New Orleans (CNN) The Justice Department will boost its pursuit of foreign influence operations, in part by appointing a prosecutor who worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's team to lead a revamped unit that will crack down on unregistered foreign agents, the head of the department's national security division said Wednesday.

The initiative at the Justice Department to pursue violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires that an entity representing a foreign political party or government file public reports detailing the relationship, will be overseen by Brandon Van Grack, who left Mueller's team in recent months to rejoin the national security division.

Van Grack's appointment to the newly created position and the Justice Department's interest in expanding its pursuit of foreign influence cases stemmed largely from the impact of Russian operations on the 2016 presidential election, John Demers, the head of the national security division, said Wednesday at a conference on white-collar crime.

With Van Grack's new role, the Justice Department will shift "from treating FARA as an administrative obligation and regulatory obligation to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority," Demers said.

He also pointed to the impact of a recent settlement with one of the country's highest-profile law firms -- Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP -- on the department's decision to escalate its enforcement in that area.

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