Joseph Lieberman was a senator from Connecticut and a failed vice presidential nominee. He is now a lobbyist for a foreign tech firm — and the whipping boy for Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.
Zhongxing Telecommunications Equipment, known as the ZTE Corporation, is a Chinese telecommunications firm and a threat to our foreign policy. They make cheap smartphones which top intelligence officials warn could be used to spy on U.S. citizens. And they were the target of tough tariffs after they violated sanctions by selling their digital wares to Iran and North Korea.
Lieberman is a ZTE lobbyist. Except Lieberman tells Politico that he doesn’t lobby Capitol Hill so much as he is “listening and asking questions.” His goal? To determine what can be done to “raise the level of trust in ZTE.”
Too cute by half, to be sure.
The former senator might tell his friends he isn’t lobbying for the Chinese. But Lieberman filed a quarterly report with the Secretary of the U.S. Senate that says otherwise.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed. Warren has wedded in her presidential ambitions to her good-government agenda. And so, on Wednesday, Lieberman made convenient practice for the Massachusetts Democrat.
We need a lifetime ban on Members of Congress working as lobbyists to make sure they only serve the public. We need a ban on foreign lobbying so countries like China, Russia and Saudi Arabia have to conduct their foreign policy out in the open. I’ve proposed both.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) January 3, 2019
A little public shaming won’t stop Lieberman from enjoying a big corporate paycheck. But this latest line on the Lieberman resume is just the latest example why Warren’s ban on congressional lobbying is needed.
