Stephen Payne (lobbyist) - Controversy

Controversy

In July 2008 Payne was secretly videotaped discussing a $750,000 lobbying contract and offering access to senior U.S. officials (including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Joe Biden) to the exiled Kazakhstani politician Yerzhan Dosmukhamedov (known as Eric Dos for short), and suggesting a $250,000 donation to the future George W. Bush Presidential Library.

In the conversation, which was secretly taped by The Sunday Times at a meeting in the restaurant of The Lanesborough hotel in London, Dosmukhamedov claimed that the former Kyrgyz president Askar Akayev wished to rehabilitate his image and meet with the U.S. officials. Payne has claimed that he did nothing wrong, and stated that he was there to recruit a new legitimate lobbying client and that it was Dos who first raised the issue of a donation in his initial e-mail to Payne. The Sunday Times has released only 4 minutes and 31 seconds of the hour-long meeting and Payne claims that the unreleased portion of the video would show that he was at the meeting to solicit a lobbying client and that the release of the entire tape would dispel The Sunday Times version of the video where Payne claims his comments were edited and taken out of context. Payne was asked to resign from the Homeland Security Advisory Committees directly following the July 13, 2008 publication of the article. U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, on behalf of the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a letter to Payne one day later, on July 14, 2008, requesting further details and background about this incident, and asked Payne to respond to his letter within ten days. Payne responded to the committee within ten days and Congress adjourned two months later without any further action from the House Committee.