The influential publication Legal Times selected Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. as one of the nation's top lobbyists and profiled him in its July 21, 2008 issue. The Legal Times editors wrote: They are the masters of K Street, explaining, influencing—and sometimes even reversing—the thinking of Capitol Hill’s top legislators.
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Jim Christian, a partner at Patton Boggs, was quoted in The Hill newspaper on July 22, 2008 talking about the success of the firm's lobbying efforts during the first half of this year. The newspaper ranked Patton Boggs at the top of its list of lobby generators. Christian also provided insight about emerging trends in the industry, telling The Hill that there is there is no time to waste in readying for the next president.
“You can’t wait until next year,” Christian said. “People like to plan ahead and polish their crystal balls.”
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Nicholas Allard, co-chairman of the firm's public policy department, was interviewed by the Independent Television News of London for a piece that aired in the United Kingdom on July 4, 2008 about the battle between Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama and GOP rival John McCain over who is more "patriotic."
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Scott Weber, a partner in the firm's New Jersey office, published an op/ed in Forbes magazine on July 3, 2008 about legislative efforts to overhaul the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Those efforts have been blocked by lawmakers concerned about giving the telecom industry legal protection from lawsuits for participating in President Bush's secret terrorist surveillance program immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Under the program, the president authorized law enforcement agents to monitor telephone calls and e-mails of suspected terrorists and their contacts in the United States without a warrant from the FISA court. In his op/ed, Mr. Weber urges Congress to upgrade the law now. The telcom industry should not be punished for helping the president at a time of extraordinary need, Weber said.
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Todd Harrison, a partner in the New York office, was quoted in the New York Times on July 3, 2008. Harrison provided expertise for a story about Samuel Israel III, a former hedge fund manager, who was on the run. Israel faked his own suicide on a Hudson River bridge in June and disappeared, launching an international manhunt. Mr. Harrison, a former prosecutor who now specializes in white-collar criminal cases at Patton Boggs, told the paper that most fugitives do not go very far from home. “There was nowhere for him to go so he had to drive around locally,” Harrison said. “The marshals were after him as soon as he disappeared. There was no way he was going to be able to get on a plane or cross any borders, and life on the run is a hell of a lot harder than people think.”
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Todd Harrison was also quoted by Reuters about the missing hedge fund manager. Click here to read the full article.
Katie Whelan, senior public policy adviser, was featured in the Legal Times blog Influence: The Business of Lobbying on July 1, 2008 talking about the work she will be doing with the firm.
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JUNE 2008
Todd Harrison, a partner at Patton Boggs' New York office was quoted on June 19, 2008 in Fortune concerning the arrests of two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers who were indicted on federal charges tied to the failure of two funds that had made outsized bets on mortgage-backed securities. Investors ended up losing $1.4 billion when the funds, which had borrowed billions of dollars to place bets on the subprime market, filed for bankruptcy protection last July, according to the magazine.
"The first thing I thought of was Enron," says Todd Harrison, a former prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York. Harrison went on to say that the allegation against one of the fund managers reminded him of the case against the late Ken Lay, the former chief of Enron. He was accused of having sold his stock in the company while telling employees, investors and others that they should support Enron by holding onto their own stock.
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Ted Sonde, a partner at Patton Boggs, was quoted in a Bloomberg story published on June 20, 2008 about the arrests of two Bear Sterns hedge fund managers on federal fraud charges. Sonde told the financial news wire that if the accusations are true, "it shows a callousness toward their own investors." Sonde, the former associate director of the enforcement division at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said hedge fund managers "have an obligation to be honest with your investors about what's going on.''
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Nicholas Allard, co-chair of the firm's public policy practice, was quoted in a Forbes.com article on June 16, 2008. The article looks at the role lobbyists will play in the upcoming political elections now that the rules have changed.
"We're obviously interested in politics, and this is the World Series," Allard said.
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Joshua Greene, a member of the public policy practice, appeared in an article in the June 11, 2008 edition of The Wall Street Journal discussing congressional reaction to the surge in oil prices. The article addresses how Congress and the oil and financial industries "are locked in an escalating public confrontation over where to fix blame for oil's run-up." The article says that lobbyists are "huddling privately with lawmakers to horse-trade over measures that could attack the oil issue and work to industry's advantage." Click here to access this article.
Nicholas Allard, co-chair of the firm's public policy department, was quoted in the June 11, 2008 edition of Politico about how lobbyists are responding to a recent White House memo stating that, except in extraordinary circumstances, the administration would not implement any final rule before the end of the Bush presidency if the comment period for that rule did not begin by June 1.
"This is a curveball, for sure," said Allard, a former chief of staff to the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). "People are just realizing that it could have a dramatic impact."
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Nicholas Allard, co-chairman of the firm's public policy department, was quoted in the June 10, 2008 edition of Politico in a story about how Sen. Barack Obama's ban on contributions from lobbyists and PACs has frustrated many Democratic lobbyists and fundraisers, who say that Democratic congressional candidates can’t — and won’t — turn their backs on such a steady stream of campaign cash.
"There’s nothing wrong with lobbyist and PAC money, because the government can’t be bought," said Allard, a veteran of many Democratic campaigns, including former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 White House bid."
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Ed Newberry, the firm's deputy managing partner, was quoted in the Hill on June 2, 2008 discussing the firm's effort to help give the representative from Washington, D.C. the right to vote in Congress. Patton Boggs' pro-bono effort is gaining ground on Capitol Hill, according to the article.
“I really look at this as a human issue,” Newberrysaid. “At the end of the day, it comes down for me to help people in the District of Columbia to have a real voice in the federal government.”
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Nick Allard, co-chair of the firm’s public policy department, was featured in a June 1
Boston Globe story about how
John McCain and Barack Obamathe are trying to distance themselves from lobbyists in their bid for the
White House.
"It's overly simplistic and more demagogic than analytic to say that the solution to all the problems in Washington is to get rid of the lobbyists," said Nicholas W. Allard, a partner, lobbyist, and cochairman of the public policy department at Patton Boggs, a Washington law firm and lobbying powerhouse. "Lobbyists are not the source of congressional gridlock, the source of bitter partisanship, or the reason candidates have to spend so much time raising money."