FOREIGN AGENTS

A timely exposé of American lobbyists who degrade democracy and weaken human rights.

In the spirit of Progressive Era muckrakers, Michel, an investigative journalist and author of American Kleptocracy, reveals the shamelessness, venality, and moral turpitude of those who work to influence federal legislators and the public in order to advance antidemocratic foreign interests. These foreign agents include public relations, law, and consulting firms and former governmental officials. The author traces the origins of the problem to Ivy Lee, who, in the 1920s and ’30s, launched the public relations industry, and Paul Manafort, whose work in the 1980s spurred “a new age of unrepentant Americans willing to sell their services to dictators and autocrats abroad.” Lee worked for Nazi Germany and, prior to that, “whitewashed” the Soviet Union, while Manafort earned his infamy by enabling Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He also served as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, was later convicted of numerous crimes, and subsequently was pardoned by the president he helped elect. Trump, Michel notes, was “the first president to solicit foreign aid for election help.” Though working in distinctly different eras, Lee and Manafort emboldened an industry that enhances despots by exploiting the “right to petition” elected representatives. As the author shows, foreign governments also collaborate with universities, nonprofit foundations, and think tanks to burnish their image, change U.S. law, and undermine opponents. Remedial legislation, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the Lobbying Disclosure Act, is mostly ineffectual. This is an industry without a moral compass, and Michel’s outrage is palpable and justified. Any thoughts that foreign lobbying produces benefits for the U.S. seem farcical. “It may be time to…finally bar Americans from lobbying for foreign regimes,” he writes.

A provocative and alarming account of the political cesspool known as foreign lobbying.