Between 2020 and 2025, a Qatari foreign agent donated nearly $30,000 to campaign committees linked to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Over the same period, Graham’s office granted his lobbying firm ample access so he could advocate Qatar’s interests, including over 131 total communications between the office and the agent, personal meetings, and phone calls with the senator himself.
This dynamic has played out extensively in recent years. Qatar’s active foreign agents have donated nearly $700,000 to members of Congress and other government officials since 2020 and, at the same time, enjoyed open lines of communication and face time with influential lawmakers — often the very same people they cut checks to, according to a Washington Examiner review of hundreds of public records.
“Access means that lobbyists can visit politicians to explain their preferences for governmental policy, indicating that campaign contributions help make lobbying efforts more successful,” Center for American Progress senior fellow David Madland wrote of the process. “If contributions can buy access to lobby, then lobbying victories would necessarily increase the incentive to engage in campaign funding.”
A 2018 academic research paper found that lobbyists increase their contributions to certain committees and lawmakers when issues relevant to them are at the forefront of the political process. Another research paper from 2015 discovered evidence that contributions to a member of Congress increase access to their office, suggesting that these lobbyist donations are motivated by a desire to shape policy.
Andrew King, the Qatari foreign agent who generously donated to political action committees affiliated with Graham, has more than just financial ties to the South Carolina senator. Before founding Neale Creek, his government relations and political consulting firm, King worked as a senior staffer in Graham’s office for nearly 20 years, focusing on overseeing the office’s Middle Eastern affairs, among other things. Additionally, King is the co-founder and treasurer of 150 PAC, which has donated thousands of dollars to Graham and other members of Congress on top of his personal political contributions.
Graham’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
King and Neale Creek used the access granted to them by congressional offices to engage in “the promotion of business with the State of Qatar,” according to documents filed with the Department of Justice. Qatar is heavily invested in Graham’s home state of South Carolina. The specific documents passed between Neale Creek and congressional officials, however, do not appear in the DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration Act database.
Neale Creek’s influence extends beyond Graham’s office. Having donated nearly $180,000 to members of Congress and affiliated PACs since 2020, the firm has had hundreds of in-person meetings, phone calls, emails, and text exchanges with congressional sources in that time frame. Qatari foreign agents working for Rubin Turnbull & Associates collectively donated the most to political committees, disbursing over $225,000 in contributions since 2020.
While it may not be clear exactly what Neale Creek and King are saying to members of Congress, communications from other firms working on behalf of Qatar offer some insight.
Documents distributed by Qatari foreign agents working for Venable, for instance, talk up what Qatar views as the positive effects of investments made by its sovereign wealth fund while downplaying the Gulf nation’s links to terrorist organizations.
One such document shared with policymakers, for instance, points out that Qatar is “a founding member of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS,” but omits the fact that a member of Qatar’s royal family provided a safe house for the founder of Al Qaeda, the predecessor to ISIS, in Iraq. The Qatari royal also gave Iraqi Al Qaeda members Qatari passports and provided them with $1 million in support. Qatar has also been a key financial backer of Hamas.
Venable, like Neale Creek, also makes considerable donations to the members of Congress whose offices they later lobby. The firm’s PAC has donated tens of thousands of dollars to committees linked to congressional leadership from both parties since 2020, campaign finance records show.
In one instance, Venable donated $20,000 to House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) leadership fund and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in June 2024, approximately one month after having two phone calls and a video conference with one of Johnson’s senior policy advisers to discuss the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s “posture surrounding Qatar.” Around that time, the Republican-led committee was pursuing action aimed at dampening Qatari influence over higher education in the wake of pro-Palestinian campus protests.
On the other side of the aisle, Qatari agents working for Venable met with one of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’s (D-NY) policy advisers in February 2024. One month later, the firm donated $2,500 to Jeffries’s campaign committee.
Venable’s Qatari foreign agents also secured phone calls and exchanged text messages with staff from the office of the House Republican Whip, the policy director of the House Republican Conference, the staff director of the House Rules Committee, and the coalitions director of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee.
In addition to funds from its PAC, Qatari foreign agents working through Venable personally donated over $100,000 to political committees since 2020, including contributions to those linked to congressional leadership, according to the Washington Examiner’s analysis.
“Money does ‘buy’ something — privileged access for contributors and the special attention of members who reward them with vigorous help in minding their business in the committee process,” according to an American Political Science Association report.
At least one senator caught up in the cycle of foreign agent campaign contributions followed by access was later convicted of corruption stemming from a Qatari foreign influence scheme.
In January, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York sentenced former Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) to 11 years in prison after he was found to have accepted bribes to take action to benefit the governments of Qatar and Egypt. Before his conviction, high-ranking staffers working in Menendez’s office frequently met with and were contacted by Qatari foreign agents working through the firm Praia Consultants. Those agents had donated roughly $10,000 to Menendez’s political committees prior to their meetings with his staff.
CONSERVATIVE MEDIA TARGETED BY QATARI FOREIGN INFLUENCE OPERATIONS
Many of these donations came from Vladimir Petrovic, the former Serbian ambassador to the United States. Petrovic’s foreign agent registration forms state that he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in April 2022. However, the former ambassador made thousands of dollars in political contributions before then, primarily to Menendez and other Democrats. It is illegal for foreign nationals to make campaign contributions.
Praia Consultants did not respond to a request for comment.