Florida Senator Rick Scott positions himself as an ethical guardian against the hired legal representation of Venezuelan chavista thugs in the United States. His objections began with a public letter to Foley & Lardner, where he stated: “I was recently made aware that your firm was hired by Inspector General Reinaldo Muñoz, the chief lawyer for the brutal regime of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. This is shocking news given the absolute genocide that Maduro is inflicting on his citizens. He is a thug and a dictator who is murdering children and starving his people. No business in the United States should have any contact with Maduro’s government, much less willingly take money to lobby on his behalf.” While Senator Scott is right about some points, his loud and very public claims appear, at least to this observer, utterly hypocritical.
Indeed, Maduro is a thug and leads a regime that can only be described as brutal. He is completely indifferent to the plight of Venezuelan citizens and wouldn’t lose any sleep if everyone outside the nepotistic circle he and Cilia have built around them perished right now. In that regard, Senator Scott is correct.
Two days ago, Senator Scott launched another attack, this time directed at Attorney General William Barr and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. His new target is the firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP. In this instance, Senator Scott remarked: “I asked Foley & Lardner to stop working for Maduro, and they heeded that call earlier this February. I was recently alarmed to learn that the firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP has taken on the shameful mantle of lobbying for Maduro’s dictatorship. Amsterdam has even publicly stated that it would not submit a FARA registration statement, a mandatory disclosure whenever foreign agents are hired to engage in specified political activities under the statute.”
Amsterdam quickly turned this into an opportunity, having the other half of Amsterdam & Partners (Andrew Durkovic) fire back with a “counter-letter” addressed to the International Commission of Jurists, praising their “pro bono work,” emphasizing their “focus on human rights,” how they spoke against Putin, and their “multiple” visits to El Helicoide in Caracas.
Foley & Lardner can afford to drop Maduro. However, for Amsterdam, Maduro could likely be their biggest source of income in the coming years.
This is, evidently, a battle of hypocrites. On one side, we have a Senator who has said nothing about Rudy Giuliani, the unregistered lobbyist for Alejandro Betancourt (undoubtedly one of Venezuela’s major thugs), an associate of Nicolás Maduro, and currently under criminal investigation in two multimillion-dollar cases, just in Florida. In fact, Giuliani met with AG Barr to lobby on behalf of Betancourt. This did not provoke an indignant letter from Scott, nor did Betancourt’s retention of Jon Sale. We are still waiting for a letter from Senator Scott to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin warning about Giuliani’s alleged Treasury lobbying, again on behalf of Betancourt, according to sources, to lift the ban on trading bonds issued by Venezuela.
We never saw letters from Scott when David Boies was acting in that farcical lawsuit on behalf of Reinaldo Muñoz Pedroza. We never heard the Senator denouncing from his moral pulpit the involvement of the very “prosecutor” of Juan Guaidó, serving as legal expert for Helsinge, Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Lukoil, and others, whose actions can only be described as utterly corrupt and detrimental to Venezuela. We didn’t hear Florida’s Senator criticizing the many corrupt thugs from Venezuela who launder large sums of money in his state.
As for Amsterdam, well… I met the man many years ago in a Starbucks in St John’s Wood. He didn’t strike me as a beacon of integrity and morality, nor particularly intelligent. More of a swindler, as his resume suggests. That quixotic nonsense about pro bono work and confronting Putin, while in the service of Erdogan and Maduro, only a galloping megalomaniac mind, opportunistic and completely deluded, can fail to recognize how irreconcilable it is to boast about human rights defense credentials while being sustained by regimes whose systematic and chronic human rights violations are known worldwide.
Unfortunately, this is what Venezuelans have to deal with today. Those who support the cause of freedom in our country are just as skilled at turning a blind eye when it comes to their network as those who continue supporting those plundering our nation. The only consistent factor across the board is this: money talks, and bullshit walks.