Washington’s UFO lobbyist is having a moment

With Daniel Lippman

WASHINGTON’S UFO LOBBYIST IS HAVING A MOMENT: Much of K Street is working to shape President Joe Biden’s mammoth infrastructure proposal, which lobbyists say could be one of the most heavily lobbied bills in history. But one lobbyist is focused on something he believes will be even bigger. “The Disclosure event is coming and it’s the biggest event in human history,” said Steve Bassett, a lobbyist for the Paradigm Research Group. “It’s almost impossible to measure it.”

— Bassett is referring to the expected release next month of a report on unidentified aerial phenomena — more commonly known as UFOs. Congress included a provision in December’s Covid relief bill directing intelligence agencies to compile such a report within six months. Bassett hopes that once the report is released, Congress will hold hearings that eventually lead the federal government to disclose that we are not alone — something for which he’s been lobbying for the past 25 years.

— Bassett is Washington’s only registered lobbyist pressing the federal government to acknowledge “an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race,” as his disclosure filing puts it. He came to Washington in the 1990s but soon realized that it wasn’t easy to persuade lawmakers or even congressional staffers to take meetings to discuss UFOs. So Bassett embraced a strategy that more conventional lobbyists have also adopted over the past decade or two. “I said, I’m not going to spend time talking to some intern in some office on the Hill,” Bassett said. “I’m going to lobby the media.”

— The strategy has proven somewhat effective. In 2015, The Washington Post covered his efforts to engage Hillary Clinton’s campaign on UFOs. (Bassett was encouraged by former White House chief of staff John Podesta’s interest in the issue.) Mother Jones profiled him a few months later. But Clinton’s loss was a terrible blow. “I was devastated,” he said. Depressed, he left the country to live in Britain, but returned in 2018 after the UFOs unexpectedly started to break through in Washington.

— The New York Times published a front-page story on Dec. 17, 2017, on the Pentagon’s investigation of UFOs after Congress allocated money to do so at the instigation of Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader. “When those stories hit the front page of The New York Times, that was the Rubicon,” Bassett said. And former blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge, who’s harbored an interest in extraterrestrial phenomena for decades, co-founded a new group, the To the Stars Academy of Arts & Sciences, that Bassett credited with raising the awareness of the issue in Washington. (The group, which doesn’t have lobbyists, didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

— Public interest in unidentified aerial phenomena has only intensified in recent weeks, following a big piece in The New Yorker, a recent “60 Minutes” episode and former President Barack Obama’s admission on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” that “there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.” Bassett doesn’t credit his lobbying with convincing Congress to order up the report, but he feels vindicated after decades of advocacy — though he’s more focused on what comes next. “What’s going down now is very significant,” he said. “We are, I believe, in the last weeks and months of the government-imposed truth embargo on the ET issue.”

Good afternoon and welcome to PI. I’m filling in for Caitlin, who’s off this week. Here’s Langston Hughes to start off your week. Tips: [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter: @theodoricmeyer.

FIRST IN PI — WARREN HEADS TO K STREET: Mark Warren, who was until recently the Senate Finance Committee’s Republican chief tax counsel, is heading to Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck after leaving the Hill earlier this year. He’ll be a shareholder and plans to register as a lobbyist, according to the firm. Warren is also a veteran of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Treasury Department during George W. Bush’s administration.

— “His senior leadership experience in both houses of Congress and at Treasury are especially valuable to our clients as we continue to navigate the effects of [the Covid relief legislation Congress passed last year], which Mark managed during his time with the Senate Finance Committee,” Marc Lampkin, the managing director of Brownstein Hyatt’s Washington office, said in a statement.

BARRY BENNETT’S ASSETS PARTIALLY FROZEN IN DISPUTE: A judge has ordered the lobbyist Barry Bennett’s business assets partially frozen, POLITICO’s Betsy Woodruff Swan and Josh Gerstein report. Earlier this month, a court sent Bennett formal notice that a default judgment was entered against him — meaning, because he did not comply with court orders, he is liable, and the only remaining legal issue is how much he owes in damages to a Republican consultant who sued him.

— Bennett, who was Ben Carson’s campaign manager in 2016 and later worked on Donald Trump’s campaign, opened the lobbying firm Avenue Strategies with Corey Lewandowski after Trump’s victory. Avenue has since shut down, and Bennett recently opened a new lobbying firm, Bennett Strategies. Now, according to the court documents POLITICO reviewed, a judge in Maryland has ordered Bennett’s assets partially frozen to satisfy the judgment entered against him, and ruled that he owes damages to Republican consultant and pundit Ying Ma, who also worked on Carson’s campaign.

LOBBYISTS RETURN TO THE HILL: They’re back. “I’m wearing a suit for the first time,” Brian Pomper of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld told Roll Call’s Kate Ackley Zeller as he made his way to a meeting on the Hill last week. “I haven’t worn a suit since March of last year.”

— Some Democratic lawmakers are also resuming in-person fundraisers, which they’d resisted earlier this spring. “I feel like all of a sudden this all opened up completely,” said Cristina Antelo, a Democratic lobbyist who runs Ferox Strategies.

— Still, not every lobbyist is eager to return to the Hill. Kathryn Lehman of Holland & Knight “said she prefers her at-home office setup and not having to commute in traffic. The rules and protocols of meeting on the Hill with congressional aides, she said, don’t make for a good use of anyone’s time. ‘Why would you put that burden on a staffer?’ she said, adding that virtual ‘fly-in’ advocacy days are ‘1,000 times’ easier than traipsing from Hill office to Hill office.”

THERE’S ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND OTHER CORPORATE PACS: Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) helped start a GOP groundswell earlier this year when he pledged to refuse campaign donations from Amazon, Google and Facebook’s PACs and top executives, POLITICO’s Emily Birnbaum reports.

— But that stance has enhanced his appeal with another group of donors: the tech giants’ major antagonists and their lobbyists. Buck, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, has raised tens of thousands of dollars from the PACs of companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and Fox Corp. since June 2019, a POLITICO analysis of campaign finance disclosures shows.

—The Association for Accessible Medicines has promoted Erik Komendant to senior vice president for government affairs, making him the trade group’s top lobbyist. He was previously vice president for federal government affairs. The trade group has also hired Steven Selde as director of its Biosimilars Council. Selde was previously a lobbyist for the Ambulatory Surgery Center Association.

— The Semiconductor Industry Association has hired Meghan Biery as director of global technology and security policy. She was previously senior national security policy advisor in the Commerce Department’s the Bureau of Industry and Security.

— The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition has hired Michelle Bekkering as national engagement director. She’ll start June 1. She was previously the U.S. Agency for International Development’s assistant administrator for development, democracy and innovation.

— Cerberus Capital Management’s international arm, Cerberus Global Investments, has hired Brian Hook as vice chairman. He was previously President Donald Trump’s special envoy for Iran. He’ll be working under Cerberus Global Investments’ chairman, who happens to be a veteran of another GOP administration: former Vice President Dan Quayle.

Representation Matters: Women of Color on the Frontline (Reps. Sharice Davids, Jahana Hayes, Lauren Underwood and Lucy McBath; One Voice)

Americans Against DC Statehood (Super PAC)
Organon & Co. Employee Political Action Committee (PAC)
Patrick Engineering Inc. PAC (PAC)
Republicans for Truth, Accountability & Progress (Super PAC)
Robinhood Markets, Inc. PAC (PAC)
SC-01 Republican Nominee Fund 2022 (PAC)
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Southpaw PAC (Hybrid PAC)
St Rocco Foundation (Super PAC)
Stronger Washington PAC (Leadership PAC: Tiffany Smiley)
Team Blue PAC (PAC)

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Rutledge Policy Group, LLC: Norton Rose Fulbright US LLP

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