The lobbyists hired by Paul Manafort launched a lobbying blitz barely a week after the Senate began weighing a resolution to publicly condemn the man who was effectively their client, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, for throwing a political opponent in jail.
A lobbyist for one prominent Washington firm, the Podesta Group, emailed the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) shortly after he introduced a resolution condemning Yanukovych in May 2012, and a lobbyist for another firm, Mercury, met with one of his aides the next month. They fought for months to kill the resolution — or at least delay it until Ukraine held parliamentary elections that fall.
