K Street Firm Cuts Ties With Saudi Office Implicated in Khashoggi Murder

A powerhouse DC lobbying firm has formally cut ties with the Saudi government office implicated in the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The move comes after an advocacy group Khashoggi founded launched a campaign to shame the firm and one of its top lobbyists.

Squire Patton Boggs on September 17 terminated its representation of “the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court.” That office, despite its mild name, acted as a hub for cyber hacking and more sinister efforts spearheaded by de facto Saudi ruler Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS, to silence critics. A February report by the White House Office of Director of National Intelligence said that a Saudi team dispatched to Istanbul on October 2, 2018, under orders to kill or kidnap Khashoggi, “included officials who worked for, or were associated with, the Saudi Center for Studies and Media Affairs.”

The report also named the man who then headed the office, Saud al-Qahtani, a top aide to MBS, as among the group that “participated in, ordered, or were otherwise complicit in or responsible for the death of Jamal Khashoggi.” (The report added that it is unclear whether Qahtani and the others named “knew in advance that the operation would result in Khashoggi’s death.”) Saudi Arabia in February called the report “negative, false and unacceptable.” Qahtani was removed from his post amid international outrage over the murder.

In foreign lobbying filings from 2016, Squire Patton Boggs said that its lobbyists dealt directly with Qahtani. The firm’s last reported lobbying contacts with Congress or executive branch officials on behalf of the Saudis came in 2017, before Khashoggi’s murder. In March, a Squire Patton Boggs spokesperson told Mother Jones that the firm’s “FARA account has been inactive since 2016 and we have not been paid any money for lobbying activities.” But while its lobbying activities may have ceased, Squire Patton Boggs continued billing the Saudi office for legal work. The firm reported receiving $157,300 in fees from the Saudis in the six months ending January 29 of this year. It has reported no new payments since then. In all, the firm reported receiving at least $2.7 million from the center since signing a contract in 2016.

Squire Patton Boggs did not explain why it ended its contract with the Saudi center. But the move comes on the eve of the third anniversary of Khashoggi’s murder and after Democracy for the Arab World Now, an advocacy group Khashoggi founded, launched a campaign to convince lawmakers to pledge not to meet with Ed Newberry—a global managing partner at the firm, whose online biography quotes a description of him as the “King of K Street”—unless the firm ended its relationship with the center. Newberry was the top lobbyist on the account.