Interview: Lobbying
#79: Casey Michel
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Casey Michel is an author and the Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation. His new book is FOREIGN AGENTS: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World. Our questions are in bold, his answers in block quotes.
What’s lobbying?
Lobbying is, at its core, very simple - it's encouraging legislators to push policies that you want to see enacted, for whatever the cause or concern might be. In the U.S., it is a constitutionally protected right - right there, in the First Amendment, is the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." This is just a dated way of saying that any American has the right to contact their legislator on behalf of whatever cause they want, and to encourage legislators to pass policies therein. It can be for anything: environmental protections, health care reform, gun rights, whatever. But it is perfectly legal, and protected by the U.S. Constitution.
How big is this industry in the United States?
The lobbying industry in the U.S. has grown far bigger than the country's Founders ever predicted. It's now a multi-billion dollar industry, with entire firms dedicated to acting as lobbyists who will work for anyone. These lobbyists come from all walks of life, and include everything from PR and law firms, to consultancies, to even former members of Congress and the White House, who leave office and instantly become lobbyists trying to sway their former colleagues. And it's not just in Washington. In state capitols across the country, and even in many municipal governments, lobbyists work day in and day out to push policies that their clients want - and often do so with extremely little transparency into their operations.
In the most basic sense, how can foreign dictators turn money into political influence? Is this a new phenomenon?
None of this is necessarily new, at least in terms of domestic lobbying. This kind of domestic lobbying actually began almost as soon as the U.S. gained its independence, with the first instance of organized lobbying coming from Revolutionary War veterans trying to obtain back-pay from the Washington administration. During the 19th century, the term "lobbyist" came into being, and by the middle of the 20th century lobbying had come into its own as a profession. It wasn't until the late 20th century that we saw the modern form of lobbying emerge, marrying both traditional lobbying with political consultancy, but if you drill down to the core of the industry, you can see how it remains similar to the kinds of lobbying networks the country saw decades, even centuries, ago.
But what is new is how the foreign lobbying industry has exploded in recent years - and transformed the lobbying industry as we know it. These are the American firms and figures who aren't working for American clients, but are instead working for foreign clients, opening the doors of Washington (and elsewhere) to foreign regimes, foreign oligarchs, foreign companies, and foreign proxies in the process. These are clients who the Founders never anticipated taking advantage of constitutional protections - but who, thanks to legal protections, can hire as many American lobbyists as they want to sway American legislators, target American populations, and push American policies that benefit these regimes.
This is now a multi-billion dollar industry unto itself - and only continues to grow year after year. And almost every country and regime around the world now takes advantage of these foreign lobbyists, spending bottomless amounts of money on fleets of lobbyists to open the spigots of American financial aid, American military aid, and much more to benefit foreign regimes - and to gain access to the highest rungs of American political power in the process.
What role do (former) politicians play?
It's difficult to overstate the role of former politicians in the world of foreign lobbying - and just how many former officials leave office to become foreign lobbyists (or as they're legally known, "foreign agents"). There was a headline in Politico not long ago that summed up this pattern: "Want to be a 'foreign agent'? Serve in Congress first". We now have over 100 former members of Congress who left office and immediately signed up to represent not American clients, but foreign clients - selling themselves to the highest bidders they can find. And these former members of Congress, or even the White House, apparently have no standards in terms of who they'll represent, or any concerns about things like democracy and human rights. They represent the most heinous regimes on the planet - places like Saudi Arabia - or even the kinds of oligarchs that we know are proxies for places like the Kremlin.
For instance, one former official I write about - former Sen. Bob Dole, who was the GOP nominee for the presidency in 1996 - left office and immediately became a foreign lobbyist not only for authoritarians in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also for Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch considered one of Vladimir Putin's closest allies. Dole took significant sums to open doors in Washington for Deripaska - and, in the process, extend the Kremlin's influence and interference networks in the U.S.
This is only one case of dozens, even hundreds, more. And all of this is perfectly legal, and broadly bipartisan. And it's all been going on for years.
How effective are existing lobbying laws?
There's one primary set of regulations facing foreign lobbyists. This is a regulation passed in 1938 called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. That legislation is very simple. It doesn't ban foreign lobbying; rather, it simply requires these foreign lobbyists to disclose what they're doing, and who they're representing, and how much money they're making in the process. That's it. They simply have to tell the Department of Justice, who will then publicize the information for the rest of us.
It's a phenomenal piece of legislation - very progressive, very pro-transparency, even decades later. There was only one problem: for decades, FARA was effectively ignored. It was unenforced well into the 21st century. Which meant that foreign agents could do whatever they want, and never disclose what they were doing, and not have to worry about any consequences. This is one of the key reasons the foreign lobbying industry exploded as much as it did - because legislators were so asleep at the wheel for so long.
Now, that has thankfully started changing, and we've seen multiple prosecutions in just the past few weeks that are trying to enforce basic foreign lobbying laws. But we're going to be playing catch-up for years.
What else could be done to prevent influence-peddling?
FARA is a great piece of legislation - but it's not a panacea. Because as we've seen in recent years, foreign influence campaigns have discovered new ways of targeting and influencing American legislators, and Americans writ large.
The most obvious area for much-needed reform is transparency in the think tank sector. American think tanks have transformed into go-to vehicles for foreign influence, taking in millions of dollars (that we know about) from foreign regimes. But even then, we still don't have a full picture - primarily because think tanks don't actually have to comply with FARA. They are total black boxes of foreign funding and foreign influence. And given the key roles think tanks play in creating American policy, they're a ripe target for foreign regimes trying to shape that policy.
It's no surprise that we've seen multiple scandals at multiple think tanks in recent years on the receiving end of this kind of foreign funding. There was the scandal at the Brookings Institution, where the president was forced to resign because of financial links in Qatar. There was a scandal at the Center for American Progress, which was a supposedly pro-democracy group accepting significant sums from the dictatorship in the UAE. Just recently, we saw a new indictment for another think tanker, Sue Mi Terry, who was accused of (among many other things) hiding South Korean funding from her think tank colleagues, who had no idea they were being bankrolled by Seoul - and, of course, pushing pro-Seoul interests along the way.
The time has absolutely come for think tanks to reveal who they're taking foreign funds from. Again, this doesn't have to be made illegal - but it must absolutely be transparent.
What’s a question you wish you were asked and what’s your answer to it?
I'm not sure if it's a question, but one thing I want to emphasize is this: it's not just American adversaries who are doing this. American partners around the world are engaged in these same kinds of influence-peddling schemes. China and Russia may get the headlines - and there might be plenty in my book about both - but this is hardly limited to autocratic enemies. Just recently, many of the new indictments have come from what America's supposed partners have been doing. I mentioned the South Korea case a moment ago, but just recently Sen. Bob Menendez - the former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the most powerful senator in terms of crafting American foreign policy - was convicted of conspiring to become a foreign agent. It was the first time in American history we've ever seen anything like this, and a spectacular case and conviction. And it was all on behalf of an American partner: the military dictatorship in Egypt.
Or look at the other indictment in Congress right now, accusing Rep. Henry Cuellar of being an outright foreign agent, and selling out his country in the process. Cuellar wasn't allegedly taking staggering sums of money to work on behalf of Venezuela or Iran - he was instead doing it on behalf of yet another supposed American partner, the dictatorship in Azerbaijan.
Again and again, these regimes have realized just how wide open the US is to these foreign lobbying and foreign influence schemes. And it's not just the usual suspects. Country after country has realized that American lobbyists, and even American politicians, can be bought - and, as a result, we all pay the price.
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Should Twitter/X count as a foreign agent, seeing as its used by many foreign governments to directly or indirectly influence US policy?
Written with fine clarity and objective presentation.