Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said last year that the Justice Department and the FBI "have been seriously lax in enforcing" the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Congress Foreign lobbying overhaul loses steam in Congress Amid partisan clashes and pushback from foreign-owned companies, the push to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act appears to be going nowhere fast.

When Paul Manafort was indicted last year for failing to register as a foreign agent, lawmakers vowed to crack down on people who skirt the rules on lobbying for foreign interests.

Nearly a year later, amid partisan clashes and pushback from foreign-owned companies, the push to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act appears to be going nowhere fast.


“There’s these very fierce efforts to maintain the status quo,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), one of the lawmakers pushing to overhaul FARA, said in an interview Monday.

Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges including failing to register with the Justice Department for his work in the U.S. on behalf of Ukraine’s former president. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecution of Manafort has drawn attention to the law he admitted to breaking, which was first passed in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda efforts.

Johnson’s bill, which would toughen enforcement by giving the Justice Department more power to go after people who fail to register, came amid heightened interest in cracking down on foreign lobbyists. An identical bill was introduced in the Senate last October, and this summer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) proposed stopping Americans from lobbying on behalf of foreign governments and companies.

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But Johnson hasn’t gotten a vote from the full House on his bill, and the Senate version hasn’t even made it out of committee. Nor have Warren’s or a separate House bill that gives the Justice Department more authority to investigate suspected violators.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats alike have complained the DOJ hasn’t made enforcing FARA a priority.

“Given recent Russian and other efforts to influence our elections, this law has never been more important,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who sponsored the Senate companion bill to Johnson’s legislation, said last year during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the law. “Unfortunately, it appears that the Justice Department and the FBI have been seriously lax in enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act and for a long time.”

The Justice Department says that since FARA came under scrutiny, there has been a substantial uptick in foreign-agent registrations under the law, and the DOJ has issued twice as many advisory opinions about FARA to the industry this year as it had a year earlier.

Johnson’s proposal and its Senate companion hit roadblocks when they drew opposition from companies based abroad, which feared the changes would force their lobbyists to register as foreign agents — which would require them to disclose every meeting and phone call they made on behalf of overseas clients — rather than under the less-restrictive disclosure rules for domestic lobbyists.

Dozens of foreign-owned companies have lobbied Congress on the matter in recent months, according to disclosure filings, from the defense contractor BAE Systems to foreign automakers such as Honda and Volkswagen. One company lobbying on the legislation, the medical-device firm Medtronic, was headquartered in Minnesota until a few years ago, when it bought an Irish company and moved its headquarters to Dublin as part of a “tax inversion” that slashed what the combined company paid in U.S. taxes. Medtronic declined to comment.

Johnson has said his bill is aimed at requiring foreign companies with U.S. subsidiaries to disclose only lobbying that benefits foreign governments or political parties. But Washington lawyers with expertise in FARA say many foreign companies have reason to be concerned.

Forcing foreign companies with U.S. subsidiaries to disclose every lobbying contact to the Justice Department “is going to do very little to shed light on foreign lobbying activity,” said Robert Kelner, who leads Covington & Burling’s election and political law practice. “It’s just going to create a lot of additional work.”

Ten companies based overseas have gone so far as to form a group called the Fair FARA Coalition to fight the bill. (The coalition does not disclose its members.)

Timothy Jenkins, a lobbyist who represents the coalition, said his group is working on an alternative proposal that he said would limit which companies would have to register under FARA.

While Johnson’s bill has attracted two Democratic co-sponsors, several Democrats voted against it when the House Judiciary Committee approved it in January. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) asked at the time why Democrats should give new powers to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department, “which is abusing — showing disrespect for — the rule of law.”

“Democrats were confused at first when Mike Johnson initially offered his legislation,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the good-government group Public Citizen, which supports toughening the law. “They didn’t understand what it was and why the Republicans would be pushing it. I got a call from Mike Johnson’s staff asking me to lobby Democrats to get some Democrats on board.”

Johnson’s bill hasn’t moved forward since it made it out of committee, but Johnson said he was optimistic that it would come up for a vote, perhaps as soon as the lame-duck session after the November elections. And if it does, he’s confident it will pass.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to want to go on record opposing disclosing foreign influence,” he said.

The Senate, meanwhile, has made even less progress on FARA legislation.

“I continue to urge Senate leadership to consider this legislation and will keep working across the aisle to advance measures to combat disinformation meant to sow divisions and threaten our democratic institutions,” Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), who co-sponsored a separate bill, said in a statement.

Still, there’s at least one indicator the bill could pass: Lobbyists are still lobbying against it.

The Organization for International Investment, a trade group representing foreign-owned businesses, circulated a draft proposal of changes it would like made to Johnson’s bill earlier this month, which was obtained by POLITICO.

Nancy McLernon, the trade group’s president and chief executive, said the trade group is trying to shape the bill to minimize the impact on its members rather than kill it outright.

“We share the concern of foreign governments or political parties influencing our political system without a doubt,” McLernon said. “What we’re trying to do is [make] sure those companies representing commercial interests are not caught in the crosshairs.”

