Lobbyists representing an arm of the Moroccan government have donated thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and a super PAC supporting it, public records show.
The firm, Nurnberger & Associates, reported that its employees donated $1,500 to Clinton’s campaign last month in a Monday filing with the Department of Justice disclosing its work on behalf of the Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP).
The firm reported another $5,000 in contributions last year to Ready for Hillary, a now-defunct pro-Clinton super PAC. Ralph Nurnberger, the firm’s principal, served on the group’s national finance council.
The previously unreported donations suggest additional ties between Clinton and the Moroccan government, which has donated millions to the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation and received favorable treatment from the State Department while Mrs. Clinton served as secretary.
The MACP is a nonprofit owned by the Moroccan government. "Chief among the Center’s objectives is to assist the Kingdom of Morocco in its efforts to obtain American support to construct a stable, progressive, democratic, and economically dynamic region in North Africa," according to its website.
To that end, it secured a lobbying contract with Nurnberger in 2009 by way of another firm, the Amani Group (since renamed GrayLoeffler). That firm’s founder and partner, the former Democratic congressman William Gray, co-chaired Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
Nurnberger submitted a registration statement to the Justice Department, pursuant to the Foreign Agent Registration Act, just eight days after Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in 2009.
In the years that followed, it reported lobbying State Department officials on MACP’s behalf. In 2011, the firm met three times with Lorraine Hariton, a former Clinton campaign finance committee member tapped by the secretary as the department’s special representative for commercial and business affairs.
The last meeting took place on Oct. 18, 2011. Days later, State announced that Hariton would "lead a delegation of American entrepreneurs, early-stage investors, non-governmental organization representatives" on a trip to Morocco and two other North African nations.
Clinton and the Moroccan government have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship, as reported by Politico’s Ken Vogel last month. A state-owned mining company last month paid more than $1 million to host the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in Marrakesh.
Vogel reported that the meeting faced criticism from the Sahrawi people of the Western Sahara, who accused the Clintons of buddying up with a regime that they say represses advocates for independence from Morocco.
"Hillary Clinton sold her soul when they accepted that money," one former employee of the Moroccan mining company told Vogel.
The MACP has also faced criticism for what the critics describe as "smear tactics" designed to discredit political forces advocating Western Saharan independence.
"If you are looking only for the totally biased and slanted Moroccan royalist line on the Western Sahara, this group I guess works well enough," wrote Charles Liebling, chairman of the group United States Citizens for Western Sahara, in a 2012 blog post.
"If, however, accuracy, truthfulness, international law, and balanced analysis are concerns, I suggest you go elsewhere," he said.
Neither MACP nor Nurnberger returned requests for comment.