NEW: DOJ's policing of foreign influence is bedeviling Trumpworld figures. Rudy Giuliani & Tom Barrack caught prosecutors' attention over foreign dealings.
Behind the scenes, a small team is staffing up & pressuring lobbyists for foreign governments. ($) businessinsider.com/fara-foreign-a…
Behind the scenes, a small team is staffing up & pressuring lobbyists for foreign governments. ($) businessinsider.com/fara-foreign-a…
.@cryanbarber with a deep-dive into the DOJ FARA unit. His lead: "When Brandon Van Grack left the Justice Department in January, stepping down from a top role policing foreign influence, his government colleagues sent him off with a curious going-away present: a pink cat piñata."
Before becoming a gag gift, the piñata sat in the office as a mascot of sorts for the Justice Department unit tasked with enforcing a decades-old federal law requiring the disclosure of foreign lobbying.
It was a tongue-in-cheek totem, a nod to what the unit saw as the unfair notion that it took a lax approach to enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA...
...until the special counsel Robert Mueller's team returned the pre-World War II law to prominence with high-profile prosecutions of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and other MAGA acolytes.
Since parting ways with its papier-mâché party prop, the FARA unit has only continued to shed its reputation as a feeble and flimsy Justice Department backwater.
More broadly, DOJ has in recent months escalated its enforcement efforts, mostly notably w/ investigations & prosecutions of prominent Trumpworld figures suspected of monetizing their access to Trump's admin by working illegally for foreign governments & other overseas powers.
"The Justice Department and FARA unit haven't skipped a beat in the last six months and, if anything, have continued the historic ramp-up of FARA enforcement," said Van Grack, who served in Mueller's special-counsel office before becoming the FARA unit chief in 2019.
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