By POMED –
Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck lobbyist and former House Committee on Foreign Affairs Chair Ed Royce is “contributing to, and benefiting from, human rights violations by using his high-level access to ensure continued U.S. support for [Egypt and other] systematically abusive governments,” said Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), Freedom Forward, and the Quincy Institute on February 10.
- After 14 terms in Congress, Royce retired in 2019 and joined Brownstein the next year, where he lobbies for the Egyptian and Saudi Ministries of Foreign Affairs. DAWN says that Royce “wielded his political influence to schedule briefings and calls for the Egyptian Ministry and for the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States Motaz Zahran to meet with members of Congress and their staffs.”
- The organizations note that these meetings came as Egypt was lobbying the Biden administration to release $300 million of military aid which Congress had conditioned on human rights conditions. Despite Egypt’s failure to meet the conditions, the administration ultimately withheld only $130 million of it and provided Egypt with the remaining $170 million.
- While chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Royce argued that “America is more secure when fewer nations are authoritarian” and that “human rights are far better protected in democratic countries, ones without dank prison cells full of political prisoners.” Today, he is helping to ensure the flow of U.S. military aid to one of the world’s most authoritarian governments, one which holds tens of thousands of political prisoners in its dank prison cells.
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