Thread by @DanielSchulman

Some interesting history on the Foreign Agents Registration Act, under which Sam Patten was charged today, courtesy of MoJo's @dfriedman33
motherjones.com/politics/2018/…

Prior to 2017, when Mueller charged Paul Manafort & Rick Gates with FARA-related crimes, the DOJ had brought just 7 cases—in 50-plus years.

That’s not because there is an lack of unregistered foreign agents running around Washington. In fact, there has been an explosion of them.

But the Justice Department’s FARA unit is not equipped for enforcement. The FARA office last year told us that it had just 9 employees.

This is how the FARA office typically deals with violators, which it often discovers by reading news reports

Because of almost non-existent policing of the law, lobbyists haven’t been too concerned about violating it. Here’s how Paul Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, characterized the FARA charges against his client last year: “We look at it as just failing to file some forms.”

The Mueller probe, and the cases spun off from it, have utilized FARA to an unprecedented degree. Lobbyists have scrambled to make sure they’re in compliance nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m…

But the flurry of recent FARA activity means little in terms of reining in foreign influence peddling. Once the Mueller investigation ends, so, likely, will the focus on secret foreign lobbying