Tuesday, June 18, 2024

POLITICO Nightly: The ‘absolute explosion’ of foreign interference in U.S. politics


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BY CATHERINE KIM

Presented by 

Sen. Bob Menendez leaves federal court in New York.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) leaves federal court in New York on June 12. | Pamela Smith/AP

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. 

V   PROGRESSIVE ATTORNEY JESSICA CISNEROS ran against him, but Corporate Democrats rallied around CUELLAR even after the FBI raid, received funds from Pro-Israel donors. Aides pleaded guilty to money laundering etc. Corporate Dems were determined to defeat a PROGRESSIVE, even supporting a crook.  

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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WHAT'D I MISS?

— FBI abruptly cancels Hill briefing on encryption: The FBI has abruptly canceled two large Hill briefings on encryption slated for this week, offering no explanation to the staffers invited, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO. Last week, the FBI invited congressional staff to two virtual briefings on “warrant-proof encryption,” slated for June 18 and June 20. Briefers would have discussed how encryption created challenges for the FBI’s work investigating “violent crimes against children and transnational organized crime,” according to the invitation. The briefings were the second in a series for all Hill staff on FBI “priority topics,” according to a copy of the invitation POLITICO reviewed. The first briefing in the series, held last month, focused on fentanyl.

— Education Department dings two schools for not protecting Jewish, Muslim students: The Education Department has determined that neither the University of Michigan nor the City University of New York properly responded or investigated certain reports of antisemitic and anti-Arab discrimination on their campuses after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Today’s “resolutions” are the first ones issued by the agency’s Office for Civil Rights in connection to incidents that occurred after the sweeping attacks by Hamas. But the Education Department avoided weighing in on specific protest rhetoric, including chants of “from the river to the sea” and “intifada,” that have been deemed antisemitic by Jewish groups and played a major role in congressional hearings about campus antisemitism.

— New Jersey AG charges Democratic power broker George Norcross in bombshell indictment: New Jersey’s attorney general today charged one of the state’s most powerful Democrats and his allies in a sweeping indictment alleging a long-running corruption scheme. The charges against businessperson and Democratic organizer George Norcross are groundbreaking. He has long been the subject of scrutiny by law enforcement and a political task force, but has never been charged. The indictment, brought by Attorney General Matt Platkin, portrays years of extortion and threats. According to the indictment, Norcross “led a criminal enterprise whose members and associates agreed the enterprise would extort others through threats and fear of economic and reputational harm and commit other criminal offenses to achieve the enterprise’s goals.”

NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024

AD BLITZ — The Biden campaign announced today that they would be spending $50 million through the end of June on advertising, a significant blitz that includes their first ad that goes directly after former President Donald Trump’s felony conviction.

Biden’s campaign says it wants to more clearly define the choice between the candidates ahead of the first debate between them in Atlanta on June 27, reports The Associated Press.

ON THE SHORTLIST — Donald Trump Jr. is urging his dad to pick a “fighter” as his running mate, reports POLITICO. The elder Trump is locked in a general election that will be decided at the margins, where a candidate who could appeal to women or voters of color could boost his chances. And whomever he taps must muster the mettle to shine in a high-stakes vice presidential debate later this summer.

All of that is a tall order, but Trump has a long list of options . His campaign is vetting eight potential candidates: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Florida Rep. Byron Donalds, New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

Vance, Burgum and Rubio are in their own higher tier, according to multiple Trump allies granted anonymity to speak freely. But who’s up and who’s down seems to change by the week.

 

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AROUND THE WORLD

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court.

Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich stands in a glass cage in a courtroom at the Moscow City Court on Dec. 14, 2023. | Dmitry Serebryakov/AP

CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC — A Russian court announced today it will hold the espionage trial of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich behind closed doors beginning in late June .

The 32-year-old American journalist has been detained in Russia for more than a year on allegations of spying for the CIA, a charge that the newspaper describes as “false and baseless.”

The Russian court detailed the charge in a statement today, saying that “Gershkovich, an American journalist for The Wall Street Journal, on the assignment of the CIA, collected secret information in the Sverdlovsk region on the activities of the defense enterprise JSC NPK Uralvagonzavod for the production and repair of military equipment.”

“The trial will be held behind closed doors. The first court hearing is scheduled for 26 June 2024,” the Sverdlovsk Regional Court said in the statement.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, said today that contacts had taken place with the United States over a possible prisoner exchange involving Gershkovich, Reuters reported.

TARGET PRACTICE — NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced today that more than 20 members of the transatlantic alliance will meet defense spending targets this year, a major issue as Republicans accuse European partners of not contributing their share to the common defense.

Speaking in Washington today, the Norwegian diplomat said he planned to inform President Joe Biden during their meeting later. The announcement comes four months after Stoltenberg projected 18 countries would meet the goal.

“This is good for Europe and good for America,” he said at an event hosted by the Wilson Center think tank.

 

JOIN US ON 6/26 FOR A TALK ON AMERICA’S SUPPLY CHAIN : From the energy grid to defense factories, America’s critical sites and services are a national priority. Keeping them up and running means staying ahead of the threat and protecting the supply chains that feed into them. POLITICO will convene U.S. leaders from agencies, Congress and the industry on June 26 to discuss the latest challenges and solutions for protecting the supply lines into America’s critical infrastructure. REGISTER HERE .

 
 
NIGHTLY NUMBER

175,000

The number of cannabis convictions that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued pardons for today, in one of the country’s most expansive efforts to provide relief to people with old nonviolent offenses. Maryland legalized possession and sales of marijuana for adults on July 1 of last year, after voters overwhelmingly backed a referendum.

RADAR SWEEP

BACK TO THE FUTURE — The writer John Ganz had grown up believing that his entire family had managed to escape the Holocaust. But in 2018, an old college professor of his discovered in a database that he had two relatives who did not make it out. One relative was jailed as a political prisoner in 1934 and then murdered at Auschwitz almost a decade later. This revelation set off a journey for Ganz — to acquire German citizenship and learn more about this side of his family’s history, which his older relatives never discussed. In Harper’s, he explores these topics and what it means to be connected to family.

PARTING IMAGE

On this date in 1986: President Ronald Reagan announces the resignation of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (far right) during a briefing at the White House. Reagan said he would nominate Justice William Rehnquist (second from right) to the post of Chief Justice and Antonin Scalia (left) as a new member of the Supreme Court.

On this date in 1986: President Ronald Reagan announces the resignation of Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (far right) during a briefing at the White House. Reagan said he would nominate Justice William Rehnquist (second from right) to the post of Chief Justice and Antonin Scalia (left) as a new member of the Supreme Court. | Dennis Cook/AP

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