Feds charge Miami mayor’s campaign consultant with misleading U.S. about work for Qatar

A top adviser to Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s short-lived presidential campaign has admitted misleading the federal government in 2017 and 2018 about the extent of his lobbying activities on behalf of the nation of Qatar and agreed to pay a six-figure fine, according to court documents made public Tuesday.

Barry Bennett, a prominent GOP strategist who was paid more than $70,000 for his work last year on the mayor’s presidential campaign, acknowledged that he covertly operated an advocacy group that years earlier ran a public relations campaign for Qatar and attempted to influence U.S. policy, according to court documents.

Prosecutors say the advocacy group, known as Yemen Watch or Yemen Crisis Watch, spotlighted the humanitarian crisis in Yemen in an effort to draw negative attention to one of Qatar’s rival nations, effectively bolstering the reputation of the small oil-rich country.

During that time, Bennett’s company, Avenue Strategies Global, was paid $2.1 million for work on behalf of the Qatari embassy that it did disclose, according to prosecutors and public records. But prosecutors say $773,000 of that money went into Yemen Watch for activities that Avenue Strategies left off of its federal disclosures.

Bennett was charged Tuesday with two felonies, including violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a federal law which requires anyone involved in political advocacy or public relations work in the United States on behalf of a foreign government to register with the U.S. Department of Justice, with a few narrow exceptions. Both charges carry up to five years in prison with a conviction.

Under a deferred prosecution agreement that Bennett signed on Dec. 28, he agreed to pay a $100,000 fine, correct past filings by Avenue Strategies Global and refrain from lobbying on behalf of foreign entities for 18 months. The government agreed to drop the charges should Bennett hold fast to those commitments.

An attorney representing Bennett, who managed Ben Carson’s 2016 presidential campaign and then worked later that year to help elect Donald Trump, did not respond to the Herald’s request for comment.

The period covered by the case introduced by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia far predates Bennett’s work for Suarez. But the charges land as Miami’s mayor faces questions about his own activities involving another Middle East nation, Saudi Arabia.

Last month, the Miami Herald reported that Suarez, along with his top aide and a campaign consultant, helped coordinate a Saudi government-sponsored conference in Miami Beach in March. The nonprofit subsidiary behind the conference was recently subpoenaed as part of a U.S. Senate investigation into how Saudi Arabia has bought its way into popular U.S. institutions and used them to reshape the public narrative in the United States. The conference, during which Suarez spoke onstage Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who is the right hand to the Saudi crown prince, was just one example of a broader relationship between Miami’s mayor and the gulf nation.

Read more | The kingdom and I: How Miami’s mayor helped Saudi Arabia rehab its bloody reputation

In a statement issued Wednesday, the mayor’s communications director Stephanie Severino said Suarez “has not engaged with any entity that would require a foreign agent registration nor has he been contacted by the DOJ.”

Federal Election Commission records show that in 2023, Suarez’s presidential campaign paid $10,000 to Bennett’s Virginia-based firm, Bennett Strategies, for “strategic campaign consulting.” A super PAC that supported Suarez, SOS America, directly paid Bennett $63,000 from April to June for “strategic consulting,” according to campaign finance reports.

Bennett spoke briefly to the Herald outside Suarez’s campaign headquarters in Coral Gables the same day that Suarez dropped his presidential campaign in August. The Washington Post later referred to him as Suarez’s campaign manager.

Read more | Absentee mayor: Miami’s Francis Suarez blurs line between public duty, pursuit of wealth

A recent Herald investigation also examined Suarez’s activity in other Middle East nations, including several days spent in Qatar in December 2022. On that trip, Suarez attended a World Cup semifinal match with retired soccer star David Beckham, who had earlier in the year secured City Hall approves to build a $1 billion commercial complex and stadium on city-owned land for his Major League Soccer team, Inter Miami.

The mayor has refused to discuss specifics regarding his Middle East travel. It is unclear who paid for the mayor’s trip to Qatar, or what else he did while he was there. A spokesperson for the international law firm who employs him, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, said the firm never sent Suarez to Qatar and none of the firm’s clients, including soccer governing body FIFA, provided the mayor with tickets to the match.

State ethics investigators are now examining whether Beckham gave Suarez a free ticket, which could violate ethics law because Beckham is a registered city lobbyist.

Miami Herald staff writer Jay Weaver contributed to this report.