With help from Daniel Lippman FARA FRIDAY: Doug Watts, one half of the GOP operative duo who pleaded guilty earlier this year for concealing their influence efforts on behalf of the Qatari government, has registered retroactively to disclose that work to the Justice Department. — Watts and Barry Bennett, former advisers to Ben Carson’s 2016 campaign before moving to back former President Donald Trump, entered into deferred prosecution agreements last year for failing to disclose that an organization set up by Watts and Bennett called “Yemen Crisis Watch” — which aimed to highlight accusations of human rights violations committed by Saudi Arabia in a military conflict in Yemen — was actually being funded and controlled by the Saudis’ regional nemesis Qatar, for whom Bennett was a registered lobbyist. — The two men organized briefings on the issue on Capitol Hill, placed op-eds on the conflict in Beltway outlets and even helped finance and participate in a “documentary-style” TV show to discuss Yemen Crisis Watch, according to prosecutors. In a DOJ filing over the weekend, Watts said the services he performed at Bennett’s behest were designed “to generate awareness of atrocities in Yemen which reflected poorly on adversaries of Qatar as defined by Bennett.” — The foreign principal listed as the beneficiary of the group’s work is “The Embassy of the State of Qatar through the Foreign Agent Avenue Strategies Global, LLC and its principal officer Barry Bennett.” — The registration was a condition of Watts’ deal with prosecutors, which required that he “file an accurate and complete registration under FARA for the conduct” described by the government in its statement of facts. — The filings don't offer many additional details about Yemen Crisis Watch’s activities beyond what prosecutors laid out in court documents, but that may change. Watts had technical issues with FARA’s (notoriously dated) website during the filing process, his attorney Justin Dillon told PI, and after consulting with the FARA Unit is in the process of filing an amendment. — It’s unclear what will be revised, but there are several differences between Watts’ FARA filing and court documents. For one, Yemen Crisis Watch was to receive $30,000 per month beginning in September 2017, the filing says, though prosecutors detailed more than $700,000 in payments to the organization from Bennett’s now-defunct lobbying firm, Avenue Strategies. — And though the front group was supposed to run from anywhere between a year and a year and a half, per Watts’ filing with the FARA Unit, prosecutors said the group’s work lasted only for about six months before Bennett shut it down at Qatar’s request. TGIF and welcome to PI. Send tips: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on the platform formerly known as Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. BAYOU IN BOEHNERLAND: Former House Speaker John Boehner and wife, Debbie, hosted current Speaker Mike Johnson, his wife, Kelly, and members of the Ohio congressional delegation for a fundraising dinner last night at the Montgomery Inn Boathouse in Boehner's hometown of Cincinnati, raising $250,000. — Among those SPOTTED at the fundraiser, per a tipster: Reps. Troy Balderson (R-Ohio), Mike Carey (R-Ohio), Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Mike Turner (R-Ohio) and Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio); Teri Geiger of Balderson’s office; Frank DeBrosse of Turner’s office; Greg Brooks and Alex Scharfetter of Wenstrup’s office; Ohio congressional nominees Mike Rulli and Dave Taylor; Tommy Andrews, John Criscuolo, Chad Meredith and Dave Schnittger of Squire Patton Boggs; Matt Perin and Keith Dailey of Kroger; Jay Martin of Cintas; Christina Lotspike of Procter & Gamble; and Government Strategies Group's Chip Gerhardt. TRADE GROUP VET HANGS A SHINGLE: Jeff Joseph has launched Starlight Public Affairs, a public affairs/executive leadership consulting firm. Joseph most recently served as president and executive vice president of the Mid-Atlantic and Southern region for BCW, and previously served as president and CEO of the Software & Information Industry Association and in top communications roles at the Consumer Technology Association and Biotechnology Innovation Organization. WHO’S AFRAID OF LITTLE OLD SILICON VALLEY?: “Venture capitalist Garry Tan is working to create a new front in the influence battle over artificial intelligence and rally his startup allies into a force he hopes can challenge the tech industry’s biggest voices in Washington,” our Brendan Bordelon and Josh Sisco report. — “The president and CEO of influential tech startup incubator Y Combinator is trying to build a lobbying operation that fights on behalf of ‘Little Tech,’ the thousands of venture-backed firms competing for a place in the emerging AI economy.” — “Tan took little interest in Washington before last year’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which once served as a key financial resource for startups, but he’s a quasi-political figure at home. He’s spent the last several years working to moderate uber-liberal San Francisco, spearheading successful recalls of a progressive district attorney and several school board members.” — “In Washington, however, he has a problem. While he and the San Francisco venture community ignored the Beltway, conversations about technology in the nation’s capital became dominated by massive players like Google and Microsoft, whose interests don’t always align with smaller startups.” GUILTY … OF RAKING IN CASH: The Trump campaign said this morning it had raised an eye-popping $34.8 million since former President Donald Trump was found guilty in his hush money trial last night, and CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reports that many of the right’s biggest donors are sticking with Trump as well despite the felony convictions. — “‘I haven’t heard anybody who gives a s---,’ said New York businessman and Republican donor Andy Sabin, when asked whether major GOP contributors he knows care about the verdict in Trump’s trial.” — “The donor sentiment represents a shift for some Republican megadonors, who initially looked for an alternative to Trump during the party’s presidential primary, driven by a belief that the the former president’s legal problems would fatally weaken his campaign to replace President Joe Biden.” That’s a good thing because, as Schwartz reports, now that Trump is free from the courtroom, he’s “plowing ahead with a packed schedule of fundraising events that will likely raise millions of dollars for his presidential campaign.” — The convictions also don’t seem likely to deter K Street from getting behind the former president: “A Republican corporate consultant recalled to CNBC how he’d had conversations recently with nearly a dozen lobbyists who had privately ripped Trump after Jan. 6, and in the buildup to his New York trial. All of them are going back to help raise money for Trump, in spite of the guilty verdict.”
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