New Delhi: Washington’s lucrative lobbying industry, often termed as ‘legalised bribery’ by its critics, has found itself at the centre of a fresh debate after newly disclosed US Justice Department filings revealed how Pakistan mounted an aggressive private influence campaign in Washington during the 2025 India–Pakistan crisis, while India’s own documented engagement remained minimal by comparison.
Incidentally, it was the Sunday Guardian that had first revealed in July 2025 reported that Pakistan had contracted at least 13 Washington-based lobbying firms to represent its interests, creating what was described as its largest influence network in the US capital. The campaign, initiated as soon as it became clear that the Trump administration would return to power, included retainers with firms linked to well-connected operatives and foreign relations specialists, and spanned issues from security and trade to broader regional perception management. (Pakistan Builds Largest Influence Network in Trump’s Washington with 13 Lobbying Firms)
A follow-up report in August 2025 showed that, in just the first eight months of the year, Islamabad had already hired at least seven lobbying and legal firms as part of a fast-moving, multilayered effort to open doors with US policymakers and think tanks.( Pak’s lobbying efforts in Washington acquire massive scale)
By October 2025, another report in the Sunday Guardian concluded that Pakistan had quietly channeled nearly PKR 1.9 billion (about USD 6.7 million) into Washington’s influence industry over the course of the year, a sum equivalent to multiple development priorities at home. The operation included million-dollar retainers with top-tier consultancies and strategic advisers that facilitated meetings with Congress, executive branch officials, and US media.
Those disclosures set the stage for subsequent Foreign Agents Registration Act filings that showed Pakistan logged more than 60 interactions with US officials, congressional aides, analysts and media figures, aimed at pressing for American intervention to halt Operation Sindoor after the terror attack in Pahalgam.
The records show that Pakistani diplomats and defence officials pursued over 60 contacts with senior US administration figures, lawmakers, Pentagon and State Department officials, and influential American journalists between late April and May 2025.
By contrast, records from the Indian side demonstrate a far smaller footprint. The Indian Embassy’s filings indicate only four formal outreach contacts on 10 May, the day the ceasefire was announced, with a lobbying firm engaged primarily for media coordination and bilateral communications.
The asymmetry highlighted by these developments underscores a larger structural reality: in the United States, lobbying is not an informal practice but a sophisticated commercial sector worth many billions of dollars each year.
Publicly disclosed federal lobbying expenditures reached approximately USD 4.4 billion in 2024, continuing a steady upward climb that has turned K Street (metonym for the lobbying and influence industry in Washington, DC) into one of Washington’s most dependable professional services markets.
The industry’s durability rests on what firms actually sell. Lobbying businesses market procedural intelligence, access to decision-makers and implementation leverage rather than simple persuasion. They navigate committee jurisdictions, appropriations cycles, regulatory calendars and enforcement priorities for clients ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to foreign governments.
In volatile policy periods as is being seen in the present Trump administration that is characterised by loud bragging and little regard for diplomacy, this expertise commands premium fees, which explains why 2025 brought strong revenue growth for leading firms as clients scrambled to interpret tariffs, trade restrictions and new regulatory initiatives.
A defining feature of the US lobbying economy is the revolving door between public service and private remuneration.
The market is heavily staffed by former members of Congress, ex-senior congressional aides, retired military officers, former White House officials and, in the foreign influence lane, retired diplomats and national security professionals. Their personal networks and insider knowledge are converted into client value through strategy design, introductions and message framing.
This revolving-door structure produces layered incentives.
Serving politicians benefit because lobbyists supply technical input that congressional offices often lack the capacity to generate internally. Senior staffers tolerate the ecosystem because it offers a clear post-government career path where policy expertise can be monetised at a later period.
Executive-branch agencies benefit as well, drawing on industry submissions and outside specialists to understand how proposed rules will function in the real world.
US law tries to manage the ethical risks without dismantling the business. Measures such as the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act mandate regular disclosure of lobbying activity, while statutes like 18 U.S.C. Section 207 imposes cooling-off periods and limits on former executive-branch officials switching sides in specific matters. But those restrictions focus on direct contacts.
They do not prevent former officials from participating in adjacent influence work, which leaves ample room for firms to profit from their experience.
For clients, the return-on-investment calculus is straightforward.
Shaping a single line in tax law, securing a regulatory exemption, clicking pictures with influential individuals, altering procurement design or delaying an adverse rule can be worth far more than an entire year’s lobbying budget. That prospect sustains a parallel economy for retired officials who trade in access and process knowledge, and it also keeps serving diplomats and aides engaged with the system, knowing they too will enter the same marketplace once they leave government.
Transparency watchdogs note that even the disclosure regime leaks. The US Government Accountability Office has repeatedly flagged compliance gaps in quarterly filings, reinforcing concerns about unequal access and policy capture.
Yet, despite these critiques, the business continues to expand because the demand for influence in Washington expands whenever the scope of government expands.
The latest India-Pakistan disclosures have therefore not created a new phenomenon; they have merely illuminated how entrenched the lobbying industry already is. From domestic legislation to foreign policy engagement, the sector sustains a professional class whose economic fortunes rise and fall with every turn of the American political process.
