{"id":70694,"date":"2017-03-07T09:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T14:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=70694"},"modified":"2017-03-07T07:33:21","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T12:33:21","slug":"saudis-use-vets-as-pawns-to-fight-jasta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70694","title":{"rendered":"Saudis use vets as pawns to fight JASTA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government of Saudi Arabia doesn&#8217;t much like the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) because it makes them liable for the events that occurred in New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia on September 11, 2001. So, according to some military veterans and the <a href=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2017\/03\/05\/vets-say-they-were-duped-into-helping-saudi-arabia-dodge-payouts-to-911-victims\/\">New York Post<\/a>, the Saudis are using veterans to lobby Congress on their behalf and many of those veterans aren&#8217;t aware of the fact that they&#8217;re lobbying for the Saudis.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Vets complain they\u2019re not only being misled but openly lied to. During one recent trip, an organizer denied any \u201cSaudi involvement\u201d in sponsoring the trip, even though federal filings show the organizer has a $100,000 contract with the Saudis and is a registered foreign agent for the kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>In their recruiting pitch to vets, the Saudi lobbyists, who pose as veteran advocates, claim that JASTA exposes them as well as \u201c150,000 [US] military personnel stationed in over 150 countries\u201d to \u201cretaliatory lawsuits\u201d in foreign courts \u2014 even though international law experts note that JASTA deals only with the immunity of foreign states, and poses little if any risk to individuals.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Former [Marine Sergeant Timothy Cord, who served in Iraq] said the trip leader, Jason E. Johns, shot down any concerns about Mideast sponsorship as soon as the vets arrived in DC. \u201cHe stood up the first night to announce that \u2018there are rumors going around about Saudi involvement, and they absolutely aren\u2019t [involved].\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Johns\u2019 bio describes him as president of No Man Left Behind Veterans Advocacy Group. But federal records also list him as a registered Saudi agent making $100,000 to mobilize vets to lobby against JASTA. The primary registrant on his disclosure form is Qorvis MSLGROUP, the Saudi government\u2019s top PR firm in Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Saudi government pays for transportation to and around the nation&#8217;s capitol as well as footing the $560\/night bill at Trump International Hotel, meals and drinks. In return, veterans are expected to &#8220;storm&#8221; Congress and convince members to weaken the bill in favor of Saudi government interests, all the while veterans aren&#8217;t told the story of who is providing for their trip to the halls of Congress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government of Saudi Arabia doesn&#8217;t much like the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) &hellip; <a title=\"Saudis use vets as pawns to fight JASTA\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=70694\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Saudis use vets as pawns to fight JASTA<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}