Ron Nixon | Jan 29

NYT - Lobbyists for the Egyptian government in Washington have ended their contracts with the country because of growing tensions after a raid by Egyptian authorities on several American nonprofit organizations.

The Egyptian government has refused to let employees of the organizations leave the country. The detained workers include Sam LaHood, son of Ray LaHood, who is the Obama administration’s secretary of transportation.

The lobbying firms include the Livingston Group, run by former Representative Robert L. Livingston, Republican of Louisiana; the Moffett Group, run by former Representative Toby Moffett, Democrat of Connecticut; and the Podesta Group, owned by Tony Podesta, one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington. Mr. Podesta has close ties to the Obama administration.

The firms were widely criticized for distributing talking points defending the Egyptian government’s raid. They shared a lobbying contract worth more $1.1 million a year to represent Egypt’s interests in Washington, according to documents filed with the Department of Justice.

Mr. Livingston confirmed in an e-mail to Politico that the three firms had dropped Egypt as a client; Politico reported the ending of the contracts late Friday.

The firms had formed a joint effort called the PLM Group to advocate on behalf of the government of President Hosni Mubarak. He stepped down early last year after more than two weeks of street protests led by youth activists. According to the filings with the Justice Department, Egypt has paid PLM more than $4 million since 2007.

The severing of the contracts by the three firms comes weeks after the Egyptian government raided the offices of three American nonprofit groups that work with local organizations on election monitoring and government transparency. The groups are the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House.

The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. Freedom House is a Washington-based group that promotes democracy and open elections.

The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department, according to tax records and budget documents.