'They're Beefing Up': FBI Takes Expanded Role in 'Foreign Agent' Reviews
"We've gone from 30 mph not to 60 mph but to 90 mph in the last 18 months to two years," Thomas Spulak, a partner at King & Spalding, said in an interview.
December 23, 2019 at 02:37 PM
6 minute read
The original version of this story was published on National Law Journal
Amid the greater scrutiny of foreign influence in the United States, the FBI has taken an expanded role in efforts to ensure lawyers, lobbyists and political consultants are fully revealing their advocacy for government clients, a move that observers said brings a new intensity to compliance reviews that have traditionally been handled by Justice Department staff.
This year, FBI personnel began joining Justice Department officials in inspections authorized under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, a decades-old law requiring the disclosure of lobbying and other influence work for foreign governments. FARA enforcement ramped up over the past three years, as part of the special counsel's investigation of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Lawyers, lobbyists and other advocates are required to file reports detailing their work for foreign interests and allow the Justice Department to review records related to those engagements. The inspections—generally conducted by officials from the Justice Department's FARA unit at the offices of registered foreign agents—are meant to assess not only whether disclosures are fulsome but also whether firms are complying with FARA's record-retention requirements.
NOT FOR REPRINT
© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Law Firms Mentioned
Trending Stories
- 1BD Settles Thousands of Bard Hernia Mesh Lawsuits
- 2First Lawsuit Filed Alleging Contraceptive Depo-Provera Caused Brain Tumor
- 3The Law Firm Disrupted: For Big Law Names, Shorter is Sweeter
- 4The Growing Tension—And Opportunity—in Big Law Nonequity Tiers
- 5The 'Biden Effect' on Senior Attorneys: Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Featured Firms
Law Offices of Gary Martin Hays & Associates, P.C.
(470) 294-1674
Law Offices of Mark E. Salomone
(857) 444-6468
Smith & Hassler
(713) 739-1250