As Qatar Mediates the World’s Disputes, Its U.S. Lobbying Sows Legal Problems

In recent years, Qatar has ramped up its lobbying operations in the U.S., a key military ally and commercial partner, to better position itself in relation to its bigger neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan alleged this month that Qatari officials gave a relative of New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez tickets to the Formula One Grand Prix in Miami the past two years and invested tens of millions of dollars in a real-estate venture of a friend of Menendez’s. As chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez was in a position to promote Qatar’s interests, and prosecutors say he did so. The Qatari officials aren’t accused of wrongdoing, and Menendez, who was already charged with being an illegal agent of Egypt, has denied the allegations against him.

In a separate case, a Republican lobbyist and onetime unpaid campaign adviser to former President Donald Trump admitted to illegally failing to register an advocacy group he set up on Qatar’s behalf to tarnish Saudi Arabia. The Gulf kingdom, along with the U.A.E., had cited Qatar’s alleged support for Iran and its proxies in the region, including U.S.-designated terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, as grounds for imposing a full-scale blockade on Qatar from 2017 to early 2021. The lobbyist, Barry Bennett, agreed to settle charges with prosecutors.

Documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show that in a third instance, Qatari lobbyists worked to kill U.S. legislation that would hurt its interests by secretly tainting the bill as a product of its rivals’ “unsavory lobbying." Those efforts led to a thicket of civil litigation still under way.

“Part of foreign-influence operations is to expose the foreign-influence operations of other countries," said Ben Freeman, a director at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank. “In the last few years, especially, everyone is using the same playbook of exposing the dirty deeds of your rivals."

Qatari officials have said their lobbying efforts were necessary to counter those of the country’s regional antagonists. Qatar’s embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment on the new cases.

The new details have emerged as Qatar has taken on a high-profile role as mediator in some of the world’s most challenging conflicts, including Afghanistan and Gaza. It has helped to negotiate the return of Ukrainian children from Russia and of Americans detained in Venezuela.

The emirate has long walked a tightrope between the U.S. and its adversaries. It hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East as well as Hamas’s political leadership and, for years, that of the Taliban. It has purchased billions of dollars in arms from the U.S. and Europe, while also providing hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid for Gaza, in coordination with Israel and the U.S.

The Gulf state has acted like many others by pouring money into a range of campaigns in Washington to further its national interests. “If they have any issue, it’s that they have a hard time saying no," said Jim Moran, a former Democratic representative who has lobbied for Qatar since 2017.

Prosecutors say some of those lobbying activities weren’t properly disclosed. Bennett, the Republican lobbyist, admitted in an agreement with prosecutors filed last week that he had secretly run an advocacy group on behalf of Qatar in 2017 called Yemen Crisis Watch, designed to tarnish Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., which at the time were enmeshed in a military campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen. That war left thousands dead and fueled what the United Nations described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Journal reported in 2021 that Yemen Crisis Watch’s activities had come under scrutiny by prosecutors.

Bennett was charged with violating a law requiring lobbyists for foreign governments to register all of their work, but prosecutors said they would defer the charges for 18 months and drop them if he acknowledged wrongdoing, paid a fine and abided by the other terms of the deal.

Neither Bennett nor a lawyer for him responded to requests for comment.

In 2017, as the blockade took effect, Qatar embarked on a $200 million lobbying campaign to influence Trump by winning over his friends and associates with trips to Doha. One aim of that effort was to kill legislation that would impose sanctions on Hamas’s supporters, according to emails reviewed by the Journal. As a host for Hamas’s political leadership, Qatar was singled out for punishment in the bill.

“This is top priority and should be the sole matter everyone is working on for the next two days," a Qatari official told a team of lobbyists in November 2017, as the bill moved through Congress.

The lobbyists planned to discredit the bill’s supporters in Washington, namely those aligned with Qatar’s rival, the U.A.E.

“If we can taint that bill as being the product of unsavory lobbying, we can stop it in the House," one lobbyist, Nick Muzin, wrote to another. If they could link the bill to Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, whose security business was developing contracts with the U.A.E., they might have some success, he wrote. Broidy had sponsored conferences in Washington examining whether Qatar was supporting terrorists. A representative for Broidy didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The lobbying feud became intensely personal and lasted for years. Hackers obtained access to Broidy’s emails and anonymously distributed them to reporters. Broidy accused Qatar’s agents of orchestrating the hack, which they have denied.

The bill ultimately didn’t advance.

More recently, as Qatar in 2021 was helping the U.S. evacuate its troops and local supporters from Afghanistan, its officials turned to Menendez, who prosecutors allege did favors for them.

According to the most recent indictment, the then-chair of the Senate foreign relations panel introduced his friend Fred Daibes to a member of the Qatari royal family who ran an investment company tied to the Qatari government. Daibes was looking for investors for a real-estate project and was giving gold bars, cash and other bribes to Menendez and his wife for a range of favors, prosecutors have alleged.

Two months later, Menendez shared with Daibes a draft of a press release in which Menendez said allies in Qatar were serving as “moral exemplars." That nod from a powerful American lawmaker for accepting U.S.-bound Afghan refugees was a boon for the Gulf state.

“You might want to send to them. I am just about to release," Menendez texted Daibes.

In January 2022, before Daibes was to meet with the Qatari investor in London, Menendez texted both men, according to the indictment. “Greetings. I understand my friend is going to visit with you on the 15th of the month," he wrote. “I hope that this will result in the favorable and mutually beneficial agreement that you have been both engaged in discussing."

A lawyer for Menendez said the lawmaker acted appropriately, dismissing the allegations as a “string of baseless assumptions and bizarre conjectures." A lawyer for Daibes declined to comment.

—Stephen Kalin contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at aruna.viswanatha@wsj.com and Julie Bykowicz at julie.bykowicz@wsj.com