The Egyptian government has wasted no time preparing for the post-Donald Trump era, assembling a bipartisan powerhouse lobbying team that includes retired congressman Ed Royce and a former top aide to House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Motaz Zahran, signed the $65,000-a-month contract with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck on Monday Nov. 9, the first weekday after Joe Biden delivered his victory speech on Saturday. Signing for the Denver-based law firm is policy director Royce, a California Republican who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2013 through 2018.
Nadeam Elshami, the former chief of staff to Pelosi and a 25-year veteran of Capitol Hill, is expected to supervise work on the account along with Royce. Elshami was born in the United States but spent his early childhood in Egypt.
Two of the firm’s partners, veteran Republican lobbyist Marc Lampkin, who manages the firm’s Washington, D.C. office, and leading Democratic fundraiser Alfred Mottur, are also registered on the account. They are joined by policy director Douglas Maguire.
The firm will “provide government relations services and strategic counsel on matters before the US Government,” according to its filing with the US Department of Justice. The contract is for an initial term of one year and will be re-evaluated after that.
The contract comes as Cairo is dreading a return to power of some of the same US players that they blame for the Arab Spring uprising and the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
“They’re clearly worried,” said Michele Dunne, the director of the Middle East program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and co-chair of the bipartisan Working Group on Egypt. “When it became clear that Biden would be named the winner, [President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi] sent his congratulations and now you see all of these former foreign ministers and major figures being called out onto the talk shows to reassure government supporters in Egypt that everything’s going to be fine with Biden.”