Atlanta-based firm Alston & Bird is playing a supporting role in a blockbuster drama over domestic spying on organizations considered hostile to President Donald Trump's agenda. But exactly what that role is remains unclear, and the firm won't shed light on it.

A New York Times report that went online Saturday found that Erik Prince, the security contractor who is a sibling of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has been helping right-wing activist group Project Veritas by recruiting former spies to help infiltrate teachers unions and Democratic congressional campaigns.

A note that Alston & Bird served as the conduit for a $1 million donation to the controversial organization appeared halfway through the article.

The firm told the Times that Alston & Bird "has never contributed to Project Veritas on its own behalf, nor is it a client of ours," declining to comment on the source of the contribution. A spokesman did not respond to an inquiry from the American Lawyer on Monday.

Project Veritas was founded in 2010 by conservative provocateur James O'Keefe, the same year he was convicted for entering a federal building under false pretenses. Three Harvard University professors referred to the group as a "right-wing disinformation outlet" in their 2018 book on manipulation in American politics.

The Times report focused on the organization's efforts to infiltrate the Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers and the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA officer elected to Congress as a Democrat in 2018. Prince, the former head of Blackwater Worldwide and an occasional informal adviser to Trump administration officials, allegedly recruited intelligence veterans to help guide Project Veritas staff.

Other previous targets of the group include Planned Parenthood, NPR and the Washington Post.

A search through federal records validates Alston & Bird's assertion that it has not represented Project Veritas in any litigation. But other Big Law firms have not shied away from working on behalf of the controversial group: attorneys from Am Law 100 firm Womble Bond Dickinson and Am Law 200 firms GrayRobinson and McCarter & English have all represented the firm in various pieces of federal litigation.

Alston & Bird, meanwhile, has previously appeared in another Trump-era controversy, one with origins well before the 2016 election. The firm registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to advise a public relations firm working on behalf of the Russian Federation in 2014, and a 2019 CNN report said that it has worked on behalf of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a business contact of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, since 2003. 

That 2019 report focused on another Alston & Bird mystery client: a foreign government-owned company that was challenging a mysterious grand jury subpoena related to the Robert Mueller investigation. While details of the matter remained cloudy even as the case rose to the U.S. Supreme Court, one of the few things reporters were able to ascertain was that Alston & Bird represented the business. 

The firm opened up its 12th office last year, adding London to earlier international outposts Brussels and Beijing. In addition to its capabilities in litigation, deals and regulatory work, Alston & Bird hosts an influential D.C. lobbying team led by former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas, and former Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-North Dakota. In 2019, it brought in nearly $8.5 million in lobbying revenue from 64 clients, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

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