Street journal about the fall of a k street renegade. What was it about . About a top lobbyist a big u. S. Company, and how he essentially used his huge lavish lifestyle and spent a ton of money on cars and real estate how fast terrible end. Why did you get on this story . About thisrumors guys lifestyle for a wild area other newspapers or organizations could cover the story before i could. While andwe take a think broad investigative stories take longer. About a year later i started look into his life and into his campaign donation. Some video from 2012. And itrris is his name is 20 seconds. It is critical women on the west coast have an opportunity. We will see the Fourth Annual west coast event of the year. Evan morris. He was born in long island new york in queens, went to Union College, was a Political Science major. U. S. Ands of people in the came to washington, where he did some internships. Entered in 1996. It was a prime job. I think he was an all that she was in late all he was in awe. He prevented some of them in the white house. After graduating college he went , where a lot at gw of political wannabes go. Close to the center of power, political power. He landed his first lobbying job. Very democratic, very connected top democratic members of congress. From there he moved over and got a top lobbying job with a swiss drug company. Too long he was head of the office. Making lots of money, he had a huge budget, lots of perks. And he had connections. With two names in the story, how do they relate to . A swiss global pharmaceutical company. Investment in 2009, roesch and renamed it essentially they are the same company in the u. S. Back then. What got your attention on this in the first place . I heard rumors among lobbyists downtown about this who haderful lobbyist been seeming to live a lavish lifestyle. His time as a lobbyist, he belonged to eat golf courses, costs 100,000 to join. Francisco. San he was all over the place. Kept a separate set of golf clubs at each course. It isnt unusual for a , butngton lobbyist to have the amount of money he seemed to be spending was extraordinary. You said you heard about it over a year ago. I heard the story about a year ago and waited to what reporting was sure if there was a story. If a big washington lobbyist spending a lot of money, that stuff happens all the time, we had to figure out what made this different or a story for wall street journal. Brian kickback scheme, is that a fair way of characterizing this . Brody yes, that is when we started to think we had a story. He went from a guy who could have been making a sevenfigure salary from his company, couldve had a lot of stock options, couldve come from family money, spending money lavishly to once we heard there were potential kickbacks, then it seemed as if we might be onto a real story. Brian your story was the full page, which is not that usual for wall street journal. Brody not anymore. Brian this is one of the biggest u. S. Investigations since jack abramoff. Brody what they are trying to figure out who was involved in kicking money back to this lobbyist. In the course of 10 years as a top lobbyist, he had 100 individual lobbying firms that employ a total of 600800 individual lobbyists, so that was just on the contracts he had with publicly disclosed lobbyists. Then he had media consultants, ad buyers, campaign consultants, and all sorts of other vendors. What investigators are trying to figure out is who among those could have been steering some of the lobbyist Company Money back to himself . Brian how did he operate as a lobbyist . What kind of things did he do . Brody even at a young age he was an extremely successful and smart lobbyist. He had the ability to play the washington chess game and figure out what were the right moves to make. His first and perhaps biggest success was when a drug to treat the avian flu, which was going to be potentially a problem in the u. S. In 20042006, people had died overseas and people in the u. S. Were getting worried. He was able to start a campaign for promoting some of these stories and fears that americans have about the avian flu. From his point of view as a lobbyist, once voters were concerned, they started talking to members of congress. Then members of congress started getting concerned, and then the bush administration, with the help of congress, created a huge stockpile of vaccinations for the bird flu. The key part of the story is that evan Morriss Company made the single biggest treatment for, tamiflu. So his efforts on avian flu produced 2 million in sales for his company. Brian here is Chuck Schumer at a News Conference talking about tamiflu. We have a shortage of tamiflu. Every expert says that you should cover 2540 of the nation. The president wants to cover 15 at most. That is rolling the dice. [end of video clip] brian this is during george w. Bushs administration. Back to what you said earlier, there were stories coming out of europe about the avian flu and the need for tamiflu. It is hard to accuse senator schumer in this process, but when you see that, what is your reaction . Do you think that is what evan morris generated . Brody what evan morris was trying to do is take the fear of the avian flu that was coming from overseas and stoke them in the u. S. To get members of congress to react. It was a little bit of a perfect storm where a bunch of things had to break in his favor, but he hired media consultants, he did lots of polling, he went out there and he hired consultants around the country who could generate new stories, not wall street journal or the new york times, but smaller papers that would be easier to get a story into. Then somebody would read it and call their Congress Member about seeing the story. That would motivate the member of congress to try to act on their behalf. Brian what happened to the sale of tamiflu . Brody in the u. S. It shot through the roof. They had it couple different federal purchases of tamiflu. The first one was a little short of 1 billion. The federal government also decided it was wise to not just have a stockpile in washington, but they needed one in california as well. So they started a federal state joint program where the federal government would kick in more money to help states stockpile. Every state now has a separate stockpile of tamiflu. On top of that, tamiflu expires. Every few years you need to buy some tamiflu to keep up your stockpile. If there ever is an outbreak of avian flu or another flu strain, they do have the stockpile. It just turns out we never had the epidemic. Brian you tell me if this is right, i got on the roche website and i think i saw that they do 50 million of business a year. Is that right . 50 billion. Brody thats right. Sometimes they post their earnings in swiss francs, so the translation can get lost. They have hiv drugs, they have a very popular and successful Cancer Treatment drug. They have everything across the board. Brian heres some video from 2014. The reason for this is that Hillary Clinton is speaking at the biotechnology Innovation Convention in san diego. It is not long, but why was she there . How did evan morris plan this . Brody one of the things we have in the story is that because of his connection with the clintons, because of his white house internship, he was very interested in helping bill and Hillary Clinton in their political careers. He sought to raise money for the Clinton Foundation, he sought to raise money for Hillary Clintons president ial campaigns and her Previous Senate campaign. He was a big fan and wanted to be in their orbit. One thing he was able to do is in the brief time between Hillary Clinton leaving the state department and running for president , she accepted paid speeches which obviously were all over the most recent president ial campaign. One of the speeches that she accepted was for bio which is the trade association which represents genentech among others. Brian how much was she paid to go there . Brody it was 335,000 for a short speech. [begin video clip] sec. Clinton pharmaceutical Companies Moving out of the country is something i do not want to see. Simply because of some kind of taxes [applause] [end video clip] brian who would have been in the audience . Brody i believe there were thousands of employees at the pharmaceutical industry and biotechnology industry. Bio represents a growing number of Biotechnology Company that produced drugs. All across the board again. They are talking to some washington people, sales representatives, doctors, people up and down the supply chain. Brian who would have paid that money to have her there . Brody the fee was paid directly by bio, and they collect fees from its members, including genentech. The story is that evan morris as the top lobbyist for genentech was writing an annual check to bio just to be a member. Then some of that money would go to the annual convention, but would also go to hiring keynote speakers. Brian im looking at the digital version of your story which was different from the version i first read in wall street journal, the actual newspaper. Why is there a difference . Brody there is a difference in the online story and the story in the paper. The online story is not restricted by the amount of space we have in the newsprint. The more advertisers you have, the bigger the paper, the more space there is for stories. The internet has no such space constraints. Increasingly, stories that deserve more space than they are getting in the paper can run longer online. In our case, the story online was 4000 words and came out the day before the paper version. Which is also an interesting change. The paper version was around 3000 words. Brian so if somebody wants to look at the story, they can find it on february 13 instead of february 14 . Brody correct. If you just type in Brody Mullins or k street renegade it will come up. Brian how long have you been at the wall street journal . Brody 12 years. I write about businesses and lobbyiss and how they get their money. I try to follow how Companies Use money and lobbyists to change regulations to help their companies or hurt their competitors in many places. How companies and lobbyists spend money in elections to elect the people they want in power. Try and lift the curtain of the largely unseen world on how Companies Get their way. Brian let me read some of this back to you. Evan morris and his wife, a former schoolteacher, made more than 125,000 in personal Campaign Contributions from 2003 to 2015, the records show. The couple donated to nearly 50 lawmakers, almost all democrats. Mrs. Clinton was a top mr. Morris helped the biotech organization the higher mrs. Clinton to address the convention in 2014, and we talked about 335,000 she was paid. He arranged donations to the Clinton Foundation of between 110,000 and 275,000. Ofn you found that, first all, how did you find that stuff . All of that information is publicly available. The donations to the Clinton Foundation are made public on a voluntary basis by the Clinton Foundation. The speech money Hillary Clinton made was made public voluntarily by the clintons. The federal Election Commission and maintains records for Campaign Donations to federal candidates, and i think we had figures that evan moore spent on lobbying. And maintains records for Campaign Donations to federala lot of that is discd through the house and senate. Brian he organized for a democratic lawmaker at a golf club in new jersey. He invited donors to meet and take photos with mr. Clinton who just finished a round of golf. That was not public. That was something i bumped into in my own reporting. The point of that scene is to show not only did he say he knew the clintons, but he knew bill clinton well enough to be able to flag him down, to get the people he was golfing with and arrange for a quick photo op. How old would he have been roughly . Around 32. Ts say he ran the lobbying office. How many people were working for him . Timects at the end of his in 2015, he had well over 100 lobbyists working for him both within the company and contract lobbyists, people who work for their own lobbying firms. How much was his yearly budget . Budget was about 50 million in 2015. Brian so genentech wouldnt tell you that . Brody i spent many months talking to people who used to work with evan morris or continued to work with him. A lot of people give us different parts of the story that we had to piece together. Brian did you ever talk to evan morris . Brody no. Brian he lived in this area through the process. Where did he live . Brody he lived in a 1. 7 million house. People of his stature who have a job like that it is probably runofthemill. He put in 1 million into home renovations. He had multiple porches. He had a huge wine cellar. He had multiple porsches. Brian you said he bought a 2000 bottle of wine at some dinner . Brody yes, his favorite bottle of wine was at its cheapest 2000. Bottle of wine at some dinner . Brody yes, his favorite bottle of wine was at its cheapest 2000. That was one of his favorite wines. He was a wine connoisseur and collector. He had thousands of bottles of wine in his house. One of the anecdotes we have in the story is that one day he went to lunch with a fellow lobbyist and ordered a 2000 bottle of wine. When they finished that, the restaurant delivered another equal value bottle of wine for free. Brian when you started to do this article and you talked to genentech, what did they tell you they knew and did not know . Brody i want to stay away from the sausagemaking process on how the story was reported. We had conversations with genentech and they provided statements to us that we included in the story. Brian but they worried about this story . Brody yes, they were worried like any company would be worried about one of their employees. The guy was a Senior Vice President , not some noname lowlevel employee. The Vice President of their own company, who for years had been embezzling millions of dollars from the company and the company was more worried about their brands and their reputation even more than the money that was stolen. Brian if you go to a point where you take the tamiflu story, how much of what he generated and you say 1 billion in revenue, how much of his technique actually did that . Brody great question. It is very hard to figure out. One of the reasons it is hard to figure out is that the lobbyist evan morris liked to tell tall tales and in villages role in certain actions. For example, he would tell anyone how close he was with the clintons. He said he had Hillary Clintons cell phone number. I doubt that some of that is true. I think it is unfortunate, but like any good lobbyist in washington, when something goes your way, you take credit for it. He made a lot of the moves to help roche win the tamiflu business. I think some of it could have come from outside of his doing. Brian i want to go to the clip we saw earlier from evan morris back in 2012 at the woman of the year of event. What would his role have been in the Health Care BusinessWomens Association and the women of the year . Did genentech give money to this kind of thing . Brody it is hard to tell. But he would like to do using genentech money is hand out lots of money to charities and charitable foundations. The Leukemia Society or this organization. Part of that is what any big company does, particularly in a pharmaceutical or health care state. If you want to create allies and help get the support and research that they are doing. It all seems like sometimes he had an all tier your motive in giving money, and in the case of the california group, i cannot figure it out. He liked to be a player. He liked to throw a lot of money around. He liked to be interviewed on television. Brian lets go and see what he looks like and what he sounds like. [begin video clip] we are very happy at genentech that this is our fourth year hosting the event. We think it is critical that went in on the west coast get to attend. You know, not everyone has an opportunity to travel. We are proud to host the Fourth Annual west coast event for woman of the year. [end video clip] brian in your experience, how many people like him in a city Like Washington i dont mean they are breaking the law or anything or embezzling, but how many had this kind of money available to them to spend on charitable events and dinners and stuff like that . Brody certainly hundreds of them, maybe thousands. I would not think it is more than 10,000. But, you know, one of the things that has happened to washington in the past couple decades as the government has gotten so powerful and plays such an increasing role in the industry is that Companies Large and small need to come to washington to influence policy even if they are not actively pushing policy, Companies Need to know what washington is doing because it has a great impact on Business Decisions you will need to make in the corporate boardroom. Brian how much of the federal government has gotten involved in the story . Brody so far it is mainly the Health Care Regulatory agencies, fda which approves a bunch of drugs in the roche and genentech market, as well as rescinded approval for a drug. The health and Human Services department, in charge of tamiflu stockpile. Brian has there been a grand jury . Brody there is a grand jury looking into this. Brian still meeting . Brody yes. Brian how long has it bee