Mr. Caperton said the Barnes Group had no contact with the Department of Justice and couldn't remember whether senators or representatives were contacted or just staff members.
Mr. Caperton said the firm worked for Mr. Armstrong for about three months, but, after arranging meetings on Capitol Hill, decided a full-scale lobbying effort wouldn't have worked.
Kent Caperton, principal of the Ben Barnes Group, said in an interview that his firm was hired in July 2010 on Mr. Armstrong's behalf for a lobbying effort aimed, in part, at raising concerns about Jeff Novitzky, a Food and Drug Administration special agent who was leading the investigation into Mr. Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service cycling team.