Janus-Merritt Strategies

Janus-Merritt Strategies was a lobbying firm founded in 1997 by conservative activist Grover Norquist and then-lawyer David Safavian, who later became better known as the chief of staff in the General Services Administration and for his conviction in the Abramoff-Reed Indian lobbying scandal.

The firm was founded as the Merritt Group, and later renamed Janus-Merritt Strategies (sometimes referred to as "Janus Merritt" or simply "Janus"). Janus (mythology) was the two-headed god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings.

From the start, the firm had a fiercely ideological tenor: "We represent clients who really do have an interest in a smaller federal government", Safavian said in a 1997 interview with Legal Times. "We're all very ideologically driven, and have a bias in favor of free markets." He went on: "We're not letting people who offer us money change our principles."

Over the next five years, the firm's clients included businesses like BP America, the U.S. division of British Petroleum. There were foreign companies like the Corporacion Venezolana de Cementos and Grupo Financiero Banorte. And there were gaming interests, including those of several Indian groups, such as the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Council (a client the firm shared with Jack Abramoff), and the Viejas Band of Kumeyaay Indians, the National Indian Gaming Association (Janus lobbied for the latter two on the same issue, amendments to the Interior Appropriations Act that were considered anti-Indian.)

The firm was also registered as a lobbyist for the governments of Pakistan and Gabon, and for Pascal Lissouba, the corrupt former president of the Republic of the Congo.

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