VAN GRACK’S NEW GIG: Brandon Van Grack, the first-ever head of the Justice Department’s FARA office and a lead prosecutor for special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, has left DOJ after more than a decade to politico.com/newsletters/po…
become a partner at the law and lobbying firm Morrison & Foerster, where he will co-chair the national security practice and handle investigations and white collar defense. — The FARA unit did suffer a handful of prominent defeats in recent years, however. Former President Barack
Obama’s White House counsel, Gregory Craig, was charged with lying to the Justice Department about his work for the Ukrainian government, but was acquitted in 2019. After the department secured a conviction against one of Flynn’s associates, Bijan Rafiekian, a federal judge later
overturned the guilty verdicts. Under Van Grack, the department saw foreign agent registrations soar as it began issuing more advisory opinions to provide lawyers with guidance on when registering was necessary. Most recently, he was Chief of DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration
Act (FARA) Unit, after serving as a lead prosecutor for Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
As Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Brandon oversaw every criminal investigation involving export control and sanctions and led the DOJ’s response to the Obama Administration’s rollback of sanctions targeting Iran – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As a
Trial Attorney, he prosecuted more than 30 export control and sanctions cases, including first-ever cases involving North Korea, weapons of mass destruction, and the Atomic Energy Act. Brandon has also handled the review of transactions before CFIUS and Team Telecom across
multiple administrations. During the Obama Administration, he managed the DOJ’s review of transactions before CFIUS, to include advising on mitigation proposals, and over the last year he led DOJ’s review of transactions involving foreign influence before CFIUS and Team Telecom.
As Chief of the FARA Unit, and the first official to supervise all foreign influence matters across the DOJ, Brandon revitalized and transformed the enforcement of FARA. Following the DOJ’s announcement making FARA an enforcement priority, he supervised a team of 40 attorneys and
staff that opened a record number of investigations, pursued a record number of enforcement actions, secured a record number of registrations, and obtained the first civil injunction involving FARA in nearly three decades. Brandon also directed the review of Lobbying Disclosure
Act (LDA) filings for criminal violations and regulated the exemption under FARA for LDA registrants. As a long-time prosecutor, including as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Brandon directed complex cyber
investigations, including multiple matters involving state-sponsored cyber attacks. He prosecuted the first person convicted as a cyberterrorist and led the investigation of an international hacking group for identity theft, extortion, and dozens of spearphishing attacks against
public and private entities. He also collaborated with other government agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security, to facilitate cooperation from corporate victims and disseminate threat
information. Brandon earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School and his B.A. from Duke University. He began his legal career as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of a global law firm, where he represented clients accused of fraud and violating securities law and
regulations. He later served as a law clerk for the Hon. Thomas F. Hogan, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Brandon has been widely recognized for his expertise in handling national security matters, and he regularly keynotes and speaks at industry conferences
involving political activities, export control and sanctions, and FARA. He has received numerous awards for his work, including the Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service (2018), the FBI Director’s Award for Outstanding Cyber Investigation (2017), the Homeland
Security Investigations Executive Associate Director’s Award for Outstanding Counterproliferation Investigation (2014), and five awards from the Assistant Attorney General for National Security. He was also recognized by DCA Live as a Rising Star of Law, 40 Under 40 (2018).
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On September 14, 1867, a meeting of the Aztec Club was held at Astor House in New York City. Robert Patterson, original member and last president of the Montezuma Society was given the chair by motion, with Peter V. Hagner en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Clu…
as treasurer and George Sykes to serve as acting secretary. In November, 1868, twenty-one years after the cessation of hostilities in Mexico City, Ulysses S. Grant, an original member of the Aztec Club, was elected President of the United States, the second member to do so.
The archives of the Aztec Club are maintained at the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, located at United States Army War College at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The U.S. Army War College, located at the Carlisle Barracks, prepares high-level military personnel and civilians for
In 1993 after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, John Skilling said in an interview to the Seattle Times that according to their studies the World Trade Center was strong enough to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. The en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Skil…
only thing they were worried about was, in case of an airplane crash, the dumping of all airfuel into the building which would cause a horrendous fire. The building structure would still be there. John Skilling (October 8, 1921 in Los Angeles, California – March 5, 1998 in
Seattle, Washington) was a civil engineer and architect, best known for being the chief structural engineer of the World Trade Center.
John Skilling graduated from the University of Washington in 1947 with a B.S. in civil engineering[2] and started working for an engineering
Francisco Mendes|Benveniste founded and directed the Mendes Bank, along with his brothers Diogo Mendes (Meir Benveniste) and Goncalo Mendes, from Lisbon and later from Antwerp,[15] a powerful trading company and a bank of world en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benveniste
repute with agents across Europe and around the Mediterranean. They became particularly important as one of the six families that controlled the spice trade in the Portuguese India Armadas (the kings of black pepper).
They financed the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain,
England, the Flanders and the popes in Rome through the Bank of Mendes, which became one of largest banks in the world of the 16th century along with the Fugger and Welser family[In 1911 Mendes Gans & Co. changed into a licensed bank (under supervision of, and licensed by, the
The company's beginnings date back to the British Mandate for Palestine when Consolidated Refineries Limited (CRL), a joint venture of Shell and the Anglo-American Oil Company (now Esso),[7] started constructing a sprawling en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAZAN_Gro…
refinery complex which sat at the end of the British-built Mosul-Haifa oil pipeline which stretched from the oil fields near Kirkuk in then British-controlled Iraq Construction of the first refinery unit started in 1938 and was carried out by the M. W. Kellogg Co. with assistance
from Solel Boneh, with an annual capacity of two million tons of crude oil. KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is a U.S. based company that delivers science, technology and engineering solutions.[2] KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial
"So this is the end of the Romanov Dynasty, is it...", to which Mikhail Kudrin responded: "No, not yet; there is still much work to be done". According to Kudrin, when the body of the French Bulldog Ortino, "the last en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filipp_Go…
pathetic remnant of the Imperial Family", was brought out on the end of a Red Guardsman's bayonet and unceremoniously hurled onto the fiat, Goloshchyokin sneered, "Dogs deserve a dogs death" as he glared at the dead tsar.
At a telegraph office in Ekaterinburg on 18 July, he caught Sir Thomas Preston, a diplomat at the British Consulate, attempting to cable Sir Arthur Balfour in London with the message, "The Tsar Nicholas the Second was shot last night."The Balfour Declaration was a public
The Center's initiatives include the following: working in conjunction with the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University to establish the Bipartisan Index,[114] partnering with the Arms Control Association to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_L…
establish the Bipartisan Nuclear and WMD Policy Dialogue Project, and compiling a comprehensive selection of bibliographical resources for researchers and policymakers interested in global food security. In addition, the Lugar Diplomacy Series brings together American policy- and
opinion-makers and the Washington diplomatic community. Guests have included Elena Kagan, David Petraeus, and Howard Buffett. In 1972, Lugar was the keynote speaker at the Republican National Convention. During this time he became known as "Richard Nixon's favorite mayor",