Sam Patten

W. Samuel Patten is an American political consultant, lobbyist and author. Initially starting his career in Maine, he would go on to advise high-profile political figures worldwide.

He received particular international attention in 2018 in relation to the Special Counsel investigation led by former FBI director Robert Mueller. He ultimately took a plea deal and was sentenced for failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department when he represented the Opposition Bloc, a Ukrainian political party, from 2014 through 2018.

Patten was born, raised and currently resides in Maine. His father is Bill Patten Jr., whose mother was the Washington, D.C. socialite Susan Mary Alsop and whose father was later alleged to have been the British politician Duff Cooper, with whom his mother had an affair. His father published a small-town weekly newspaper in Camden, Maine and became a prison minister.

Patten graduated Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in 1993. While at Georgetown, he became close to his grandmother Susan Mary Alsop, and was once wounded while defending her from muggers.

Patten married in 2013.

Patten began his political career in Maine as an intern for Senator William Cohen and as press secretary for Susan Collins during her campaigns for Governor (1994) and Senator (1996).

In the mid-to-late 1990s, Patten did public affairs work for the Kazakhstan oil sector.

In 1999 he worked for Senators Collins and Olympia Snowe in Washington, D.C. He was the Maine campaign director for the George W. Bush presidential campaign in 2000. From 2001 to 2004 Patten headed the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute; while there he worked with Konstantin Kilimnik, who later moved to Kyiv to work for Paul Manafort's consulting business in Ukraine. Patten worked for the U.S. State Department in 2008. In 2012, he advised Rob Sobhani on his U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland.