CT Mirror Op-ed: Egyptian Dictator’s Lobbyist Defends Secrecy in Collapsed Dalio and State Partnership.

Toby Moffett. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s lobbyist is not happy that ordinary standards of transparency caused Dalio Philanthropies to withdraw from a publicly and privately financed initiative. Moffett wrote an opinion piece that appears in CTMirror.org blaming Republicans for wrecking the projected $300 million project by seeking standard accountability in the spending of public funds. Moffett makes no mention of what appears to be the shabby treatment of the education organization’s accomplished executive director.

Those with long memories may recall Democrat Moffett was elected to Congress from Connecticut’s Sixth Congressional district in 1974. Moffett was part of the post-Watergate reforming class. That was the Congress that championed, among other issues, open government legislation.

Moffett declined to challenge fellow congressman Christopher Dodd for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination for the seat of retiring incumbent Abraham Ribicoff in 1980. Instead, Moffett took on Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. of Greenwich, in 1982. Weicker defeated Moffett by nearly 50,000 votes, with the Democrat running far behind other statewide Democratic candidates.

Moffett’s agony in defeat became a long running story in Connecticut’s sympathetic media. In 1986, Moffett challenged often underestimated incumbent William O’Neill for the Democratic nomination for governor. Moffett failed to garner enough state convention delegate votes to qualify for a primary. Four years later, Moffett suffered a crushing defeat when he attempted another resurrection, this time in the open Fifth Congressional District seat. Waterbury Republican Gary Franks beat Moffett and became the first African-American Republican to win a seat in the House in nearly 60 years.

Between comeback bids, the Nora Desmond of Connecticut politics did a stint as a local television news anchor and reporter. He went on to lobby for chemical manufacturing giant Monsanto.

From 2007 until 2012, Moffett lobbied on behalf of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. Moffett formed a lobbying company with Democrat John Podesta and right wing former Republican U.S. Representative Robert Livingston to represent the Egyptian tyrant. The Arab Spring in 2011 brought the overthrow of Mubarak, who with his family looted as much as $70 billion from the Egyptian people. Amnesty International condemned Mubarak’s government for its legacy of “mass torture and arbitrary detention.”

A 2012 New York Times story reported the the end of the lucrative lobbying deal:

Lobbyists for the Egyptian government in Washington have ended their contracts with the country because of growing tensions after a raid by Egyptian authorities on several American nonprofit organizations.

The Egyptian government has refused to let employees of the organizations leave the country. The detained workers include Sam LaHood, son of Ray LaHood, who is the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation.

The lobbying firms include the Livingston Group, run by former Representative Robert L. Livingston, Republican of Louisiana; the Moffett Group, run by former Representative Toby Moffett, Democrat of Connecticut; and the Podesta Group, owned by Tony Podesta, one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. Mr. Podesta has close ties to the Obama administration. 

The firms were widely criticized for distributing talking points defending the Egyptian government’s raid. They shared a lobbying contract worth more $1.1 million a year to represent Egypt’s interests in Washington, according to documents filed with the Department of Justice.

Defending the raid of American nonprofit groups that monitored elections and government transparency in Egypt. That’s the Toby Moffett mocking calls for transparency in spending $100 million in taxpayer funds and ignoring the account of a woman who was hired to run the project and mysteriously suspended. This isn’t Mubarak’s Cairo. It’s Connecticut. His talking points will do him no good. We do things differently here.