Welcome to Pay Dirt—exclusive reporting and research from The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay on corruption, campaign finance, and influence-peddling in the nation’s capital. For Beast Inside members only.
A former senior House staffer convicted of federal tax crimes and failing to report those crimes in security-clearance paperwork has started a new lobbying firm.
Isaac Lanier Avant, the former chief of staff for Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), registered late last month to lobby on behalf of the political arm of the Seafarers International Union, which steered substantial funding to Thompson’s re-election campaign last cycle.