By Caitlin Oprysko

PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off this Monday for Indigenous Peoples Day but will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.

With Daniel Lippman

WHAT BROWNSTEIN DID FOR PIF: Within hours of an announcement that the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was seeking testimony from the PGA Tour, LIV Golf and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund over the organizations’ bombshell agreement to join forces, the Saudi Public Investment Fund’s newest lobbyists at Brownstein Hyatt Farber & Schreck were already springing into action to help PIF defend the deal with its one-time nemesis, according to documents filed with the Justice Department over the weekend.

— The DOJ filings shed new light on some of the key targets of PIF’s lobbying frenzy, prior to the fund’s U.S. subsidiary being hit with a subpoena last month. The blitz involved a team of former senators-turned-lobbyists and dialed-in K Street operatives fanning out across Washington to try and fend off scrutiny and sell the agreement to policymakers. Brownstein reported more than 100 contacts with Government officials on PIF’s behalf in a little over two months, according to the filings, which cover the six-month period ending on Aug. 31.

— The operation churned to life quickly. On June 21, the day the Senate PSI hearing was announced, Republican lobbyist Marc Lampkin emailed the deputy chief of staff to PSI ranking member Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) “to determine if the Senator was planning to attend the PSI hearing re: the LIV-PGA merger and to speak to the Senator directly regarding this matter,” per the filings.

— Lampkin later spoke by phone to Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) chief of staff and in the days leading up to the hearing reached out to aides for fellow subcommittee members Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and the subcommittee’s GOP staff director about plans for the hearing.

— Inquiries included “whether there were concerns from Republicans on the upcoming hearing” and what Hawley might ask at the hearing, at which only PGA Tour executives ultimately testified. (Hawley’s questioning at the hearing focused largely on the PGA’s past lobbying against the PIF-financed LIV, as well as a since-ended PGA Tour venture in China.)

— Meanwhile, the filings show, Democratic lobbyists at Brownstein worked the other side of the aisle. Former Sen. Mark Pryor met with PSI Chair Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) two days after the hearing was announced, and that weekend, Al Mottur discussed the hearing with PSI member Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

— Mottur remained in contact with aides to Carper and Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who also sits on the panel, while he and Andrew Usyk held Zoom calls with staff for Sens. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and Alex Padilla (D-Calif.). Shortly after the hearing with PGA executives, former Sen. Mark Begich debriefed in a meeting with Blumenthal.

— At the same time, Brownstein lobbyists were in contact with other areas of the Hill, gathering intel on the House Judiciary Committee’s agenda regarding competition issues and discussing Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden’s (D-Ore.) probe of the LIV-PGA deal and his bills targeting special tax treatments enjoyed by the PGA Tour and sovereign wealth funds. At one point, Lampkin offered to set up a meeting between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the head of PIF.

— PIF’s lobbyists mobilized again in August as tensions between Blumenthal and PIF escalated over the fund’s continued stonewalling of Blumenthal’s widening probe, according to DOJ filings. The back-and-forth prompted texts to Blumenthal himself from Begich and Mottur, while the firm’s other lobbyists reached out to staffers for other members of the subcommittee.

— Pryor, meanwhile, was texting former colleagues about Wyden’s bills, including Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), both of whom sit on the Finance and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, PSI and Finance Committee member Carper, and Finance member Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).

— Brownstein’s efforts on behalf of PIF also extended to the Biden administration, the filings show. At the end of August, former State Department official Samantha Carl-Yoder emailed NSC staffers Brett McGurk and Hilda Esquivel a copy of an unspecified letter from PIF.

— The outreach came two days after PIF’s attorneys responded to Blumenthal’s subpoena threats by claiming that “an unprecedented effort” by Blumenthal to compel testimony from the head of the fund “would not only disrupt the delicate balance of foreign relations and international diplomacy, but would also compromise the prerogatives of the Executive Branch.”

TGIF and welcome to PI. What else is going on out there? Drop me a line: [email protected]. And be sure to follow me on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: @caitlinoprysko.

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FIRST IN PI — MEHLMAN ADDS A BIPARTISAN PAIR: Mehlman Consulting has lured a pair of top staffers away from the Hill, including one aide to House Speaker hopeful Steve Scalise (R-La.). Alye Mlinar has worked for Scalise since 2021, advising the House majority leader on health care, tax, trade and Social Security issues. Prior to that, she was a staffer on the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and a health policy analyst for the Senate Republican Policy Committee.

— The firm has also hired Erica Chabot, whose two decade career on the Hill was spent mostly with recently retired Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who separately chaired both the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Appropriations Committee. For the past two years, Chabot has been the majority staff director for Democrats on the Senate Agriculture Committee as work ramped up on this year’s farm bill.

— In an interview, Chabot said that she was drawn to Mehlman’s culture of bipartisanship. “Bipartisanship is just one of those things that it's hard to come by on the Hill these days,” she told PI, “and it's sort of the way in which I cut my teeth, if you will, during my 20 years in the Senate, so I just — their bipartisan approach to meeting their clients’ needs and addressing [the] goals and initiatives of their clients … is just something that was of great interest and appeal to me.”

THE AWKWARD RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEMS AND GIG COMPANIES: “Ride-booking companies have long found friends in a sprawling family tree of former Democratic leaders and aides despite frequent labor clashes with the companies, a fact thrust into the headlights this week with the appointment of Sen. Laphonza Butler,” POLITICO’s Olivia Olander reports.

— “The Californian's previous ties to Uber triggered a double take from some on the left, given the otherwise shining lines for them on her résumé: veteran labor leader, Democratic stalwart and head of an organization to elect women supporting abortion rights.”

— “But she's far from alone. From some of the most prolific campaigners of the Obama years to former Hill staffers, plenty of Democrats have found work backing the gig economy, creating tension within the party for some labor advocates who have confronted the tech giants’ employment practices.”

HOSPITALS ON THE ROPES: “The next three months will test the influence hospitals still wield in Congress as lawmakers propose and advance policies the industry has spent millions of dollars in advertising and advocacy to oppose,” our Megan Wilson writes.

— “Hospitals, up against both health industry opponents and patient groups, have stopped the toughest measures from being introduced or moved through committee. But momentum is still building for proposals that would be a multibillion-dollar hit to their bottom lines and could be included in an end-of-the-year package.”

— “Hospital lobbyists have spent countless hours in the halls of the Capitol and industry associations have blasted the airwaves with advertisements since lawmakers began discussing payment reforms earlier this year.”

— “Despite those efforts, committees in the House and Senate have approved legislation containing various bipartisan payment and transparency measures — and hospitals face a pivotal 90 days to persuade lawmakers to scrap them. ‘This is the biggest threat we've seen in a while. It does feel like it's open season on hospitals,’ said Jon Cooper, senior vice president of government affairs for the Greater New York Hospital Association.”

ICYMI THURSDAY — NGP VAN ON THE BRINK?: “A company at the center of the Democratic Party’s digital strategy is on the verge of a meltdown — sparking alarm among a broad constellation of liberal groups that are relying on it ahead of 2024,” per our Brittany Gibson and Madison Hernandez.

— “NGP VAN provides tools used by Democrats, from the White House to local school boards, to raise money and mobilize voters. But with new management in recent years, it has been stripping its operations to the bare bones.”

— “The potential decline of these tools — which have given Democrats a significant technology edge over Republicans over the past few cycles — would be so threatening to operations that a handful of top Democratic digital firms recently called a roughly hourlong Zoom meeting with leadership of the company to seek answers.”

— “Among their demands: reassurance that NGP VAN wouldn’t dismantle one of its top products, an online organizing and fundraising tool called ActionKit. Without it, Democrats worried about their prospects during the 2024 cycle and beyond. … The alarm relayed on the call reflected a larger concern: that the Democratic Party has grown too dependent on a small handful of companies to carry the bulk of its campaign operations.”

— L’Allegro Smith and Glenda Windsor joined Public Knowledge as government affairs policy advocate and office manager, respectively, per Morning Tech.

— John Martens is now a partner at Federal Science Partners. He most recently was senior adviser for the House Appropriations Committee.

— Michael Stroud is now a partner in Ice Miller’s public affairs group. He most recently was vice president for government affairs and general counsel at the International Liquid Terminals Association.

— Mike Daniels is now head of government relations at WK Kellogg Co., following its separation from Kellogg Company. He was previously senior director of federal government relations at Kellogg Company.

— The CEO of patient group American Kidney Fund, LaVarne Burton, will be the next chair of the Kidney Care Partners.

Delaware Equality Project (Equality PAC, McBride for Delaware Inc)

Hassan Hickenlooper Victory Fund (Sens. Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper)

New York Senate Victory 2024 (DSCC, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand)

American Clown Car PAC (Hybrid PAC)

535 Group, LLC: Msps For The Protection Of Critical Infrastructure (The Collective)

Cornerstone Government Affairs, Inc.: Wiscoseoul, LLC Dba Coso Health

Ernst & Young LLP (Washington Council Ernst & Young): Ecolab Inc.

Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman, P.C.: Decatur County Memorial Hospital

K&L Gates, LLP: Korea International Trade Association

Troutman Pepper Strategies (Fka Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group, LLC): Mural Health

Williams And Jensen, Pllc: Ipi Action Fund

Alcalde & Fay: Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Chesapeake Enterprises: American Innovation: The Ai Project

Doubleday Government Relations: City Of Burien

Invariant LLC: Waev Inc.

Mr.Richard Hirn: National Weather Service Employees Organization

Patriot Strategies, LLC: City Of Laredo, Texas

Patriot Strategies, LLC: City Of Pharr, Texas

Patriot Strategies, LLC: Matagorda County Economic Development Corporation

Patriot Strategies, LLC: Sustainable H2O Technologies

Public Square: American Council Of Education

Schramm, Williams & Associates, Inc.: San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors Water Authority

Whitmer & Worrall, LLC: Blacklidge Asphalt Supply

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