In a new piece for Time, George Clooney and human rights activist John Prendergast have exposed the Sudan regime and the American lobby firm that is helping them.
In the op-ed, the two write about Squire Patton Boggs, the firm that, alongside K Street law, signed a contract with the Sudanese government.
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In the deal, the firm is aiming to remove U.S. sanctions from the Sudan regime. According to Clooney and Prendergast, the firm will be “earning $40,000 a month from a government that’s on the U.S. state sponsors of terror list, with a head of state, Omar al-Bashir, wanted for genocide by the International Criminal Court.”
“Over the last four administrations, Congress has led bipartisan U.S. efforts to isolate the Sudan regime. So it’s surprising that Squire Patton Boggs, a firm that includes in its senior ranks former House Speaker John Boehner and former senators Trent Lott and John Breaux, has taken on this account,” Clooney and Prendergast write.
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“Given the exemplary service these men have performed for our country, it must mean that they simply don’t know. Either they don’t know that their firm is taking $40,000 a month from the government of Sudan, or they don’t know what this regime has done,” they explain.
This is important because, on July 12, Donald Trump’s administration will decide to lift the U.S. sanctions or not that Barack Obama’s administration had paused in January.
Clooney and Prendergast end the piece by suggesting that because Squire Patton Boggs is such a big firm, it’s possible they’re unaware of the deal. “The question of their firm working in the service of such a brutal and vile regime can only be answered by the simplest of terms. Probably, they just don’t know,” they write. “But they do now.”
