Coats had no dealings with Chavez aide says

Photo of Senator Coats' Detractors

by

Glenn Thrush of Politico

It took them exactly a week, but Dan Coats's nascent Indiana Senate campaign has finally responded to my story about his lobbying efforts on behalf of a Texas oil company that has partnered with the government of Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez.

A quick refresher: Coats's firm, King & Spaulding, received $470,000 in fees from Houston-based Harvest Natural Resources from 2005 to 2008, according to the Senate's lobbying database. During that period, the company concluded a deal with the Chavez government that gave it roughly a third of the revenue generated from projects it developed.

Kevin Kellems, Coats's spokesman, sends an e-mail today claiming the story "got the Venezuela charge exactly backwards. The firm helped an American company deal with the fact that Chavez was trying to confiscate their business assets."

Kellems, himself a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, says Coats had no direct dealings with Chavez and his aides and suggested that Coats played a relatively minor role, despite his appearance on three years' worth of disclosure forms.

Kellems downplayed Coats' role, writing:

"Dan Coats was asked by the firm to assist in setting up two appointments for a Texas company which was a long-time client of the firm — appointments with a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and House Foreign Affairs committees — so the CEO could inform them of the Venezuelan threat to annul their contract and harm the company financially."

In late 2005, at the time he was lobbying for Harvest, President Bush tapped Coats to act as Capitol Hill Sherpa for then-Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.

Lobbying reports from that period, which list Coats as the main lobbyist on the Harvest-Venezuela account, list contacts with the "Executive Office of the President."

Kellems didn't immediately respond to an e-mail asking Kellems if Coats addressed the Harvest negotiations with the president or any of his top advisers.

Posted by Glenn Thrush 03:03 PM