Zimbabwe, shunned by the international community during the years it was ruled by dictator Robert Mugabe, hadn’t retained a Washington lobbying firm in more than a decade.

But after Mugabe was deposed in a coup in 2017, the country’s new leaders decided they needed help rebuilding the country’s reputation in Washington. They turned to Brian Ballard, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump’s campaigns who has built a lucrative business lobbying his administration.

Last month, the country’s foreign minister signed a contract with Ballard worth $500,000 a year, making Zimbabwe the latest country to turn to Ballard or a handful of other lobbyists with Trump administration connections.

Ballard Partners and two other lobbying firms led by Trump campaign veterans have lobbied for nine foreign governments and four foreign political parties since Trump’s inauguration, according to a POLITICO analysis of Justice Department disclosures. Sonoran Policy Group, another firm that has played up its administration connections and hired Trump campaign alumni, has lobbied for nine other foreign governments and one additional foreign political party.

Ballard and the others aren’t the first presidential campaign veterans to lobby for foreign governments. Tim Glassco, for instance, joined the Podesta Group after working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and went on to lobby for the governments of Albania, Cyprus, Egypt and Georgia while Obama was in office, according to disclosure filings.

“I’d rather they work with us than with the Chinese, who don’t care at all about human rights" — James Rubin

But the number of countries that have turned to lobbyists with Trump campaign connections is striking.

Some of the countries are American allies, while others have stained human rights records, such as Zimbabwe, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

James Rubin, the lead Ballard lobbyist working for Zimbabwe and a former State Department official in the Clinton administration, said the firm’s lobbyists thought carefully before agreeing to represent the country. While the country’s new leadership has made mistakes, including a crackdown on demonstrators in January that reportedly killed at least 17 people, “it is far, far better than Zimbabwe’s government was under Mugabe,” Rubin said.

Ballard will work “to encourage a re-examination of Zimbabwe by the State Department with a view to establishing the best possible bilateral relationship with the United States and facilitating the restoration of Zimbabwe’s membership in good standing in the community of nations,” according to the firm’s contract.

“I’d rather they work with us than with the Chinese, who don’t care at all about human rights,” Rubin said.

But Michelle Gavin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former U.S. ambassador to Botswana, which borders Zimbabwe, said that while Zimbabwe’s new government has undertaken some reforms since Mugabe was ousted, the country is still plagued by corruption and human rights abuses.

“What we’re seeing on the ground I don’t think gives many observers any confidence there is genuine respect for the rule of law,” she said.

Bruce Wharton, a former U.S. ambassador to Zimbabwe, tweeted last week that the country’s decision to hire Ballard was a “[t]ragic waste of public funds.”

Zimbabwe has tried to retain lobbyists with presidential connections before. In 2008, Zimbabwean government officials agreed to hire two men who claimed have connections to Obama, who were later convicted of illegally attempting to lobby to lift U.S. sanctions on the country.

Lobbyists are sometimes eager to work for foreign governments because doing so is often more lucrative than lobbying for domestic clients. Ballard Partners has brought in more than $7.2 million lobbying for foreign interests since Trump’s inauguration, according to disclosure filings, representing a large chunk of the firm’s business. By comparison, the firm has earned roughly $28 million lobbying for domestic clients at the federal level since setting up shop in Washington in January 2017, according to the firm.

Avenue Strategies, a lobbying shop started by Trump campaign veterans Corey Lewandowski and Barry Bennett after the 2016 election, has raked in $3.3 million from foreign interests. (Lewandowski never did any foreign lobbying and left the firm in 2017, before it signed any foreign clients.)

Chartwell Strategy Group, a lobbying firm started by Dave Tamasi, another former Trump fundraiser, brought in $740,000 lobbying for the governments of Georgia and Kosovo last year, according to the firm. And Sonoran Policy Group, which brought on two Trump campaign veterans after the 2016 election, has earned more than $9 million from foreign interests, $5.4 million of it from a single contract with Saudi Arabia’s government.

Lobbyists with Trump ties have also commanded sizable fees representing companies in need of help abroad.

ZTE, for instance, the Chinese telecommunications company that successfully pressed the Trump administration last year for leniency after it was discovered to be illegally selling to Iran and North Korea, hired four Trump campaign veterans at three different firms to advance its interests in Washington: Bryan Lanza, Rick Wiley, Doug Davenport and Dave Urban. (Lanza stopped lobbying for the company last year.) The company paid Urban’s firm $230,000 for him to lobby the Executive Office of the President and the Senate for a little more than a month last year, according to a disclosure filing.

Like Ballard, Gotham Government Relations and Communications, a New York lobbying firm, once counted Trump as a client and quickly opened a Washington office after his victory. Gotham started lobbying the White House late last year on behalf of a company looking to persuade Trump to back its plan to send private security forces to Libya to facilitate oil exploration, according to Brad Gerstman, a partner at the firm.

No lobbying shop with Trump connections has signed more foreign governments as clients than the obscure firm called Sonoran Policy Group.

Robert Stryk, who runs the firm, never worked on Trump’s campaign, but he hired two former Trump campaign staffers after the 2016 election. (Both have since left.)

Stryk helped set up a phone call between Trump and New Zealand’s prime minister in the chaotic weeks after the election and later persuaded New Zealand’s government to hire his firm after throwing a lavish inaugural party at the New Zealand Embassy. The New York Times Magazine chronicled his ascent, along with the activities of Lewandowski and other consultants and lobbyists with administration connections, in a piece headlined “How to Get Rich in Trump’s Washington.”

Stryk has cut the figure of someone who’s gotten rich. He has spent freely on cigars, flights on private planes and long dinners in the private upstairs room of Café Milano in Georgetown with bills that ran to thousands of dollars, according to three people familiar with the firm. He built a wet bar in SPG’s Georgetown office, boasted of plans to open a London office and said he wanted to build a $200 million-a-year business.

Stryk started lobbying last year for the Democratic Republic of Congo, a repressive regime accused of human rights abuses that Ballard and Avenue had turned down when representatives of the country tried to hire them, according to Ballard and Avenue lobbyists. (Avenue subsequently agreed to lobby for the government of Felix Tshisekedi, the country’s new president, after he was elected in January.)

The DRC paid Stryk’s firm nearly $1.5 million last year, according to Justice Department disclosures. SPG registered to lobby for the country as a subcontractor to an Israeli firm, the Mer Group. While SPC remains registered, Stryk said he’s no longer working for the country.

SPG tried, among other efforts, to broker meetings between Congolese officials and the Trump administration, including an attempt last year to set up a meeting between Vice President Mike Pence and Joseph Kabila, then the DRC’s president, according to a disclosure report. The meeting never happened, an official in the vice president’s office said.

Stryk was unapologetic about his work for clients with tarnished reputations such as the DRC and Somalia in an interview with POLITICO last year, saying he had come to realize they needed his help more than wealthier nations.

“These are the places that need us the most,” Stryk said. “New Zealand doesn’t need us. They need us.”