Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused Vice President Kamala Harris of inaction as Christian Armenians faced ethnic cleansing at the hands of Muslim Azerbaijanis last year — inaction that was spurred by a network of Azerbaijani foreign agents with ties to the Democratic Party.
On Sept. 19, 2023, Azerbaijan invaded the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, inhabited primarily by Armenian Christians, beginning a swift offensive effort that led to almost all 120,000 inhabitants of the territory fleeing westward for fear of death. Shortly after the Azerbaijani military launched its assault, foreign agents paid by various arms of Azerbaijan’s government began blasting out thousands of emails to lawmakers and key players in the Biden-Harris administration attempting to squash domestic backlash to the attack on Armenian Christians, according to Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) records.
While Azerbaijan currently retains six U.S. firms to do its bidding, BGR Government Affairs and the Friedlander Consulting Group did the heavy lifting running cover for the Caucasian oil state following its invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh, FARA filings show. In the months following the offensive, BGR sent hundreds of emails, arranged meetings and made phone calls advocating for Azerbaijani interests. Friedlander Consulting, meanwhile, sent thousands of emails and organized meetings between key policymakers and members of the Azerbaijani government in the wake of the attack.
Both Mark Tavlarides, the primary BGR lobbyist working for Azerbaijan, and Ezra Friedlander, the head of Friedlander Consulting, have considerable ties to the Democratic Party.
Tavlarides served in the Clinton administration first as a legislative staffer in the Department of Defense and later as director of the White House National Security Council, according to his LinkedIn page. He has also donated nearly $30,000 to primarily Democratic political committees this election cycle, disclosure forms show.
Friedlander, meanwhile, has a history of working in Democratic politics in New York City, according to his company biography, and often reposts pro-Democratic messaging on his X account.
“These men, women and children, terrified for their lives, left behind entire worlds: their schools and shops; their fields, flocks, and vineyards; the cemeteries of their ancestors,” Harvard University professor Christina Maranci wrote of the exodus of Armenians spurred by the Azerbaijani offensive. “The United States and the European Union speak loftily of universal human rights, but did nothing for nine months while the people of [Nagorno-Karabakh] were denied food, medicine, fuel, and other vital supplies.”
Friedlander, whose firm receives $41,666 per month to represent the Azerbaijani government, started his public relations campaign for the country just days after it began to push ethnic Armenians out of their homes — setting up a meeting between House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Gary Palmer of Alabama with the Azerbaijani ambassador on Sept. 27, 2023, to discuss “developments in the South Caucasus,” disclosures show. The following day, Friedlander began working to arrange meetings between Azerbaijani embassy staff and various congressional offices, including, among others, those of Republican Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance and Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, who sits on the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Vance, in an October 2023 congressional memo, raised concerns over the “the rapid overthrow of the ceasefire agreement in Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijan and the exodus of an ancient Christian community.”
Friedlander’s actions were preceded by Democratic New Jersey then-Sen. Robert Menendez introducing a Senate resolution on September 21, 2023, requesting humanitarian assistance for displaced Armenians, calling for the United States to sanction the Azerbaijani officials who orchestrated the attack and laying out actions to deepen America’s strategic ties with Armenia. The Azerbaijani foreign agent acted quickly, emailing virtually every Senate office eight days later urging them to oppose the resolution eight days after it was introduced, disclosures show.
It is unclear what Friedlander sent to these senators, however, as there are no emails included in his firm’s FARA disclosures that mention the Senate resolutions or that match the date of those communications. Regardless, the resolution never made it out of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, according to legislative records.
The resolution, which was co-sponsored by a bi-partisan coalition of senators, pointed out how Azerbaijan had indiscriminately used rockets and cluster bombs against civilian targets and maintained a blockade that stopped roughly 90% of food from entering Nagorno-Karabakh. In addition to killing Armenian civilians, the invading Azerbaijani forces also destroyed Armenian churches and desecrated cultural heritage sites.
“The notion of Christians being persecuted in the Karabakh region or any other region in Azerbaijan is false,” Friedlander told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Even the Prime Minister of Armenia publicly stated that literally days after the mass exodus last September. The guilty party was the illegal separatists who encouraged the Armenian population to leave. The world has forgotten that it was the Armenians who illegally occupied Karabakh although it is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan and in fact hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis that were forcefully expelled from Armenia and from Karabakh are still listed as international displaced persons by the UN, which issued four resolutions calling on Armenia to leave Karabakh.”
In one communication to policymakers, Friedlander stressed that Christians in Azerbaijan are allowed to celebrate Christmas in Azerbaijan. Freedom House, however, gave Azerbaijan a religious freedom score of zero in 2023, pointing out that faith groups must register with the government and are subject to surveillance. Members of religious communities that attempt to operate without government approval have been subject to torture and imprisonment.
Tavlarides, the Azerbaijani foreign agent working for BGR, began his work for the country in November 2023, reaching the staff managers of the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees to discuss the Armenian Protection Act of 2023, legislation that would bar Azerbaijan from receiving U.S. security aid for the next two years, disclosures show. The legislation passed the Senate by unanimous consent shortly after but has since stalled in the House amid an aggressive lobbying campaign from Friedlander, Defense News reported.
“This bill actively harms the normalization process between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” a mass email Friedlander sent to hundreds of House offices in February reads. Friedlander went on to deny that Azerbaijan engaged in ethnic cleansing and to remind lawmakers of Azerbaijan’s close relationship with Israel.
Tavlarides is a donor to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Friedlander is a practicing Jew who frequently posts about his support for Israel. Israel and Azerbaijan have a strong strategic relationship, with the latter providing the former with oil in exchange for guns.
In addition to attempting to influence lawmakers on behalf of the Azerbaijani government, Friedlander and Tavlarides also worked to influence the Biden administration’s response to the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis, according to disclosures. The latter sent Assistant Secretary of Defense Rheanne Wrikkala an email in February expressing opposition to Senate Resolution 540, which would have requested that the Secretary of State provide a report investigating if Azerbaijan has engaged in human rights abuses and assessing if security assistance to the Caucasian nation should continue.
Tavlarides’ letter stressed Azerbaijan’s support of Ukraine and Israel, the country’s history of cooperation with the United States and the importance of America maintaining commitment to its allies, without mentioning the humanitarian abuses in Nagorno-Karabakh, disclosures show. He sent similar communications to a number of House offices. Tavlarides also reached the State Department on behalf of the Azerbaijani government in January, asking it to oppose amendments to the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act that would restrict military assistance to the country, probe its relationships with Iran and Russia and call on it to release all prisoners of war and captured civilians.
Tavlarides also attempted to arrange a meeting between the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. agency that handles some European diplomatic affairs, and the Embassy of Azerbaijan, records show.
Friedlander, meanwhile, contacted the State Department in early 2024 and the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2023 to provide them with information about Azerbaijani cultural events, according to disclosures.
Tavlarides and Friedlander often extended offers to connect government officials with Azerbaijani diplomats at the end of their emails. Neither foreign agent responded to requests for comment.
Even as Azerbaijan escaped sanction for its invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh thus far, it has continued to expand its influence network in D.C., FARA filings show.
As the House considers legislation to strip Azerbaijan of American military aid, the country’s embassy hired Skyline Capitol to represent it in June, agreeing to pay the firm $50,000 per month for its services. Skyline Capitol is led by the recently-retired Republican former Utah Rep. Chris Stewart, who sat on the House Foreign Affairs and the Intelligence Committees. Stewart’s firm specializes in defense and foreign affairs lobbying.
After leaving Congress, lobbyists tend to leverage the connections they made while on the hill to deliver better representation to their clients which, in this case, happens to be a nation experts have accused of ethnic cleansing.
“Foreign governments don’t deserve a veto over U.S. human rights policy — a core American value,” Armenian National Committee of America executive director Aram Hamparian told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Azerbaijan, in particular, should not be allowed to enforce a gag-rule against American condemnation of its ethnic cleansing of at-risk Armenian Christians.”
Azerbaijan is allegedly asking lobbyists not to represent it without registering under FARA, which would mean that the American public would not be privy to what agents of the foreign nation were saying to officials, Politico reported Thursday night. Two lobbyists, speaking anonymously, said they had declined to work with the country because they believed it was prompting them to violate federal law.
A representative from the Azerbaijani Embassy stressed that the country’s “work with the companies is within the respective U.S. legislation.” They also accused Armenia of ethnic cleansing and argued that Azerbaijan has a tradition of multiculturalism and religious tolerance.
The Department of Defense, White House, BGR and the Azerbaijani Embassy did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. The State Department declined to comment.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect comment from the Azerbaijani Embassy.
Featured Image: Dante Meloni
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