UNDER THE TABLE — The trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) includes all kinds of sordid details — with Menendez accused of taking a luxury car and gold, among other gifts, in return for allegedly divulging sensitive information about U.S. policy towards Egypt and U.S. diplomats in Cairo. But New Jersey’s senior Senator is also only the latest in a growing number of lawmakers and government officials who have been accused of an illegal relationship with a foreign entity. Just this May, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was indicted for allegedly accepting $600,000 in bribes from an oil and gas company based in Azerbaijan and a bank in Mexico. In exchange, Cuellar allegedly agreed to influence U.S. policy in favor of Azerbaijan and pressure Executive Branch officials on measures that would be beneficial to the bank. The FBI and Manhattan prosecutors are also probing whether a construction company with ties to the Turkish government improperly raised money for New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ 2021 mayoral campaign. Dating back to the Trump administration, multiple officials were accused of improper relationships with foreign countries; former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort ultimately pled guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent of the government of Ukraine. So what’s behind this surge of foreign cash allegedly influencing U.S. politics? Are public officials simply getting more brazen in their interactions with foreign governments? According to Casey Michel, author of the upcoming book Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, illegal foreign influence has been entrenched in our political system for decades — but it’s happening now more than ever. Foreign lobbying of all sorts is a big business in the U.S., with countries and other entities spending over $5 trillion since 2016 to influence U.S. policy and burnish their own images. And despite bipartisan interest, attempts at reform have largely stalled out thus far. Now, though, a confluence of factors including the Justice Department getting more aggressive on the issue, have led to this recent series of high-profile indictments. To better understand how foreign actors influence our politics and what their own goals are, Nightly spoke with Michel. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Are we seeing an uptick in foreign interference in our politics through lobbying? And if so, why is that the case? We have seen an absolute explosion in recent years in terms of the scope and the scale of both foreign lobbying as well as foreign interference — without any kind of precedent in American history itself. And that’s for a few reasons: You had folks in Washington asleep at the wheel as it pertained to both the regulations and even the potential threat to these kinds of unchecked foreign lobbying. On the ground, there was a proliferation of Americans willing to provide foreign lobbying services beyond just traditional lobbying to authoritarian regimes, who were realizing just how wide open Washington was. It was really in the mid-2010s when things began to shift. And finally, folks started paying attention and realizing what the cost of ignoring these networks for so many years truly was. Foreign lobbyists and the industry itself had blossomed around Washington to no longer include even just traditional lobbyists themselves, but now include things like PR shops, consultancies and law firms. In your book, you point to the Trump administration as a turning point for foreign lobbying. Why is that? In American history, we’ve never seen a figure like Trump who had nearly as many foreign financial entanglements and relations with foreign governments — especially authoritarian governments — that have proven themselves more than willing to use that relationship for their own benefit. Russian interference in the 2016 campaign has seen plenty of ink spilled about it. But it was by no means limited to Russia. It’s Saudi financing of the Trump Organization, the Trump family, especially Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. It is Emirati financing in similar networks. It is investment partnerships from figures in places like Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan. It is seeing officials from places like Nigeria or Malaysia directly patronizing Trump hotels. Again, all of this is helping to bankroll former President Donald Trump himself. The other element is, ironically it was the Trump administration that didn’t focus necessarily on the traditional lobbying shops themselves, but actually turned its focus on American think tanks and American universities as these centers of foreign lobbying networks. It wasn’t until the Trump years and a congressional and then Department of Education investigation that there were billions of dollars — six and a half billion dollars — discovered in undisclosed donations. The credit goes not to Trump, the president, but to his administration. Which countries have we seen ramping up their foreign lobbying to the U.S.? In recent years Russia has gotten plenty of headlines. But this has been extending to authoritarian regime after authoritarian regime around the world. Certainly, China has some of the deepest pockets involved, and there are plenty of law firms and lobbying firms that have worked on behalf of the regime in Beijing. We’ve also seen that extending into large-scale donations to universities that can then transform into mouthpieces for Chinese talking points. But certainly in recent years, especially, we have seen an explosion in terms of total financing for foreign lobbyists from Gulf dictatorships — especially like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the Emirati case, they’ve really pioneered the hiring of not only former elected officials but also military officials, to then act as lobbyists on their behalf. What about Turkey, which has been making headlines because of its connection to Mayor Eric Adams and most recently Rep. Jamaal Bowman? It does seem like they are ramping up. I think Turkey is an excellent case study in the fact that it’s not just these malign dictatorships in Moscow or Riyadh or Dubai that are using these networks. It’s also American allies. I mean, Turkey is obviously a NATO ally of the United States of America, but it is still engaging in these kinds of subterfuge, in terms of foreign lobbying and foreign interference. The Turkish government has been doing this for years and years. But it does seem like finally a lot of folks in Washington and elsewhere have woken up to the threats of and the realities of foreign lobbying. I’m sure it is different by country, but what is the end game for many of these regimes? Influence? Reputation? It is reputation laundering. It is whitewashing the images of these regimes themselves to try to transform them from being despotic, dictatorial governments that suppress basic freedoms and civil liberties for the population, and transforming them into benevolent autocracies that are transitioning into democracy and that are providing more and more rights for their citizens by the day. It’s also gaining access to policymakers on the ground in places like Washington. Because at the end of the day, what is most important for these regimes is to make sure that American policy is implemented or is shifted for the benefit of those regimes themselves. These regimes want nothing more than to remain in power. They want nothing more than to continue enriching themselves and their inner circles and their family members. This is why the case of Bob Menendez of New Jersey is so fascinating. He’s accused of conspiring to act as a foreign agent on behalf of the government in Cairo, Egypt. And that wasn’t just reputation laundering. That was directly accessing Bob Menendez, who has been the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to let the Egyptian government know what voting decisions were taking place, to pass along highly sensitive information, and to sway Menendez’s other colleagues in the Senate to make decisions that benefited the regime in Cairo. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at ckim@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @ck_525.
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