolittle (R-CA). He also served as a counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights Subcommittee.
Edwin A. Buckham is Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. He is a longtime congressional staffer and former lobbyist.
U.S. Family Network, Inc. (USFN) was founded in 1996 by Ed Buckham, who also served as the organization's consultant. USFN was a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) corporation founded in Virginia, with its principal offices located in the District of Columbia in the same building as Buckham's consulting firm Alexander Strategy Group and Tom DeLay's political action committee Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC). USFN received $500,000 from the NRCC and $1 million from lobbyist Jack Abramoff's Russian clients.
The Jack Abramoff CNMI scandal involved the efforts of Jack Abramoff, other lobbyists, and government officials to change or prevent, or both, Congressional action regarding the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and businesses on Saipan, its capital, commercial center, and one of its three principal islands.
Todd Boulanger is an American lobbyist. He was senior vice president of Cassidy & Associates and was a figure in the Jack Abramoff scandal.