| The lobbyist, former Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.), waged a nine-month campaign to bolster VEB's image in Washington and avoid potential sanctions. The lobbying effort sheds light on the lengths to which some Russian interests have gone to escape sanctions since the Ukrainian conflict began eight years ago. VEB hired Sweeney in 2019 to lobby on "potential new sanctions legislation" that could it affect its activities, according to a copy of the contract filed with the Justice Department. The contract paid Sweeney $62,500 a month — a high fee even by the bloated standards of K Street. The work ended in May 2020. Part of Sweeney's value: He had ties to the Trump administration. He'd worked on Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and served on his transition team. (Sweeney would go to work on Trump's 2020 campaign, including Trump's efforts to challenge the election results, according to the Albany Times-Union. Rudy Giuliani told reporters the day after the election that Sweeney had "been going around the country collecting" information on election irregularities on Trump's behalf.) Sweeney's lobbying campaign on behalf of VEB targeted the highest levels of the Trump administration. He called top White House aides including Mick Mulvaney, Mark Meadows and Kellyanne Conway to discuss sanctions, according to disclosure filings. He spoke several times with Eric Ueland, the White House legislative affairs director, and Brian Jack, the White House political director. And he tried to set up meetings for VEB's chairman with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and several lawmakers. The offices of three Republican senators Sweeney contacted told The Early that they never met with VEB. VEB had been under sanctions since 2014, when the Obama administration imposed them in retaliation for Russia's invasion of Crimea. But the bank was facing an additional threat in 2019: Members of Congress introduced two new Russia sanctions bills that VEB worried would deepen its troubles. The bank tried to convince lawmakers that it had restructured its operations since 2014 and should not be subject to additional sanctions, according to Sweeney and a person familiar with the matter. Sweeney also argued that Democrats were trying to impose sanctions on Russia "to bash the president in an election year." "This sustained layering of sanctions on Russia has produced unintended consequences," he wrote in a January 2020 op-ed for RealClearDefense. "The critical flaw in pursuing this policy is overuse — nobody has stopped to look at what pulling the same lever over and over again is doing. Because of that shortsightedness, we have not contemplated the long-term effects, so China took advantage of our perpetual focus on Russia and rushed in to fill the void." The argument didn't work. Sweeney reported talking about sanctions three times with Alex Willette, Trump's White House deputy political director. But Willette said on Wednesday that he didn't recall any specific conversations with Sweeney and that he had no responsibility for any sanctions policy. VEB did manage to secure a meeting in 2019 with aides to Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who introduced one of the sanctions bills with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). VEB asked "to be removed from the Senators' legislation, but we were not willing to make the change," according to a Van Hollen aide. "Obviously we were not particularly successful," Sweeney said on Wednesday in a brief interview. Still, neither sanctions bill ever came up for a floor vote, giving VEB a measure of relief — until Biden imposed sanctions this week. | 
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