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.
The Hungarian government has hired a public-relations firm to help improve its relations with segments of the American Jewish community. But the firm it’s chosen seems to have a, well, problematic understanding of the proper language to use.
The contract calls for a firm that specializes in Jewish community outreach to make inroads on the government’s behalf with what it calls “New York-based influence groups.”
That line was tucked away in a Justice Department filing last week by the firm Triconsultants, which is assisting the legal and lobbying powerhouse Greenberg Traurig in its work for the Hungarian embassy in Washington.
Greenberg inked that deal a few weeks before Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s swing through D.C. this month.
Orban and his government have faced international criticism for the prime minister’s thinly veiled comments about Jewish political opponents, most notably the Hungarian-born financier George Soros. In one particularly colorful 2018 speech, Orban said he was “fighting an enemy that is different from us. Not open, but hiding; not straightforward but crafty; not honest but base; not national but international; does not believe in working but speculates with money; does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world.”
Greenberg’s contract with Hungary’s U.S. embassy, which was signed in late April, calls for the firm to lobby Congress on issues affecting the government. It’s also tasked “with outreach to selected civilian thought leaders”—a term it leaves vague.
Who those thought leaders are came into focus this week, when the Triconsultants subcontract popped up on the Justice Department’s website. That agreement also included some vague language, saying Triconsultants will “assist GT in providing strategic counsel and strengthening bilateral relations between Hungary and the United States, including New York-based influence groups.”
Who are those “New York-based influence groups”? A clue lies in the expertise of Triconsultants’ sole employee, Liz Alberti, whose LinkedIn page describes her as a “liaison to the Jewish Community.”
Alberti has an “established relationship with pro-Israel political leaders, Jewish philanthropists, business interfaith leaders international influencers,” the page states. It adds that she has a “strong understanding of the role of the American Jewish community as a political constituency with leading members of the U.S. Congress and Senate” and “experience in grassroots advocacy, organized and lead missions with leading philanthropists and Jewish leaders.”
Hungary’s prior D.C. lobbying firm, the SLI Group, also sought to tamp down criticism of Orban as an anti-Semite, even as SLI’s principal, former Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL), routinely issued public communications on his client’s behalf that went after Soros by name.
The Hungarian government no longer employs Mack’s firm. But Alberti’s work appears to be an effort to further insulate Orban from charges of anti-Semitism by conducting outreach on Hungary’s behalf with Jewish community leaders.
Alberti’s LinkedIn page says she previously worked with the Jewish community on behalf of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, whose government was the second to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem after the U.S. did so last year.
Alberti also describes herself as a Jewish community liaison for Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). His campaign has reported paying Triconsultants more than $57,000. Every one of those payments has been itemized as “fundraising.”
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