Barry Bennett is embroiled in a civil claim by Republican consultant Ying Ma, and sources say that investigators are also looking at his foreign work.
A judge has ordered that one of the most prominent lobbyists of the Trump era, Barry Bennett, have his business assets partially frozen, according to court filings reviewed by POLITICO.
Earlier this month, a court sent Bennett formal notice that a default judgment was entered against him — meaning, because he did not comply with court orders, he is liable, and the only remaining legal issue is how much he owes in damages to a Republican consultant who sued him.
Bennett was campaign manager for Ben Carson’s 2016 campaign and then advised the Trump campaign. After Trump’s election, he and Trump’s former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski opened a lobbying shop just blocks from the White House called Avenue Strategies. The firm’s international wing, Avenue Strategies Global, represented a host of big-spending clients over the years, including Citgo, Ukrainian politician Yulia Tymoshenko, and the governments of Qatar and Zimbabwe.
But things have changed. Just weeks after President Joe Biden’s inauguration, Avenue Strategies closed down. Bennett opened a new lobbying firm, Bennett Strategies after Avenue Strategies shuttered. And now, according to the court documents POLITICO reviewed, a judge in Maryland has ordered Bennett’s assets partially frozen to satisfy the judgment entered against him and ruled that he owes damages to Republican consultant and pundit Ying Ma, who also worked on Carson’s campaign.
Bennett is one of a number of Trump World denizens to find Beltway-area fame followed by messy legal entanglements.
In March of 2019, Ma sued Bennett and Avenue Strategies Global in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Maryland, alleging that they violated a contract with her by declining to pay her finder’s fees for bringing in clients and backing out of a commitment to make her a partner at the firm.
On April 13, 2021, Ma asked the court to freeze Bennett’s assets. Her filing said Bennett failed to comply with an earlier court order to participate in discovery, causing “significant, unnecessary delays and expenses to this matter.”
Then Ma went further.
“Aside from breaching his contractual commitments to Plaintiff, Defendant has willfully attacked the character of Ying Ma … by engaging in dishonesty and defamation before federal authorities in a federal investigation for which he has been implicated (Plaintiff intends to file a separate complaint on the defamation charge),” the filing reads. “Bennett has attempted to defend his illicit activities to federal authorities by, among other things, falsely accusing Ying Ma, a patriotic American citizen, of being an intelligence asset of the Chinese Communist government.”
Ma alleged that this accusation against her demonstrated his “pattern of sleaziness and illegal behavior” and might have kept her from getting a government job that required a security clearance.
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A judge has ordered that one of the most prominent lobbyists of the Trump era, Barry Bennett, have his business assets partially frozen https://t.co/3tclNNuBbR
— POLITICO (@politico) May 21, 2021
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