Updated 1:16 p.m.

Three lawyers from the law firm Sidley Austin LLP with white-collar and export sanctions experience have registered to lobby for the Chinese telecom Huawei Technologies Co. as the company faces federal regulatory and enforcement scrutiny and uncertainty over the scope of future U.S. sales.

Washington-based senior counsels Thomas Green and Robert Torresen will advocate for Huawei with Sidley partner Mark Hopson, a white-collar trial lawyer, according to a new registration. The lobbying registration was the first ever for each of the Sidley Austin lawyers.

Torresen focuses on export control and economic sanctions, and Green, a prominent criminal defender, formerly managed Sidley Austin’s white-collar practice group in Washington. Green is on the defense team for Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aide and business associate of Paul Manafort’s who pleaded guilty and cooperated in the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

Sidley Austin’s lobbying registration said the firm will advocate on “export controls, trade and economic sanctions, and other national security-related topics.” The effective date of the registration was July 1. The contract broadens the firm’s work for the embattled Huawei, which is suing federal agencies in two cases and more broadly fighting the Trump administration over restrictions on U.S. sales amid escalating trade tension between China and the U.S.

“We are not going to do business with Huawei. And I really made the decision. It’s much simpler not doing any business with Huawei. That doesn’t mean we won’t agree to something if and when we make a trade deal,” President Trump said Friday.

In May, the Commerce Department said Huawei is “is engaged in activities that are contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interest.” Reuters reported last week that the U.S. Commerce Department was reviewing whether to grant certain special licenses that would permit some sales to the company.

Green declined to comment Monday about the firm’s lobbying work.

Thomas Green Thomas Green of Sidley Austin. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ ALM)

Sidley Austin lawyers representing Huawei sued the Commerce Department in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in June over the seizure of company equipment that had been en route to China. Huawei alleged several pieces of its equipment “remain in a bureaucratic limbo in an Alaskan warehouse” after the federal government seized the property two years ago. Litigation partners Frank Volpe and Griffith Green are on the team with two associates, Matthew Letten and Ava Guo.

Separately, the company turned to the law firms Jones Day and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius to file a federal lawsuit in Texas against a group of federal agencies. The complaint, filed in March, confronts the constitutionality of provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act that preclude federal agencies from purchasing specified Huawei equipment and services.

Sidley Austin lawyers are on the defense team representing Huawei and the company’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, in a pending criminal case the Justice Department announced in January. Huawei “employed a strategy of lies and deceit to conduct and grow its business,” government lawyers contend in the case, filed in Brooklyn federal district court.

Prosecutors have moved to block Sidley Austin partner James Cole from representing the company in the case, arguing that an earlier role as the Obama-era Justice Department’s second-in-command presents an unspecified conflict of interest. Huawei has fought the government’s effort to disqualify Cole.

Huawei has relied on at least two other major U.S. law firms—Jones Day and Steptoe & Johnson—for federal lobbying.

Both firms said in registration filings this year they were advocating on issues that included “foreign investment, government purchasing, and security-related issues arising pursuant to the National Defense Authorization Act, and in connection with matters at the Department of Commerce and the White House.”

Sidley Austin reported $3.7 million in federal lobbying revenue last year and $4.3 million in 2017, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The firm has long had a lobbying presence in the nation’s capital, but it is not among the top 10 law firms in the influence arena.

The firm reported earning $500,000 in lobbying for Hikvision USA in the second quarter this year on “prohibitions on certain video surveillance equipment in the National Defense Authorization Act (HR 5515) and other potential legislation.” Sidley Austin lobbied for Mastercard this year on issues including data security and anti-money laundering, and a team from the firm advocated for Purdue Pharma this year on “patient access to abuse deterrent pain relief drugs.”

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