Vin Weber

The Daily Beast reports that Weber appeared on a disclosure form as a lobbyist for the Brussels-based European Centre for a Modern Ukraine (ECMU). A spokesman for Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, where Weber is a partner, said the group shares interests with Ukraine’s ruling party “to further integrate and align with the West.”

In practice, however, Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych has, as the Daily Beast notes, “at times sought closer ties with [Russian president] Vladimir Putin,” and carried out prosecutions against opposition figures that raised the ire of Western European neighbors. Romney, for his part, has called Russia “without question our number one geopolitical foe.” The Daily Beast, whch cited criticisms that Ukraine is “backsliding from a democratic revolution,” also noted that the EU “in December opted not to conclude a trade agreement with Ukraine” because of Yanukovych’s questionable tactics in consolidating power.

A group of Western European heads-of-state boycotted soccer matches in Ukraine this year as groups like Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Ukraine to investigate allegations that Tymoshenko was beaten in prison.

But Weber’s lobbying did not begin with Ukraine. In addition to clients like Morocco, Greece, the Iraqi Governing Council, and Panama, a year ago, a ThinkProgress investigation revealed a pitch Weber made to the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). In its annual report this year, HRW said that the U.A.E. “muzzled the right of its citizens to express themselves and to form independent associations.” In a follow-up in April, HRW joined with Amnesty International in condemning a “widening attack on dissent” in the tiny Persian Gulf sheikhdom.

In his 2005 proposal to represent the U.A.E. in Washington, Weber advocated portraying the UAE as a U.S. ally in combating terrorism and an observer of human rights. (That lobbying appears to have ended in 2007.) He boasted on his relationships with D.C. thinktanks like the American Enterprise Institute, and noted, “These are all groups with impecable reputations. Working with them goes well beyond writing a check — if that is even part of the relationship.”

Further burnishing his credentials as a Washington lobbyist, Weber was mentioned in connection with the scandal surrounding disgraced former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay. Weber reportedly donated $1,000 to Delay’s legal defense fund, even as House rules prohibited money from lobbyists.

Romney has sought to portray himself as a Washington outsider, and attacked fellow Republican candidates for lobbying. But the former Massachusetts governor surrounded himself with lobbyists in both his current run and its 2008 iteration.

The defense industry is known as a major lobbying power in Congress but the industry’s sharp uptick in campaign contributions, the majority of which are designated to Republicans, in the 2012 political cycle indicates that defense contractors are making a strong rightward shift in their political giving.

Defense industry contributions to individual candidates and PACs reached nearly $13 million earlier this month. That number, only $11 million short of the $24 million contributed in the 2008 political cycle, suggests that the defense industry will contribute more in this political cycle than in any previous election. And the increase in funds is matched by a dramatic partisan shift in the industry’s contributions.

In 2008, 51 percent of contributions went to Democrats while 49 percent were designated for Republicans. In 2010, that trend continued with 53 percent going to Democrats and 47 percent to Republicans. But the 2012 cycle appears to mark a shift in partisan bent as a whopping 60 percent of defense industry campaign dollars went to Republican campaigns.

When contacted by Politico, General Dynamic spokesman Kendell Pease explained that the Republican majority in Congress could explain the shift in campaign dollars toward the GOP:

Those are the folks that are here. Those are the folks that are making decisions now, today, and it’s very easy to figure out where they stand on issues that we feel are most important. We continue to support those folks, both House and Senate, who support those issues that we feel are most important.

Indeed, supporting Republicans has paid off. A budget proposal put forward by Mitt Romney would add $100 billion to the Pentagon’s budget by 2016, while imposing cuts on health care for the poor and disabled and reductions in funding for food inspection, border security and education. And a House Republican budget proposal calls for $554 billion in defense spending in 2013, a $29 billion increase over the White House’s proposal.

As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) has found himself the biggest recipient of defense industry dollars, taking in over $393,000 in the 2012 political cycle. The defense industry, apparently eager to repay McKeon for fearlessly defending the defense industry from budget cuts, has extended its largess to his wife, Patricia McKeon, who took in at least $19,200 in defense industry campaign contributions for her California State Assembly campaign (where national defense is not at issue). But McKeon denies the contributions were the result of arm twisting or repayment for his work in protecting the defense budget as budget cuts sweep across Washington. “She’s made lots of friends [in Washington],” McKeon told the Los Angeles Times. “When they found out she was running, they offered to help.”

The Newt Gingrich campaign’s choice of foreign policy advisers follows the trend of GOP candidates borrowing heavily from the neoconservative policymakers who helped form the hawkish foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. But Gingrich, who denied his own history of influence peddling for corporate clients, made an interesting choice in adding Stephen Yates, a Washington lobbyist specializing in foreign companies and governments, to his national security team.

Yates, whose biography on the Newt Gingrich campaign website only lists him as president of DC International Advisors, “a consultancy,” since 2006, had an extremely active lobbying career in the two years following his job as Deputy Assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for National Security Affairs from 2001 to 2005. The Gingrich campaign’s decision to leave Yates’ career as vice president of the “global affairs practice” at Barbour Griffith & Rogers off his official bio, might have something to do with the two years of active lobbying he conducted on behalf of foreign clients.

In 2005 and 2006, while he was based at Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Yates was listed on lobbying disclosures as having represented the interests of:

Yates also serves as a director at the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council.

The campaign’s decision to present Yates’ biography without any reference to his career at Barbour Griffith & Rogers or his representation of Taiwanese, Indonesian, Lebanese, Indian and British interests in Washington, raises questions. Indeed, Yates’ two-year career as a lobbyist focusing almost exclusively on foreign clients seeking influence in Washington is an interesting omission from a biography that portrays Gingrich’s national security adviser as a career civil servant.

Yates’ background in public service would indicate that he has a strong interest in U.S. foreign policy and national security. But his two years as a professional lobbyist might also suggest that annual contracts of $740,000 with the Indonesian National Shipowners Association, $720,000 with the Republic of India, and $1.5 million with the Republic of China (Taiwan), held a certain appeal in more recent years.