Blamed US for ouster, Imran hires lobbying firm for ‘good relations' with Biden
Imran Khan alleged that the United States was behind his ouster from office as the Pakistan prime minister. The former cricket captain has often called his successor and incumbent premier Shehbaz Sharif as a puppet of the US.
In the wee hours of April 10 this year, Imran Khan was removed as the prime minister of Pakistan after a dramatic no-confidence vote. The cricketer-turned-politician blamed foreign conspiracy for his ouster, even naming a US diplomat named Donald Lu .According to Khan, Lu had allegedly threatened the Pakistani ambassador in US that there would be implications if the former captain survived the trust vote.
Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan (AFP)
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Th workers of Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf coined the slogan 'Amreeka Ka jo Yaar hai, ghaddar hai (Those who are friends with US are traitors), a jibe directed at the incumbent Shehbaz Sharif government.
In a sudden somersault, the same PTI has now hired a lobbying firm for 'good relations' with the Biden administration.
According to documents being circulated on social media, the lobbying firm Fenton / Arlock LLC is being paid a handsome $25,000 per month to support the party's 'goals' for good relations with the United States and the Pakistani diaspora in the US.
The documents have been unearthed by Uzair Younus, Director of the Pakistan Initiative at the South Asia Center. He said that Fenton/Arlock was also hired by the Pakistani embassy in the US in March this year for $30,000 a month, this when Imran Khan's government was in power.
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When confronted by PTI supporters who argued that the agreement involved the PTI USA and not the one based in Pakistan, Younus shared the screenshot of the document to strengthen his claim that the 'the firm would support the goal of the PTI Pakistan for good relations with the United States and the Pakistani diaspora in the US.'
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When confronted by PTI supporters who argued that the agreement involved the PTI USA and not the one based in Pakistan, Younus shared the screenshot of the document to strengthen his claim that the 'the firm would support the goal of the PTI Pakistan for good relations with the United States and the Pakistani diaspora in the US.'
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The registration statement presented to the Department of Justice says that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf USA does represent Pakistan.
"PTI USA is in certain instances directed by the foreign political party in Pakistan," the statement said, adding that the public relations campaign will be carried out for six months.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/World News/Blamed US for ouster, Imran hires lobbying firm for ‘good relations' with Biden
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