LegiStorm

Dressing to impress and wearing the right flag pin might help you land a job on the Hill, but sometimes all you need is a good pair of genes. 

Congressional staff salary records released over the Thanksgiving holiday show several internships awarded to relations of members and staff. While it is against federal law for members of Congress to hire family members as staff, it is common for family members to hold positions in other offices.

Rep. Bill Flores' (R-Texas) son, William H. Flores Jr., held an internship with former Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) in 2014 and with the Joint Economic Committee earlier this year. He now works at Citizens Against Government Waste as director of online communications. Rep. Flores has a good relationship with CAGW, earning a 91% rating from the organization and was touted on their website recently for making a movie about wasteful spending called "Porkies."

Brandon Fields is son of former Rep. Cleo Fields (D-La.) and began an internship with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C) in September. He currently attends George Washington University after transferring from Fordham University, where he played football as a quarterback.

Dion Lawson, whose father is a financial administrator for the House, had an internship with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) in September. Salary records show Lawson being paid more than $1,000.

A lobbying firm with a history of supporting Israeli groups and causes has picked up an unlikely client - a Lebanese political party.

The New York-based Friedlander Group, headed by Ezra Friedlander, filed lobbying disclosures recently which show the Lebanese Option Party as a new client. The LOP is a relatively new political party in the country, having been formed from a Shia movement in 2007. It positions itself as an opposition party to Hezbollah, the militant Islamist political party designated a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel. In 2013, a LOP member was shot and killed during a protest against Hezbollah.

The LOP is headed by Ahmad El Assaad, who has also founded an organization called Saving the Next Generation which aims to combat the waves of extremism that have followed the Arab Spring. The party does not hold any seats in Lebanon's unicameral parliament, but does unofficially align itself with the March 14 Alliance, an opposition party which controls slightly less than half of the seats in parliament.

According to the filing, the Friedlander Group is lobbying the U.S. Agency for International Development on behalf of the LOP. While the firm has close ties to Israel and Israeli clients, they also have represented a diverse slate of clients, including the government of Japan and the Qatari businessman Hassan Ali Bin Ali.

On its website, the LOP is critical of what it perceives as the "Jewish Lobby" in the United States and its role in fostering an environment for "Islamized" movements abroad. The LOP further laments that an "Arab Lobby" did not exist before Sept. 11, 2001 and partly blames divisions in the Arab world for that inaction.

Israel and Lebanon are officially still in a state of war and view each other as enemies. 

Perhaps following the motto of "never settle," a former legislative assistant for Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) has left Congress to take a new position as a lobbyist for Verizon.

Josh Lynch left Fischer's office this fall and didn't waste time filing a lobbying filing for the telecommunications giant. Lynch has a background covering telecom issues in Congress and took several industry-sponsored trips while working for Congress. He also served as a staffer on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee of which Fischer is a member.

Lobbying disclosures reveal that Lynch will be covering issues related to spectrum usage policies and privacy/data security issues for Verizon.

He joined Fischer at the end of 2013 from Rep. Marsha Blackburn's (R-Tenn.) office where he had also worked as a legislative assistant since 2011. Prior to his stint in the House, Lynch had previously worked in the Senate under Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) beginning in 2008.

A House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer has left the Hill to become a partner with energy and environmental consulting and lobbying firm AJW Inc.

Michael Goo served as the Democratic staff director on the Energy and Power Subcommittee under Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) since late 2014. He joined the subcommittee in mid-2014 as senior energy and environmental counsel.

Goo's move to AJW marks his third departure from Congress since he first served as Democratic counsel on the House Energy and Commerce Committee in 2001. He held that position for four years before switching chambers and joining the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in late 2005 as counsel. Goo was promoted to senior counsel a year later and held the position until August 2007.

Goo returned to the House in 2009, joining the now-defunct Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming before leaving again in 2011 for the Environmental Protection Agency. At the EPA, he served as an associate administrator for the Office of Policy for two-and-a-half years. In 2013, he moved to the Department of Energy as a senior adviser, yet the position lasted less than a year and Goo returned to the House in 2014.

A hearing clerk for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has switched her frequency over to the private sector and joined the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International.

Lauren Corcoran joined APCO in October as a government relations associate after a little more than four years working in the Senate. She joined the Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce and the District of Columbia subcommittee as chief clerk in 2007. After eight months, Corcoran moved to the Financial and Contracting Oversight Subcommittee for another six months as chief clerk. She joined the full committee under then-chairman Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) as hearing clerk in August 2013.

Before joining the Senate, Corcoran worked for the State of Delaware in the attorney general's office under Beau Biden as an intern, and later in the Delaware Senate as a legislative fellow.