The firm was founded in 1991 by Haley Barbour and Ed Rogers, who had worked with each other in the administration of Ronald Reagan. Lanny Griffith joined the following year, and the firm was named Barbour Griffith & Rogers.[5][6]
The firm had close ties to the Republican political establishment[5] and by 1998 had been named by
Fortune Magazine as one of the most influential lobbying firms in Washington.[7]
Barbour publicly stated that he had divested himself of his stake in the company after his election as governor of Mississippi in 2004. The New Republic, however, received a copy of the blind trust he set up, which revealed shares in the parent company that owned BGR at the time. TNR reporters stated they observed Barbour entering the DC offices of BGR in June 2007.[8] Bloomberg reported that Barbour was set to receive $300,000 per year from the trust.[9] Several of the firms involved in cleanup of
Hurricane Katrina in Mississippi were also clients of BGR.[9] Barbour still retained the trust, which regulatory filings revealed had grown to a market value of $3.3 million by 2008/2009.[10] He returned to the firm full time in 2012.[11]
The firm rebranded from Barbour, Griffith & Rogers to BGR Group in the early years of the Barack Obama administration because it wanted to portray itself as bipartisan.[11] According to Rogers, the firm's revenue had declined after Obama's election as clients perceived it would lose influence.[11]
BGR has worked for numerous Russian firms to the
Vladimir Putin regime and
Russian oligarchs. In 2016, BGR worked for
Alfa-Bank and hired
Mandiant to support Alfa-Bank.[22][23][24] In 2021, BGR Group received $600,000 from
LetterOne, an investment company associated with the Vladimir Putin regime in Russia.[25]
BGR has lobbied on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2016, BGR Group signed a contract worth $500,000 to provide "public relations and media management services for The Center [for Studies and Media Affairs at
The Saudi Royal Court], which includes both traditional and social media forums".[26] BGR dropped Saudi Arabia as a client following the
assassination of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. BGR was being paid $80,000 monthly for "public relations and media management services".[27] Chairman Ed Rogers had been notified by The Washington Post (Khashoggi's employer) that if BGR continued to do business with Saudi Arabia, the paper would no longer run his column.[28]
^Добровольская, Лили (Центр «ТИ — Р»); Хаммер, Дэвид (WWLTV Channel 4) (August 2, 2018).
"Как лоббировали газовый бизнес Александра Волошина в Луизиане и Техасе" [How did the lobbying occur for the gas business of Alexander Voloshin in Louisiana and Texas]. Transparency International - Russia: Russians in America (in Russian).
Archived from the original on November 29, 2018. Retrieved November 19, 2018.{{
cite news}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (
link)