Lobbying

Essential Consultants, a shell company owned by Michael Cohen, has no other known employees or directors. It was incorporated in Delaware on October 17, 2016, 10 days after the Access Hollywood tape went public and a couple weeks before the 2016 election. If AT&T paid a monthly fee of $50,000, Essential Consultants would have received more money in the year than AT&T’s highest-paid lobbying firms, Mayer Brown and Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer, and Feld, which were paid $420,000 and $400,000 respectively.

Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney, received four payments totaling $200,000 from AT&T between October 2017 and January 2018. Cohen and AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson entered Trump Tower eight minutes apart on Jan. 12, 2017, according to a pool report at the time. AT&T had two reasons to be keenly interested in Trump's thinking during that period. It, along with other wireless and cable companies, was pushing the Federal Communications Commission to end net neutrality, the rules that bar telecom companies from blocking or favoring certain content.

AT&T said it made payments to Essential Consultants LLC, a company created by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, in 2017 for “insights” into the Administration at a time when the telecommunications giant needed government approval for an $85 billion takeover of Time Warner Inc. Cohen used Essential Consultants LLC in October 2016 to make a $130,000 payment to former adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, who had alleged she had a sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006. AT&T made four payments to Cohen’s firm totaling

House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Subcommittee on Communications and Technology Ranking Member Mike Doyle (D-PA) sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel requesting an investigation into all three Republican Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioners regarding their involvement with the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). 

Facebook spent more money lobbying the US government in the first quarter of 2018 than it ever has before, according to a new filing. The social media company forked over $3.3 million to steer lawmakers on privacy, security, online advertising and transparency efforts, among other issues.

With bipartisan agreement, members of Congress said that Silicon Valley needed to be reined in with new regulations. But time and again, when the most pressing issues have landed on Capitol Hill — like gun violence, school shootings, immigration and border control — Congress has declared five-alarm fires only to fail to follow through on major legislation. The current zest for new privacy laws is also likely to stall as lawmakers wrestle with the technical complexities and constitutional vexations sure to emerge with any legislation to control content on the internet. Beyond the typical pol

As Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before Congress, Facebook is quietly fighting a crucial privacy measure in the Illinois Statehouse. Starting April 11, state legislators will consider a new amendment to the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) that could neuter one of the strongest privacy laws in the US, giving Facebook free rein to run facial recognition scans without users’ consent.

Facebook's lobbying influence — along with Mark Zuckerberg’s expected mea culpa — may be enough, privacy experts say, to blunt any talk of significant consumer privacy regulations meant to reign in Facebook and other tech giants, regardless of the angry bluster Zuckerberg endures on Capitol Hill both April 10 and 11. “I think it will be really interesting whether Republicans give Facebook a pass given Zuckerberg’s prostrate apology stance — ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

In the early days, Silicon Valley and Washington largely ignored each other. But in 1998, the Justice Department accused Microsoft of building a software monopoly. A settlement was negotiated, and the tech companies got a lesson: They needed Washington lobbyists. Facebook opened its DC office when it was five years old — and already worth billions. It routinely hires lots of top-tier, veteran lobbyists, as does Google. The current lobbying environment is ideal. Many lawmakers still don't fully grasp the technology.

Alliances between Silicon Valley powerhouses and their cousins in Seattle (WA) are constantly forming and breaking apart, with big names often coming down on the opposite side of policy and legislative debates. The result is that the “tech lobby” is far from monolithic, with big names in the industry often at odds with one another.