{"id":177891,"date":"2019-05-11T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/05\/11\/i-wonder-how-much-he-got-from-the-house-of-saud\/"},"modified":"2019-05-11T18:44:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T23:44:00","slug":"i-wonder-how-much-he-got-from-the-house-of-saud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2019\/05\/11\/i-wonder-how-much-he-got-from-the-house-of-saud\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wonder How Much He Got from the House of Saud"},"content":{"rendered":"
Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) has been revealed to be literally reading talking points given him by a lobbyist for the House of Saud verbatim while debating US support for their brutal military actions in Yemen<\/a>:<\/div>\n

Rep. Ed Royce, a senior Republican who, at the time, chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee, gave a speech on the House floor in November 2017 imploring his fellow lawmakers to maintain support for the Saudi Arabian-led war in Yemen. Royce warned that foreign adversaries \u2014 namely, Iran \u2014 could gain a foothold in Yemen through the Houthi rebels. <\/p>\n

\u201cPart of the problem here is the leaders of the Houthi militia were indoctrinated in Qom, in Iran, as part of an Iranian attempt to construct a Hezbollah-like proxy in Yemen,\u201d warned Royce, suggesting that the rebels in Yemen were merely Iranian cutouts, something experts dispute. <\/p>\n

The inflammatory line had been scripted by a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia \u2014 like much of Royce\u2019s impassioned speech. \u201cDuring the 1990s, the leaders of the Houthi militia were indoctrinated in the Iranian city of Qom as part of an Iranian attempt to construct a Hezbollah-like proxy in Yemen,\u201d says a set of lobbyist talking points obtained by The Intercept. <\/p>\n

Royce had received talking points earlier that day from a lobbyist retained by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, according to federal disclosure forms<\/a>, in order to undermine congressional opposition to the Yemen war.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

The talking points provided to Royce are among the many hidden ways in which Saudi money has quietly influenced the debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that Rep. Royce is repeating word for word talking points from wealthy law firm Hogan Lovells, not his own unique thought and hearing what his constituents have to say, speaks to the very stifling our democracy suffers from,\u201d said Heather Purcell, a spokesperson for Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who introduced the bill Royce was speaking against.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our “Friends” in Riyadh, huh?<\/p>\n

The sooner that the House of Saud falls from power the better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Representative Ed Royce (R-CA) has been revealed to be literally reading talking points given him by a lobbyist for the House of Saud verbatim while debating US support for their brutal military actions in Yemen: Rep. Ed Royce, a senior Republican who, at the time, chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee, gave a speech on the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[513,368,509,449],"class_list":["post-177891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-corruption","tag-house-of-saud","tag-legislation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177891"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177891\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}