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Juan Carlos Benitez Takes K Street By Storm
Submitted by Roy Temple on Mon, 01/16/2006 - 11:10am.
Some Background On Juan Carlos Benitez
Juan Carlos Benitez is a player on K Street. He's a Senior Vice President at Cassidy & Associates where he works alongside Rep. Roy Blunt's former Chief of Staff, Gregg Hartley, as key anchors of the GOP side of their lobbying shop.
In June of 2001, Benitez was appointed by President Bush to serve as a Special Counsel for Immigration matters in the Department of Justice. And according to the Justice Department press release announcing his appointment, he also served as the White House liaison for the Hispanic National Bar Association.
By 2004, after only 18 months on K
Street, Mr. Benitez was a Pioneer for the Bush Campaign, meaning that
he, along with others like super GOP-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, had raised
at least $100,000 for the Bush re-election effort.
In fact, Benitez's ties to the White House run so deep, that when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was being mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee, Roll Call reported that the White House was sending signals that Benitez would be the man tapped to oversee the confirmation process, a role filled by Sen. Fred Thompson for Chief Justice John Roberts.
So how did Mr. Benitez make his way to the heights of the K Street lobbying crowd?
Well, it all began with a single contract.
Meet Ramona Jones
In
February 2003, the Department of Interior, Office of Insular Affairs
announced that Ms. Ramona Jones was being named the Special Advisor for
Economic Policy for the Insular Areas.
According to David Cohen, the Deputy Assistant Secretary who made the announcement regarding Jones appointment, her main duty would be to "spearhead our economic development agenda" for the Insular areas.
The Insular Areas include the U.S. territories of Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as the so-called “freely associated states”: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.
According to the DOI press release, Ms. Jones grew up on Guam and the island of Tinian in the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands.
Before her appointment at DOI, she had previously worked in the White House assisting the Office of Homeland Security and other agencies in the National Security Portfolio.
According to the DOI press release:
She is the daughter of Guam businessman Ken Jones and the former Elaine Cruz, and is married to Juan Carlos Benitez.
Mr. Benitez First Client
Exactly two weeks to the day after Ramona Jones received an appointment by the Bush administration to serve as a special advisor for economic policy for the Insular areas, including Guam, Juan Carlos Benitez signed up his first client as a lobbyist.
According to reports in the Pacific Daily News,
the major daily newspaper in Guam, on March 12, 2003, the board of the
Guam Economic Development and Commerce Authority (GEDCA) approved the
hiring of a company owned by Mr. Benitez, the Washington Pacific
Economic Development Group (WPEDG), to lobby in Washington, DC on their
behalf. The price tag: $125,000 per month.
The WPEDG is a
Guam corporation founded by Juan Carlos Benitez and two accountants
from Guam. According to a report by KUAM-TV, Mr. Benitez controlled
4998 shares with the other two men owning one share each.
The contract with the GEDCA contemplated that Mr. Benitez would put together a lobbying team to advocate for Guam. The team included: Benitez; Mr. Roy Coffee, a partner at O'Connor and Hannan; David Distefano, a former chief of staff to Rep. Bob Ney; Leo Giacometto, a former chief of staff to Senator Conrad Burns, and Xavier Romero, a former economic development official in Puerto Rico.
The contract called for a fee of $125,000 per month. At the time the contract was signed, the GEDCA planned to encourage other agencies of the government of Guam to participate in funding the contract, which they anticipated would run for a full year at a cost of $1.5 million. However, the GEDCA limited their contribution under the contract to $375,000.
That an agreement existed to pay Benitez and his firm $125,000 a month to lobby for Guam is clear. Exactly what effort Mr. Benitez and his firm put in on behalf of Guam, and when, is less clear.
Conflicts Or Coincidence Of Interests? That's A Matter Of Perspective
According to the Pacific Daily News, at a
meeting in Guam on May 23, 2003, Mr. Benitez made a presentation in
which he claimed that his efforts had already yielded more than $60
million in federal funds for Guam.
However,
according to the lobbyist disclosure statement filed by Mr. Benitez,
the effective date of his lobbyist registration wasn't until May 19,
2003. But that's hardly the biggest inconsistency in this whole matter.
At the May 23rd meeting, Benitez took credit for the fact that a congressional committee planned to hold hearings on issues affecting Guam in the fall of 2003. Mr. Benitez also attempted to take credit for the fact that FEMA had agreed to reduce--from 25% to 10%--the government of Guam's share of the recovery costs from typhoon Pongsona.
Benitez claimed that he had arranged multiple meetings to impress upon FEMA representatives just how critical this reduction was to the future of Guam.
However, the report in the Pacific Daily News seems to call into question exactly what role, if any, Mr. Benitez played in FEMA's decition. Benitez was was not hired until March 12th, and by March 15th, GovGuam officials had been notified by FEMA that the match rate had been dropped to 10%.
Either Mr. Benitez worked very quickly, or he took
credit for something that had in all likelihood already been decided by
the time he was hired.
There are also serious questions regarding the conflict of interests posed by the arrangement between Guam officials and Mr. Benitez, given the position that his wife, Ramona Jones, held within the Department of Interior.
In her new position, Ms. Jones was specifically tasked with finding ways to improve the economic conditions on Guam. Mr. Benitez managed to secure a $125,000 a month contract to pursue a very similar end for the Economic Development agency of Guam.
In addition, from her position within DOI, Ms. Jones participated in and arranged meetings which sought to achieve results that Mr. Benitez then attempted to claim credit for with Guam officials.
For example, on April 24, 2003, the Office of Insular Affairs arranged a meeting between 10 federal agencies "to explore ways to work to help Guam and the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI) harden their infrastructure so that they w[ould] be better able to survive the next major typhoon." FEMA officials were key participants in the meeting.
At the meeting, the Deputy Assistant Secretary praised Ramona Jones during his discussion of the role played by various federal officials:
Congresswoman Bordallo and others from Guam, including [Special Advisor for Economic Policy] Ramona Jones, helped people in Washington to really understand how difficult the recovery effort has been for Guam and the CNMI.
The release also makes clear that Jones helped to arrange the meeting:
Other Office of Insular Affairs officials with ties to the Western Pacific helped to organize the meeting. In addition to Jones, Guam desk officer and former Guam resident Keith Parsky helped to organize the meeting, as did Julie Flores, a Guam native who is currently on assignment at the Office of Insular Affairs.
Mr. Benitez received a fee of $125,000 per month from the taxpayers of Guam, to arrange meetings that the taxpayers of the United States and Guam were already paying his wife to undertake.
Questions Regarding The Disclosure Of His Contract By Mr. Benitez
Despite the fact that Mr. Benitez's contract for lobbying was with the GEDCA, neither Mr. Benitez, nor any member of his team ever registered to lobby on their behalf.
Instead, the members of the Benitez team took varying approaches to their public disclosure requirements. See table below:
| Name | Effective Date | Registered On Behalf of | Fees Reported |
| David Distefano | 3/15/03 | Govt. of Guam | $30,000 |
| Roy Coffee | 3/15/03 | Govt. of Guam % WEPDG | $60,000 |
| Leo Giacometto | 7/1/03 | The Washington Pacific Group | $40,000 |
Juan Carlos Benitez | 5/19/03 | WPEDG | $80,000 |
| Total Fees Reported | $210,000 | ||
There are numerous aspects of this arrangement that are cause for question and confusion.
First, it is unclear why Mr. Benitez created the Guam corporation, the Washington Pacific Economic Development Group, and had his team register as lobbyists for that corporation, rather than for their actual client, the Guam Economic Development and Commerce Authority.
Mr. Benitez was not particularly reluctant to make his ties to the GEDCA known, at least not in Washington. When Mr. Benitez joined Cassidy & Associates in June 2003, the firm's press release mentioned, not once, but twice, that he was bringing the GEDCA as a client.
But as the table above makes clear, the registration and lobbying was done in the name of the Washington Pacific Economic Development Group, not the GEDCA.
Fired Up! continues to investigate this question to determine if the appropriate lobbying laws were followed, and to determine if there were other incentives for arranging the transaction in this manner.
According to press reports from Guam, the contract ended after three months when no other government agencies on Guam were willing to fund a part of the contract. Those reports repeatedly indicate that $375,000 was paid to the group headed by Benitez.
However, as the table above indicates, the lobbying team headed by Mr. Benitez only reported fees of $210,000.
There are several possible reasons for this discrepancy. A portion of the fees could have been, and likely were paid to Mr. Romero, who indicated that he never had any intention of lobbying. However, given the fees paid to others in the group, it appears unlikely that his share would have been $165,000.
It is possible that there was another member of the team whose identity was not made publicly known.
By the spring of 2003, there had already been a great deal of controversy within Guam's political circles over contracts that Jack Abramoff had received to lobby on behalf of the Superior Court of Guam.
Similar to the Benitez Group, Mr. Abramoff never registered on behalf of his actual client, instead registering on behalf of an intermediary, Howard Hills, a Los Angeles attorney.
Ties between Mr. Benitez and Mr. Abramoff will be explored in greater detail in an upcoming piece. For example, in the late 90's, though for different clients, both lobbied for passage of S. 472 and the H.R. 856, the Puerto Rico Political Status Act.
Exactly who received the missing $165,000, and why it was not disclosed by the lobbying team publicly identified by Mr. Benitez, remains a mystery, but one we hope to shed some light on.
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