WASHINGTON _ Former U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of St. Louis has stopped lobbying for the government of Turkey, according to a filing with the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
That news comes amid growing calls for action against Turkish security officers who were shown on video attacking protesters in front of that country's ambassador's residence during a visit to Washington by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week.
The State Department condemned the violence, but Turkey has blamed the United States for lax security.
Three St. Louis area members of Congress, Reps. Ann Wagner and Rodney David, both Republicans, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., this week signed separate bipartisan letters asking for the Turkish security officials to be held responsible for the violence. The letter signed by Wagner and Davis calls for those responsible to be expelled or prevented from re-entering the United States.
After the House Foreign Relations Committee voted Thursday to condemn the actions of the Turkish personnel, Turkey responded with a sharp statement blaming the violence on "the refusal of U.S. authorities to take necessary security measures, despite repeated official warnings."
Gephardt, a Democrat who became a lobbyist after leaving Congress in 2005, had represented Turkey for eight years before the relationship ended at the end of 2016. He filed the report with the office of the Foreign Agents Registration Act in March indicating that his company no longer represented the governments of Turkey or Nicaragua.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 2015 that Gephardt's company had received more than $8 million by then to represent Turkey's interest in the United States.
Over the last 11 months of the contract, Gephardt and subcontractors working with his company were paid an additional $1.7 million by the Turkish government, according to a filing Gephardt made with FARA last year.
Gephardt was criticized for switching his position on the need to recognize as genocide the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians under Turkish rule during World War I. In Congress, Gephardt was adamant that the U.S. should officially declare it genocide. The Turkish government is fiercely opposed that declaration.
Tom O'Donnell, a Gephardt associate, confirmed in an email that the contract with Turkey had ended at the end of 2016. Filings show that Gephardt's company also stopped lobbying for the government of Nicaragua on Jan. 14.
According to that March document, Gephardt's lobbying business continued to represent the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. That is the capital of Taiwan, which is not officially recognized by the United States. The State Department in September said the U.S. has a "robust unofficial relationship" with Taiwan.
O'Donnell did not respond to follow-up queries about why the Gephardt Group's relationship with Turkey was ended. The media office at the Turkish embassy did not respond to interview requests made by phone and email.
Wagner and Davis and three dozen other members of the U.S. House on Thursday signed a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that said, in part: "Turkish personnel based in the U.S. who were involved in the attacks should be declared persona non grata and expelled from the U.S. immediately.
"Turkish personnel not based in the United States who were involved in the attacks should be barred from entry into the U.S. in the future," the letter said.
McCaskill two days earlier signed onto a letter to Tillerson with four other senators saying that it was "wholly unacceptable for President Erdogan to bring his security personnel to our country and allow them to violently assault U.S. law enforcement officials, American citizens, and U.S. residents engaged in peaceful demonstrations."
In a statement, McCaskill said that "in America, this isn't how we do things _ folks get to protest their grievances without fear of being attacked by government thugs."
