Mueller fuels foreign lobbying crackdown

Source: The Hill | December 31, 2018 | Morgan Chalfant and Alex Gangitano

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation has given federal prosecutors momentum to litigate alleged violations of what until last year was an obscure law governing foreign lobbying.

In the course of his now 19-month probe, Mueller has uncovered a web of alleged criminality linked to violations of a World War II-era law enacted amid concerns over foreign propaganda.

Mueller has obtained guilty pleas under the law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), from two of President Trump’s 2016 campaign aides, Paul Manafort and Richard Gates. Both pled guilt to charges linked to their lobbying work on behalf of pro-Russian forces in Ukraine.

Mueller has also referred cases falling outside his mandate to other U.S. prosecutors.

One of those referrals resulted in the guilty plea last summer of GOP consultant Sam Patten, an associate of Manafort’s. Patten pled guilty to illegally lobbying on behalf of a political party in Ukraine called the Opposition Bloc, the successor to Russia-backed oligarch Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Patten has been cooperating with Mueller and other federal officials and prosecutors are expected to give an update on his case by Monday.  

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Manhattan are said to be accelerating an investigation into Washington, D.C., firms that helped Manafort lobby on behalf of Yanukovych, raising the possibility new charges could be filed in the future.

And government prosecutors in Virginia are poised to lay out their case against a former business partner of Michael Flynn, Trump’s one-time national security adviser. Flynn is expected to be a witness against his old partner, who is charged with illegally lobbying on behalf of the Turkish government.

The developments have had a chilling effect in Washington among lobbyists and consultants.

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