The Many Reinventions of a Legendary Washington Influence Peddler

On the morning after Election Day of 2016, as Washington’s political establishment absorbed the shock of Donald Trump’s victory, one veteran Republican operative was already hard at work.

Jim Courtovich had never been a champion of MAGA rage. During the Republican primary, he’d supported one of Trump’s main rivals, Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida and a favorite of the Republican elite. In the general election, he hadn’t bothered to vote at all. Yet not long after the sun rose on Nov. 9, Courtovich sent an email to clients and reporters in which the career influence peddler — whose clients included Goldman Sachs, Boeing and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia — praised a populist firebrand whose political appeal was rooted in the public’s contempt for Washington and its lobbyists. In other words, people just like Courtovich.

“Donald J. Trump will bring an unprecedented level of change to the nation’s capital,” Courtovich wrote. “In pledging to ‘drain the swamp,’ he has promised to oust the old model of doing business through cronyism and back-room deals.”

Courtovich then went online and made a $2,700 donation — the maximum amount allowed by law — to Trump’s campaign, even though the billionaire real estate mogul had already been voted into office. “Day after the election in DC. Broken dreams and newly minted stars,” Courtovich tweeted. “In with the [new] and out with the old. As always.”

Trump’s victory would touch off the most dramatic reshuffling of K Street’s pecking order since the conservative revolution of 1980. The Democratic lobbyists who’d expected to flourish under a Hillary Clinton administration were now out in the cold, and the Republican lobbying establishment had almost no relationship with Trump. Suddenly every wheeler-dealer in the city was racing to make friends in Trump’s orbit, portraying themselves as longtime backers of the MAGA movement, even if they weren’t, and creating new strategies for getting what they wanted out of the president-elect. Washington’s entire lobbying industry, it seemed, was reinventing itself overnight.

Reinvention was something that Courtovich had mastered years ago. About a decade earlier, he had teamed up with a young drug industry lobbyist, Evan Morris, in a business partnership that encapsulated the broader evolution of Washington’s influence peddling business— where, in the wake of the legal reforms following the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal of the mid 2000s, old-fashioned insider-access strategies were increasingly giving way to a more modern approach known as “shadow lobbying.” As they climbed the ranks of the K Street elite, Morris and Courtovich plied these cutting-edge tactics, pressed the interests of one of the era’s most powerful drug conglomerates and encountered all the temptations that accompany success in Washington’s modern influence business — where hundreds of millions of dollars flow to consultants, media strategists and other political insiders with minimal disclosure to the public, the government and even the companies paying the bills. But in the summer of 2015 when Morris was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound behind the 18th green of an exclusive private golf club, Courtovich had come under the suspicion of federal law enforcement officials over his alleged involvement in what the drug company’s officials believed had been a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme.

The story of Washington’s influence business is one of transformation and resilience; despite countless attempts to reform K Street, corporate lobbyists have always found new ways to maintain their power over public policy. Few embody this better than Courtovich. As the lucrative contracts from his now-deceased partner dried up, he managed to locate a wealthy new backer, secure a $1.6 million party house on Capitol Hill and begin lining up new clients.

The arrival of Donald Trump presented a new and unexpected test, one that would require Courtovich — and the rest of K Street — to reinvent himself yet again. It would not be easy. Indeed, over the more than seven years following his post-election conversion, Courtovich, who did not respond to requests to comment for this piece, would face financial disruption, multiple lawsuits and even scrapes with local police. Yet still, like the Washington swamp itself, he always managed to survive.

‘Your First Death Panel is Here’

Less than a decade before Trump’s election, during the early years of the Obama era, Courtovich had established himself as a legendary host of the Washington cocktail party circuit. Twice a year, he opened his $2 million town house in Washington’s elite Kalorama neighborhood for his famous “Gaucho” parties. Courtovich stocked his kitchen with wine from Spain and beef from Argentina and adopted a bull as the symbol for the parties. Guests might find an ice sculpture of a bull at the entrance or a bull made out of wire on the bar. Once he had a 9-foot-tall bull fashioned out of topiary, with conspicuously large testicles.

These parties attracted red-carpet crowds of political and media celebrities. Senior Obama White House officials — chief of staff Rahm Emanuel or senior advisor David Axelrod — mingled with leading Republican figures such as superlawyer Ben Ginsberg and former President George W. Bush’s spokesperson Gordon Johndroe. The crowd was sprinkled with prominent journalists, including NBC’s Today show host Savannah Guthrie, CBS’ Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer, or Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times political reporter and future chief national correspondent for CNN, who also happened to be Courtovich’s live-in partner. “Gotta be a Jim Courtovich party,” POLITICO wrote in 2011, “one of the few Washington occasions that brings together so many Ds and Rs, along with press corps galore.”

Then in his mid-forties, Courtovich was tall and trim, with a gray, receding hairline he kept closely cropped. He wore custom suits from his tailor in London and $2,000 shoes. He was a master at small talk, sharing stories about his Middle East travels and his European shopping excursions. But these parties weren’t just social events, they were the source of his power in Washington. As a high-end influence peddler, Courtovich earned fees of up to $150,000 a month helping blue-chip corporations and foreign governments get favorable treatment in the press and before the U.S. government. And by throwing buzzy gatherings for Washington’s A-List, he was able to create a network of contacts in the upper reaches of the media and political establishments that he could turn to for favors. Of all of his pals in Washington, few were more significant than Evan Morris.

Though hardly anyone outside of Washington had ever heard of him, Morris was among K Street’s most gifted operators. In 2005, the then 28-year-old insider became a top lobbyist for Roche Holdings, one of the world’s oldest and largest drug companies. A few years later, in 2009, Roche bought U.S. biotech leader Genentech and adopted its name. Genentech tapped Morris to lead its Washington lobbying office — a promotion that made him the second youngest vice president in the firm’s 120-year history. Morris’ impact, however, extended far beyond his firm. That’s because he emerged as an early pioneer of a sophisticated form of influence peddling that was just then coming of age in Washington.

Over the course of the 1990s and 2000s, as the public was growing increasingly disdainful of the practice of lobbying, members of Congress became more wary of taking official actions that could be viewed as favors to special interests. As a result, the traditional approach to influence peddling — where lobbyists secured favors from Senators over stiff drinks in smoke-filled rooms — grew less effective. Increasingly, sharp lobbyists recognized that the most effective way to bring a lawmaker around to their position was through his or her constituents. They began spending less time trying to persuade members of Congress and more time targeting the people who sent them to Washington in the first place. They did this through public relations campaigns, grassroots efforts and other strategies designed to whip up support or opposition to a particular issue in a lawmaker’s home district. It was here that Morris put his imprint on Washington. After taking control of an advocacy budget worth tens of millions of dollars a year, he hired an army of outside lobbyists and consultants, including Courtovich.

In 2010, for instance, Morris and Courtovich teamed up when the FDA moved to rescind its approval of one of Genentech’s most profitable products — Avastin — for breast cancer treatment. Anything Morris could do to delay the agency’s decision could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars for Genentech, because the company could keep marketing the drug for breast cancer — at up to $90,000 per treatment — while the FDA deliberated.

To that end, Courtovich formed a credible-sounding advocacy group, the Patient Care Action Network, to build a database of breast cancer patients, doctors and nurses who’d had positive experiences with Avastin. Courtovich established a toll-free number to help recruit supporters. Callers were patched through to a “call center” where “operators” told them how they could write letters in support of Avastin to the FDA’s commissioners; the operators even provided callers with prewritten letters and the addresses of key officials. In reality, the call center was a bank of phones Courtovich had installed in his Washington office, and the operators were lobbyists and consultants hired by Genentech, according to those manning the phones.

In internal documents that outlined their plan, Courtovich framed the FDA’s efforts to ensure Avastin was a safe and effective breast cancer treatment as a “first step toward death panels” — a reference to the alarmist (but false) warnings that had galvanized Republican opposition to Barack Obama’s health reform act in 2009. He and other Genentech consultants peddled the Avastin-death-panel story to right-leaning media. “Your first death panel is here,” Glenn Beck told his Fox News audience. As the death-panel message gathered steam, Morris worked to secure allies on Capitol Hill. David Vitter, the Republican Louisiana senator, became Avastin’s leading champion. “I shudder at the thought of a government panel assigning a value to a day of a person’s life,” Vitter said in a 2010 news release.

Morris and Courtovich’s efforts helped delay the final FDA decision for more than a year, until November 2011, when the agency finally revoked Avastin’s approval for breast cancer treatment. But by slowing down the FDA, Morris and Courtovich could boast they’d saved the drug conglomerate $1 billion in sales. Genentech paid Courtovich more than $500,000 for his role in the effort.

The Avastin campaign had been a massive, complex undertaking, yet nearly the entire effort was carried out in secret. That’s because while efforts to lobby Congress directly must be reported publicly, there’s no requirement to disclose activities designed to influence constituents. These indirect lobbying campaigns could be conducted underground. At the height of Evan Morris’ work with Courtovich, Genentech’s advocacy budget had ballooned to $50 million, yet only $5 million was spent on traditional lobbying activities. The remaining $45 million was for public affairs, grassroots, polling, data analytics and other tactics that fell outside the technical definition of lobbying. And because of the gaps in the regulation of K Street, none of this $45 million shadow lobbying budget had to be disclosed to the public.

As his lobbying victories multiplied, aided by Courtovich and his firms, Morris’s compensation package swelled to more than $1 million a year, according to his colleagues. He kept more than a thousand fine cigars — costing up to $50 apiece — in a half-dozen humidors in Genentech’s office. He purchased a collection of Rolex, Omega and Cartier watches worth as much as $100,000 each. He owned three Porsches, and he joined eight exclusive country clubs in various parts of the country. For his frequent visits to Genentech’s San Francisco-area headquarters, Morris bought a $1.365 million condo in the city where neighbors included Joe Montana, Kevin Durant and major league baseball player Hunter Pence. In 2011, he paid $3.1 million in cash for a waterfront Georgian estate on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. A year later, he acquired a $300,000, custom-made, 30-foot mahogany speedboat he christened the Mulligan.

The partnership with Morris was profitable to Courtovich as well. Days after signing his first deal with Morris in 2005, Courtovich bought the $2 million house in Kalorama where he hosted his legendary Gaucho parties. When neighbors complained about the noise, Courtovich moved into a $3.8 million house near the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. He then spent $500,000 to transform the five-bedroom, five-bath property into an ideal party pad. He added a second kitchen with a 12-foot walnut-and-marble island and he created a separate charcuterie room for curing meats.

Courtovich became a fixture at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the glitzy gathering of White House officials, news media celebrities and Hollywood stars. He cohosted an exclusive brunch on the weekend of the event at the Georgetown mansion once owned by the late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham. Likewise, he became a familiar face at the summertime picnic that Joe Biden hosted for members of the media at the vice president’s residence, where Biden handed out Super Soakers to the guests’ children for the annual water gun fight.

Inside Genentech’s Washington office, though, Morris’ handling of the budget was raising questions. A group of employees grew so alarmed his spending they filed a complaint with Genentech’s human resources department. An HR team traveled to Washington to conduct an internal investigation, and the employees detailed the exorbitant lunch tabs as well as the thousands of dollars of wine that the company once purchased for a Genentech retreat held at Morris’ Eastern Shore home, but which was never actually served during the event. One secretary told the Genentech lawyers that Morris had instructed her to create phony expense reports so that he could get reimbursed for meals and other outlays that he had never actually incurred. “We spilled our guts,” the employee recalls. But after the investigators left, the employees never heard about the inquiry again.

Of all the questions about Morris’ leadership, none was more puzzling than his partnership with Courtovich. Though Morris directed a considerable portion of Genentech’s Washington budget to Courtovich’s firms — funneling more than $3 million in contracts to him in 2012 alone — other consultants often struggled to figure out what work Courtovich was doing to earn his fees. Courtovich occasionally dialed in to the weekly calls with Genentech’s advocacy team, but he rarely spoke. Eventually the business contracts between the two men began to attract scrutiny. One former Genentech contracting officer recalls reviewing a $450,000 agreement struck around 2010 between Morris and Courtovich. The wording of the contract was unusually vague — “media consulting,” instead of detailing specific tasks Courtovich would perform. Realizing the imprecise language would raise red flags with the company’s lawyers, the contracting officer called Morris and asked for more details. Morris referred her to Courtovich who pointed her back to Morris.

Stymied, the officer submitted the contract to Genentech’s internal contracting system anyway, where, as predicted, it was rejected. Morris ultimately got the contract approved by calling officials in Genentech’s headquarters and personally vouching for the expense. The contracting officer felt so uncomfortable about the situation she called Genentech’s legal department and expressed her concerns. Nothing ever came of it.

‘I Want to Be Done With This Shit’

On a warm day in July 2015, Evan Morris was playing golf at his favorite club near the foothills of the Shenandoah Mountains when his cell phone buzzed. It was Genentech’s top lawyer, Frederick Kentz, with an ominous message. He was flying in from San Francisco and demanded to see Morris first thing the next morning. Kentz ordered Morris to clear his schedule for the day. But he offered no details.

The call troubled Morris. He contacted a lawyer, and he texted a friend to cancel their plans to play golf the following morning. “General Counsel is on a plane,” Morris wrote in a text message that is being reported here for the first time. “Yeah, it’s not something I did, but probably something big and bad.”

Over the previous few days, friends and colleagues had been growing concerned about Morris. He seemed distracted and aloof. Earlier that week, one of Morris’ executive assistants inquired about him.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I just have a lot going on,” Morris replied. The roof on his Eastern Shore vacation home had collapsed, he explained, and he was growing impatient with the pace of the repairs.

“You need to get some sleep,” she said. “You look tired.”

It was a bad time for such distress. That evening, July 8, Morris was hosting a fundraiser at the $2 million home he shared with his wife, Tracy, and their two young children, to benefit a Democratic candidate running for the Virginia state senate. Among their guests would be Terry McAuliffe, the governor of Virginia, former chair of the Democratic Party and close friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton. During the fundraiser, Morris seemed preoccupied. His face had an unusual, reddish complexion and at times he was sweating. He’d recently told colleagues he might be done with lobbying, and he even had an exit plan: Raise enough money for Democrats and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign to land a job as an ambassador, perhaps to Switzerland, where Genentech’s parent company, Roche, had its world headquarters. Tracy had brought up the possibility of leaving Washington in the past. Now, for the first time, Morris was telling people at the party that he might be willing to do so.

The next morning, Morris walked into the third floor conference room at the law office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in downtown Washington. To his surprise, he was greeted not by Genentech’s lawyer but by Michael Bopp, a partner at Gibson Dunn who specialized in investigations and crisis management, as well as another attorney. Bopp invited Morris to take a seat at the conference table, beside a stack of files and documents.

A few weeks earlier, Bopp explained, Genentech had received an anonymous letter that warned of unusual financial expenditures by Morris. Genentech had asked Bopp’s law firm to investigate. The lawyers then opened up the manila folders and began asking about contracts and transactions Morris had authorized. At first, Morris responded confidently. But after a few minutes, Morris stood up, said he wasn’t feeling well, and asked for a bathroom break. Rather than heading to the restroom, though, he fled the building.

Morris drove his white Porsche to the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, where he had received the call from Kentz the day before. After a round of golf, he showered and put on a blue blazer. He ordered a steak at the clubhouse. When he finished his meal, he bought a round of drinks for everyone in the dining room. Around four o’clock, he ordered a bottle of Petrus, a rare Bordeaux that cost $1,500 at the club. It was Morris’ favorite.

He told the wait staff he had work to do, and, with the July sun still aloft in the sky, he walked to the fire pit a few hundred yards down a hill from the clubhouse. It was a secluded spot, and Morris was alone. He took a seat in a white Adirondack chair, lit a cigar and poured himself a glass of wine.

By then, Morris’ wife, Tracy, was beginning to panic. Despite her husband’s angst in the run-up to the meeting, Morris wasn’t providing her any details about the confrontation. When Tracy called, he didn’t pick up. She texted him, but he replied with short, ambiguous answers, according to a series of text messages that have not been previously reported.

“May be the fall guy. I’m ok with it.”

“They are going to put me on paid leave. Will call you when I can.”

Growing desperate, Tracy began contacting Morris’ colleagues and friends. “I haven’t seen Evan all day,” she said in a voicemail to one of his executive assistants. “Do you know where he is?”

When Tracy logged on to his financial accounts, one purchase stood out. Earlier that day, Morris had used his credit card at Loudoun Guns Inc. to buy a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver and a box of ammunition. Tracy frantically called and texted her husband. He didn’t answer. She left a pleading voicemail, insisting that everything would be OK. She sent him photos of their two young children. When Morris still didn’t respond, Tracy called the police and filed a missing person report.

Beside the fire pit, Morris was descending into hopelessness. He sent a text message to his wife with contact information for the couple’s accountant, insurance agent and financial planner. At 6:02 p.m., he sent her his last text: “I want to be done with this shit.”

At around 10 o’clock, a clubhouse server came down to the fire pit and discovered Morris’ body. There was a bottle of rare wine at his feet and a gunshot wound in his head. On his lap was handwritten a note. “Do Not Resuscitate,” it read.

‘Tragic Events from Our Past’

In accordance with Jewish custom, Morris’ funeral service was held quickly after his death. On Sunday, July 12, hundreds of mourners packed into a northern Virginia synagogue. Courtovich did not attend. On the morning after Morris’ death, he’d flown to London on business. His partner, Jeff Zeleny, by then a political correspondent at CNN, was at the service.

Around this time, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a team of attorneys from Genentech’s law firm arrived at the pharmaceutical company’s Washington headquarters to search for more information about Morris’ handling of the budget. One of the attorneys noticed a peculiar image among the snapshots on Morris’ office wall. It was a glossy photo of a smiling Courtovich that had appeared in POLITICO alongside an article that proclaimed Courtovich as one of Washington’s most accomplished “scenemakers.” But unlike the other photos, this one had been cut out, attached to a dartboard and impaled with a dart — right through Courtovich’s forehead.

Over the following weeks, the law firm’s investigators discovered that during the years Morris controlled the budget for Genentech’s Washington operations, he’d entered into roughly $25 million in contracts with three firms Courtovich either worked at or controlled: National Media, Sphere Consulting and Kearsarge Global Advisors. Despite the large sums of money involved, the contracts were unusually vague. Oftentimes, the written agreements didn’t contain clear objectives for the work the firms were required to do in exchange for six-figure fees.

The Gibson Dunn lawyers hoped Courtovich could help them make sense of this flow of money. But during two in-person meetings, they found him pleasant but unhelpful, according to a person familiar with the interviews. In the first meeting, he insisted he had never sent any money to Morris.

After the first interview, the Gibson Dunn investigators discovered a clue: When they looked into Morris’ personal bank accounts, they found a balance of $11 million — including $10 million in deposits drawn on checks from Courtovich or his firms. A closer look showed a pattern: Not long after Genentech began paying out on one of the contracts negotiated between Morris and Courtovich, Morris would receive a check from Courtovich or one of his companies. The Gibson Dunn lawyers contacted Courtovich for a second interview.

This time Courtovich said he had an arrangement with Morris that had begun in 2005. According to Courtovich, Genentech wanted Morris, its new young lobbyist, to develop a reputation as a Washington heavyweight by making large donations to think tanks, charities and social events. According to Courtovich, Genentech’s leadership believed these donations would be most beneficial to the drug company if they appeared to come from the lobbyist’s own account — as opposed to Genentech’s corporate budget. So, according to Courtovich, the company’s top brass authorized Morris to use his personal checks. Courtovich would then reimburse Morris for the expenses using funds that he’d received from Genentech for contracts arranged by Morris. Courtovich insisted he sent reimbursement funds to Morris only after receiving invoices that documented the expenses. Then Courtovich clammed up.

The lawyers contacted law enforcement officials in San Francisco and told them that an employee had embezzled millions of dollars from Genentech.

Fritz Bittenbender, the senior vice president for Genentech’s public affairs division, said in a statement to POLITICO this week that “these were tragic events from our past, involving someone who engaged in inexcusable misconduct and exploited his leadership position in order to defraud our company.” He added: “While we remain deeply angered and saddened by these events, they occurred nearly a decade ago and do not represent who we are today.”

In the fall of 2015, FBI agents in Washington and the Justice Department formally launched an investigation into corporate fraud. By then, Genentech had started to recover some of Morris’ signature possessions. Genentech lawyers filed documents in San Francisco’s superior court showing Morris had bought his $1.365 million condo, as well as a $57,000 GMC Yukon, using money from Genentech laundered through an unidentified “Party B.” In meticulous detail, the Genentech lawyers provided the court with more than two dozen canceled checks and bank transfers showing Morris had directed roughly $4 million in Genentech contracts to bank accounts controlled by “Party B” in the years before the purchase. During that same period, “Party B” sent roughly $3 million to Morris’ personal bank accounts, the documents revealed. “On that basis,” Genentech’s lawyers stated, Morris had “purchased the GMC Yukon and the property using the Genentech Inc. funds.” The court agreed.

‘Invested Significantly in Relationships with Individual Reporters’

Nevertheless, almost no one in Washington had any idea Courtovich was under FBI scrutiny. That September, just a few months after Morris died, Courtovich hosted an A-list crowd of journalists and policymakers for the grand opening bash at his firm’s new Capitol Hill town house. Republican lawmaker from California Ed Royce, ABC News political director Rick Klein, and reporters and television producers from The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and POLITICO were among those who turned out. Inside, waiters handed out champagne flutes filled with $100-a-bottle Veuve Clicquot. There was a Five Guys pop-up. For party favors, attendees received T-shirts that read “Keep Calm and Hire Sphere,” referring to one of Courtovich’s companies, Sphere Consulting.

This new “Hill House,” as Courtovich called it, was a key component of his latest business venture. A few years earlier, Courtovich’s company was audited by the Internal Revenue Service. About that time, as his Genentech contracts began to dry up. Courtovich set off to search for new revenue.

He eventually reached out to a former associate, Simon Charlton, with whom he had worked a few years before on behalf of a wealthy Saudi Arabian investment fund. In December 2014 Courtovich suggested to Charlton that they team up to start a new lobbying firm. Over the next several months, as the two men discussed the details of the project, Courtovich told Charlton how much money it would take to launch the firm: $4 million — a figure that precisely matched the amount of money the IRS had frozen in his bank account. Charlton, who, according to a person familiar with the situation, was unaware of Courtovich’s tax issues, agreed to become his silent partner.

According to their contract for the new firm named SGR LLC Government Relations and Lobbying, the $4 million from the Saudi investors was to be divided in half. Roughly $2 million would be used as start-up money for the new business. The other half would buy a critical tool for Courtovich’s brand of influence peddling: a $1.65 million property near the Capitol where he could hobnob with lawmakers and entertain reporters. Since it was located in a residential neighborhood, Courtovich told friends that he paid a person to take out the garbage cans on trash day, so that it appeared as if someone lived there.

But the townhome’s real purpose would soon become clear. A snapshot taken at the opening party of Rep. Ed Royce, chair of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, chatting with a Reuters reporter and the Washington bureau chief of The Financial Times made its way into a brochure Courtovich used to attract new clients. “We have invested significantly in relationships with individual reporters at these entities,” Courtovich wrote in a letter to the government of Qatar. “These personal relationships allow us to get a fair hearing for our clients with reporters who value straight talk over public relations spin.”

The pitch resonated with corporations and foreign governments facing problems in Washington. Courtovich signed up the Detroit-based home-mortgage giant Quicken Loans just as it was being sued by the Department of Justice over allegations of improper lending practices. (Quicken Loans later paid $32.5 million to resolve the claims; it did not admit wrongdoing.) In October 2015, Courtovich’s firm agreed to represent the former owners of a private bank in the tiny European nation of Andorra, which had gone out of business after the Treasury Department accused it of laundering money for Chinese officials, Venezuelan government leaders and Russian mobsters. In September 2016, Courtovich’s firm inked a $45,000-a-month deal with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to try and defeat a bill that would have permitted victims of terrorism to file lawsuits against the countries that harbored their attackers. The effort put Courtovich on the opposing side of families who’d lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks. Courtovich’s contract shows that he was hired specifically by Saud al-Qahtani, a top foreign policy and media advisor to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, and a figure who would later allegedly oversee the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Then, in November 2016, an unexpected new business opportunity arrived in Washington.

‘Sphere is Shocked and Dismayed’

In the run-up to the 2016 election, according to an article in Washingtonian magazine, special interests had staffed up with Democratic lobbyists and consultants in preparation for what they believed would be a Hillary Clinton administration. Now, in the wake of Trump’s victory, they were desperate to hire Republicans. But there was a problem: Washington’s stable of GOP influencers didn’t have many friends in Trump’s administration. A large number of Republican operatives — who would have thrived under a traditional Republican president such as Jeb Bush — had been vocal critics of Trump. As a result, Trump’s anti-establishment campaign was run, by and large, without the typical cast of insiders who were already familiar to the city’s lobbyists.

“You can almost look at it like this,” said one GOP consultant. “There’s Republicans, and there’s Democrats. And then you almost have to go and find the third-party people, which is Trump people.

All of a sudden, anyone connected to Trump — or who could plausibly claim to be — could refashion themselves as a high-priced Washington influencer. Courtovich was among the few Washington influence peddlers with a link to Trump’s inner circle. In the final stretch of the 2016 campaign, he’d begun working for Michael Flynn, the retired three-star U.S. Army general who became a top national security adviser to the Trump campaign. On Nov. 8, 2016 — Election Day — Courtovich’s firm used its contacts in the media to publish an opinion article about Turkey and Fethullah Gulen written by Flynn in The Hill.

Courtovich’s ties to Trump ran primarily through Flynn. Following Trump’s election, Courtovich worked to burnish his connections to the incoming White House. In mid-November, he hosted a post-election party at his “Hill House” featuring his “world famous lasagna” and a vodka-and-pineapple cocktail known as a “Stoli Doli.” Besides the regular crowd of reporters and operatives, guests included a slate of Trump-connected figures, such as Nick Owens, a behind-the-scenes operator in Trump’s presidential campaign; Patrick Fleming, an aide to Trump’s future Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo; and Bijan Kian, who was Michael Flynn’s business partner in the Flynn Intel Group. Courtovich set off to parlay these Trump contacts into clients and revenue. And it worked.

By touting his relationship with Flynn, who would soon become Trump’s national security adviser, Courtovich landed a $50,000-a-year contract with a subsidiary of Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-owned bank. Sberbank was seeking to persuade the Trump administration to remove the sanctions that the United States had imposed on it following Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. According to a former bank lobbyist, Sberbank decided to hire Courtovich in January 2017 after the GOP influence peddler made “all these promises, like he has unparalleled access to the Trump administration.” The following month, Courtovich secured a $1.8 million annual deal with Ethiopia after pledging to use his clout in Trump’s Washington to kill a congressional resolution condemning the East African government for alleged human rights abuses. At one point, according to former Trump campaign aide Nick Owens, Courtovich even proposed to the president of Albania that, in exchange for a $1 million fee, he could arrange for him to appear in a photograph with Donald Trump. Though nothing ever came of the proposal, fellow lobbyists were floored by Courtovich’s audacity. “He was selling his access to Trump,” another influence peddler said.

With a growing roster of overseas clients and an existing customer base that included large U.S. corporations like Boeing, Goldman Sachs and Quicken Loans, Courtovich was thriving once again. It was a remarkable achievement. He’d lost his former business partner to suicide, and he’d become enmeshed in a federal investigation into possible corporate fraud. Yet at the dawn of the Trump era, he had a billionaire financial backer in Saudi Arabia, a new $1.6 million party house on Capitol Hill and an influence-peddling firm that was scooping up new clients in an uncertain business environment.

But for this dashing Republican operative, life was about to get complicated.

On Feb. 13, 2017, the Wall Street Journal published a 3,800-word investigation into Morris’ career in Washington. The story, by Brody Mullins — who is also one of the authors of this book — revealed for the first time that the FBI suspected Morris of embezzling “millions of dollars from his company over a decade in a kickback scheme involving Washington consultants he did business with.” Among other things, Mullins found documents showing that in March 2012, Courtovich and Morris agreed to a $2 million consulting contract between Genentech and National Media, a firm where Courtovich worked. A few weeks later, in early April 2012, Genentech made an initial $750,000 payment to National Media. One of Courtovich’s employees then asked National Media’s chief accountant to prepare a $303,048.95 reimbursement check for a business called the Hacker Boat Company, which made and sold Morris’ boat, the Mulligan. Courtovich’s employee said that the check was to pay the costs of a political event Morris organized for the Democratic Attorneys General Association, which was held at the boat maker’s headquarters. On April 6, National Media sent a $303,048.95 check to the Hacker Boat Company. Spokespeople for the Democratic Attorneys General Association and the Hacker Boat Co. said no such event ever took place. When Mullins asked Hacker for the cost of Morris’ boat, the company confirmed it was equal to the exact payment Courtovich arranged: $303,048.95.

Courtovich’s lawyer insisted the veteran media consultant had done nothing wrong. The attorney, Eric Lewis, told the Journal that neither Courtovich nor his firms had ever willingly conspired in Morris’ crimes. Rather, the attorney said, Courtovich had been duped by his late business partner. “Sphere is shocked and dismayed that Sphere’s client provided fake documents that defrauded not only his company but Sphere as well,” Lewis told the newspaper.

Despite the protests of innocence, the Wall Street Journal investigation triggered the collapse of Courtovich’s standing in Washington. Clients — such as Goldman Sachs — cut ties. Members of Sphere’s already-small staff bolted for other jobs. Public officials distanced themselves. Friends avoided him at Washington social functions. Weeds began to grow around the Capitol Hill party house.

The following months, quite surprisingly, brought good news for Courtovich. In late September 2017, the Department of Justice and FBI scrapped the Genentech investigation without bringing charges. The only person who knew everything that had gone on at Genentech — Evan Morris — was dead. Federal prosecutors felt it wasn’t possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Courtovich hadn’t simply been duped into sending secret payments to the Genentech lobbyist, as he’d claimed.

‘Like Everything in My Life I Will Win’

As the legal clouds began to clear, Courtovich was free to refocus his attention on his influence peddling business. In the coming years, he would help the governments of Morocco and Qatar, as well as a presidential candidate in El Salvador, polish their images in Washington. On occasion, he turned up at exclusive social functions, like the invite-only brunch that then-POLITICO owner Robert Allbritton hosted at his Georgetown mansion following the White House Correspondents’ Association’s dinner. Still, Courtovich would never recover the clout he’d possessed prior to Morris’ death, when Washington’s star reporters and senior policymakers crammed into his backyard for French wines and Argentine beef.

In March 2018, the law firm that represented Courtovich and his consulting firm sued for $572,801.87 of allegedly unpaid legal bills. (The law firm dropped its suit after Courtovich agreed to make payments.) Simon Charlton and the Saudi Arabian investors who’d bankrolled Courtovich’s lobbying business sued Courtovich for breach of contract and fraud. Courtovich hadn’t paid back any of the $4 million they’d put into the business, the Saudis said, and he’d refused to provide his business partners with financial statements. More significantly, although the terms of the contract forbade him from doing so, in September 2015 Courtovich had used the Saudi-financed “Hill House” as collateral to secure a $1.3 million mortgage in his own name, according to the complaint. A few weeks later, Courtovich and Zeleny made an $800,000 down payment to purchase a $2.25-million beach house in Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, according to property records.

Other unpaid bills were piling up as well. The landlord of his downtown office space filed a lawsuit claiming Courtovich owed more than $200,000 in rent, taxes and fees. His landscaping company sued him for allegedly failing to pay about $25,000 worth of yard work. His credit card company sued over a $75,000 past-due balance.

As things were falling apart in Washington, Courtovich began spending more time at his new beach house in South Carolina. But here, too, there was trouble. The house parties Courtovich threw angered his neighbors, who complained about the noise. Before long, nearby homeowners began taking their complaints to the Sullivan’s Island Police Department.

In 2017, in an episode that began when police responded to a report of an idling vehicle near Courtovich’s home, two officers approached Courtovich while he was “intoxicated,” according to the incident report. Courtovich was “belligerent toward officers,” an officer said in his incident report, adding that Courtovich was “using profanity words and cursing.” An officer warned Courtovich that if he continued cursing and screaming, he’d be charged with disorderly conduct.

Two years later, at about seven in the evening on Sept. 2, 2019, Courtovich was leaving a local restaurant and bar when, according to a police report, he backed a golf cart at a high rate of speed across two lanes of traffic and slammed into a parked vehicle. Witnesses told police that “there was a lot of commotion from various bystanders … attempting to shout to the male driver to tell him to stop and that he had struck a vehicle,” according to the incident report. “However, the driver did not stop and proceeded down Middle Street.” Police issued arrest warrants for Courtovich for reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident and driving under a suspended license. Courtovich fought the charges for two years before paying fines to settle the matters.

Then, around 11 p.m. on June 6, 2020, two local law enforcement officers arrived at Courtovich’s house in response to a noise complaint. As the officers approached, the front door opened and an intoxicated Courtovich unleashed a “loud boisterous profanity-laced rant” about the chief of the Sullivan’s Island Police Department, according to the incident report. An officer asked Courtovich to turn down the music, and, eventually, someone inside the house complied. The officer said that if they received another complaint, they’d have to issue a citation. As the officers walked to their vehicles, Courtovich remained on his front porch, “yelling profanities.”

Less than a half-hour later, Courtovich called the police and asked to speak with a supervisor. Since they were the only officers working that night, the same officers returned to Courtovich’s home and knocked on his front door. “I wanted a supervisor,” Courtovich told them, as he slammed the door.

At that point, according to the incident report, the officers started to leave. But Courtovich reappeared on the front porch and resumed shouting profanities. An officer told Courtovich to knock it off. If Courtovich didn’t stop screaming and cussing, the officer warned, he’d be arrested for disorderly conduct. “Fuck you,” Courtovich shouted in response, according to the incident report.

And that was it. Courtovich was placed under arrest, driven to the Charleston County Detention Center and booked on a misdemeanor charge of public disorderly conduct. The dashing, gregarious figure who once filled the cocktail glasses of Washington’s elite would be spending the night in jail.

Nearly a year later, Courtovich filed a formal complaint against the arresting officer, Deputy Christopher Hampton of the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office. Courtovich alleged that Hampton didn’t have probable cause to arrest him and was improperly vaping while on duty. The Sheriff’s office agreed with Courtovich, and issued a letter of reprimand to Hampton, who remains on the force.

Despite it all, Courtovich has proven to be as adaptable and resilient as the lobbying industry itself. Today, nearly nine years after the death of his business partner, he remains an influence peddler in Washington. His most lucrative client, the government of Qatar, increased its contract with Courtovich’s firm to $55,000 per month in June 2022. For a time, federal disclosure reports he filed showed that he regularly contacted the reporters who attended his parties to promote Qatar’s interests. But in 2022, he stopped filing the required foreign agent disclosure reports, even as, according to his social media accounts, he continued to advance the interests of Qatar. Following a pre-White House Correspondents Dinner party co-sponsored by the embassy of Qatar in April 2023, for instance, Courtovich posted a picture of the invitation to his Instagram feed. “What an epic night,” he said in the post, “we at Sphere are so happy to have helped it come together.” At this year’s event, according to an attendee, Courtovich was greeting guests at the entrance.

Still, his business is not what it once was. One recent employee said he felt that there was so little work to do that he eventually quit. Courtovich’s onetime Saudi investors continue to pursue a lawsuit against him for the $4 million they say that he owed them from their 2015 investment. Courtovich has disputed the claims. Recently, he turned his Capitol Hill town house into a rental property and sold the Sullivan’s Island beach house. He and Jeff Zeleny are no longer dating.

Before our book went to press, we reached out to Courtovich for comment. He responded by text and email with the swagger he has become known for:

“Im coming after you full guns and that’s why I live where I do and why you live where you do. And that’s why I’ve never worked in a cubicle or taken the metro,” he wrote.

“We are going to the mattress and like everything in my life I will win.”