Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Lobbying Washington Post told lobbyist: Quit working for Saudis or stop writing for us

The Washington Post told a prominent Republican lobbyist he’d lose his gig as a contributing opinion writer unless he stopped lobbying for Saudi Arabia, a spokesperson for the newspaper confirmed Tuesday.

The ultimatum came after the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi, who was a columnist for the Post and wrote critically of the Saudi government. Khashoggi, who was living in Virginia, was last seen entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul earlier this month, and allegations that he was killed by Saudi authorities have strained the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.


The lobbyist, Ed Rogers, chairman of the BGR Group, writes for the newspaper’s PostPartisan blog.

Kristine Coratti Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Post, confirmed that the newspaper told Rogers he’d no longer be able to contribute if he continued to lobby for Saudi Arabia. She declined to comment further.

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The Saudi government was a lucrative client of Rogers’, but BGR said Monday it would no longer lobby for the kingdom. The firm didn’t provide a reason. The contract was worth $80,000 a month, according to a Justice Department filing.

It’s not clear what role the Post’s ultimatum played in BGR’s decision to stop lobbying for Saudi Arabia. Rogers declined to comment.

The Post has advocated aggressively on behalf of Khashoggi since his disappearance. Fred Ryan, the Post’s publisher and chief executive, called on the Trump administration Tuesday to “push harder for the truth” from Saudi Arabia.

“Until we have a full account and full accountability, it cannot be business as usual with the Saudi government,” Ryan said in a statement.

Rogers has lobbied for several foreign governments in addition to Saudi Arabia, including Bahrain, Azerbaijan and the Kurdish regional government. He worked in the White House under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush before co-founding the firm.

The Post’s arrangement with Rogers has been criticized in the past. Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York magazine, once described him as possibly “the worst op-ed columnist in America — certainly the worst one writing for a respectable publication.”

As a “founding member of a lobbying firm with a wide-ranging portfolio and a presumably enormous income, literally everything he writes suffers from crippling conflicts of interest,” Chait wrote last year.

Two other Washington firms, the Harbour Group and the Glover Park Group, have also dropped Saudi Arabia as a client over the past week.

CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated in the second paragraph to clarify that Khashoggi was living in Virginia. While he has been widely described as a U.S. permanent resident, including in the Washington Post, a U.S. administration official said he did not have that status. The Washington Post did not immediately respond to a request to clarify Khashoggi’s immigration status.