Wall Street, Washington and Gingrich

By BRODY MULLINS
WSJ

Newt Gingrich and his consulting companies helped financial-services giant Credit Suisse Group gather exclusive Washington information and analysis, showing that the Republican presidential candidate benefited from a practice that has come under fire from lawmakers.

This "political intelligence" business—while legal—also risks muddying the campaign argument by the former House speaker that he has been a Washington outsider since he left Congress in 1999.
In the Running

At a June 2010 lunch, Mr. Gingrich gave Credit Suisse and its clients his take on whether Republicans would back government spending on renewable energy. That fall, Credit Suisse analysts held conference calls with a top official at Mr. Gingrich's health-care consultancy, the Center for Health Transformation, to interpret changes to health-care policy.

And on May 26, 2011, Mr. Gingrich's health-care firm organized a day of private meetings between Credit Suisse analysts and senior Republican congressional health-care policy aides. Though held a few weeks after Mr. Gingrich left to run for president, it was planned while he was running the firm.

(More here.)