BUSTED: Anti-Trump Consultant Liz Mair Paid $15K A Month By Dictator (WITH UPDATE)November 24, 2015 by Charles C. Johnson 44 Comments
 Liz Mair with friend and disgraced “Journolist” David Weigel
Mair responds below…
Failed political consultant Liz Mair is crowd funding a political attack on billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump and she’s getting noticed.
But Mair’s past work as a paid shill of a Muslim dictatorship that jails journalists and activists should make us wonder about her motives, especially as the Middle East once more descends into chaos.
Mair was paid $15,000 a month by Ilham Aliyev, the dictator of Azerbaijan, according to documents filed in accordance with the Foreign Registration Act (FARA).
It is unclear if the payments to Mair have stopped.
Here’s that document.
Here’s part of the letter that shows Mair receiving $15,000 a month from a dictatorship that jails journalists.
Why is Mair in bed with the Azeri dictatorship?
Liz Mair, shilling for Azerbaijan a few months ago, has ties to three GOP candidates: http://t.co/2rlU0a9DW0 pic.twitter.com/rzb4706sKK
— Casey Michel (@cjcmichel) August 6, 2015
As revealed first by Matthew Boyle of Breitbart News Mair, who is a dual citizen with Britain, is pro-amnesty and she has a track record of making lots of money and losing lots of elections.
Mair worked for Carly Fiorina’s failed U.S. Senate campaign in 2010, for Tim Pawlenty’s failed presidential campaign in 2012, and for Scott Walker’s failed 2016 presidential bid.
Like Cesar Conda — who now works for Marco Rubio — Mair gets her clients after they are already elected to push pro-immigration policies which ultimate wind up being their undoing. Conda was chief of staff for Senator Spencer Abraham from Michigan – Harvard Law, Federalist Society founder, Christian lebanese — but Conda pushed Abraham to support more immigration (to everyone’s surprise) — especially Arab-friendly immigration policies! Abraham got a lot of press in the WSJ editorial page — and was wiped out the very next election. Abraham had been elected to the Senate for the first time, along with 7 other GOPs, in the 1994 republican sweep of Congress. Every other freshman Republican held his seat in the next election except John Ashcroft (his opponent died and a sympathy vote went to his opponent’s wife).
Conda and Mair repeat the same strategy. The business community–which funds campaigns–wants cheap labor. They write big checks. And they want amnesty.
Could foreigners be among the donors to Mair’s organization? It’s hard to tell. Mair ignored requests for comment.
Setting up an LLC makes it impossible to find Mair’s donors, something she likes. “It”s loosely organized and highly confidential,” Mair said to the Wall Street Journal. “I certainly know donors who are very happy that their fingerprints will be kept off things.” Here‘s the relevant quote from the Journal:
As a limited liability company, Trump Card LLC wouldn’t have to disclose its donors to the Federal Election Commission. Viveca Novak, communications director for the Center for Responsive Politics, said she was aware of no restrictions on the kinds of political activities that could be funded through an LLC. “Anyone can set one up,” she said. “You don’t know who is behind it.”
To be sure Mair is well networked, especially among the socially liberal subset of GOP twitteratti, and it’s oftentimes hard to tell what’s real with her and what’s smoke and mirrors.
And yet Trump should not worry much about Mair. She’s frankly not very good at getting Republicans elected. And she trashes them once they lose.
If she really wanted to hurt Trump maybe she should go work for him.
Mair responds at 2:51 PM:
Hey, sorry Charles– I’m not using Facebook much these days (I find it becomes a huge time suck, as does Twitter, though somehow that seems more manageable). I appreciate your emailing.
If you search FARA, you’ll find our termination of registration and (I believe– at least you should) the letter confirming when the contract ended. I want to say it was something like early January 2015 (so no, the work is not ongoing, it was a very short contract). Frankly, we have tried since that contract ended to avoid doing any work for foreign governments, for a variety of reasons including that I prefer to spend my time doing things other than filling out forms.
Also, I never worked for Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign, though I did work for Perry’s in 2012. I did advise Pawlenty at one point, but stepped back from involvement in the presidential campaign.
I also do not advocate for policy to former clients who are elected officials– that would entail lobbying, and I don’t do lobbying (just communications and non-lobbying advocacy). Though obviously, I make my views on an array of policies pretty well known, including on Twitter, so I suppose if former clients or their current advisers are following me there, they would be aware of the positions I take on various issues (for example, Sen. Paul’s staff undoubtedly know that I have high praise for the fiscal policies he has outlined as part of his presidential campaign).
I also have zero intention of taking foreign contributions into the anti-Trump effort, so please rest assured on that front.
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