When Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in the fall of 2017, he implicated two prominent Washington D.C. lobbying powerhouses as being complicit in a scheme to essentially hide foreign influence peddling.
Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group appeared, in that moment, were directly embroiled in the biggest scandal to hit K Street since the days of Jack Abramoff. But in the year that has followed, the two lobbying shops have gone on remarkably different directions.