PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off this Thursday and Friday for July Fourth but will be back in your inboxes on Monday, July 8. With Daniel Lippman FARA FRIDAY WEDNESDAY: Earlier this year, the Justice Department quietly added a new feature to its online database of FARA filings that makes it possible for the first time for visitors (AKA your host and maybe a handful of others) to search and browse all registrants’ political activities and political contributions in one place. — It’s a massive development in terms of accessibility and transparency, as documented in a new analysis by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft out today that offers an unprecedented look beyond just what foreign principals are spending on influence efforts in the U.S. and at the work their hired guns are actually doing. — The brief, shared first with PI, analyzed more than 102,000 emails, 8,700 in-person meetings, 7,300 calls, 2,540 texts and 2,100 virtual meetings reported by registered foreign agents in 2022 and 2023 (the only two years for which the new database has complete data) to determine which foreign clients were most active — as well as whom they’re hiring, the issues they’re lobbying and the top targets of those efforts. — “When a lot of folks are … taking a look at foreign lobbying, I think they — very justifiably — they follow the money,” said Ben Freeman, who co-authored the report with Nick Cleveland-Stout. Political activities “provide kind of a different story,” Freeman told PI. He pointed to countries like China and Russia, which have reported hundreds of millions of dollars in FARA spending on state-run media outlets whose U.S. audience is minimal. — Much like those countries, however, the most prolific foreign lobbies belong to wealthy, authoritarian governments, the analysis found. Of the top 20 most active countries, 13 are rated “Not Free” by the human rights group Freedom House. — “By and large, when you're talking about foreign lobbying, you're talking about lobbying being done on behalf of authoritarian regimes,” said Freeman, who conceded that it’s those kinds of governments that can rely less on their diplomats to get a foot in the door compared with longtime U.S. allies like the U.K. or France, whichg also tend to be more aligned with U.S. foreign policy and less in need of frequent image rehab. “If your embassy is doing its job, you may not need to hire a lobbying firm,” he said. — Saudi Arabia was the most prolific foreign lobby in the dataset by far, with at least 14,128 political activities reported from 2022-23, many of which targeted U.S. college campuses or were related to the Saudi sovereign wealth fund’s efforts to merge with the PGA Tour. — Ukraine’s foreign agents were most active after Saudi Arabia, reporting 13,601 political activities — the vast majority of which can be attributed to Yorktown Solutions, the boutique firm that managed to beat out nearly a dozen massive law and lobbying firms and global PR shops in terms of firm-wide political activities. — Rounding out the top three is the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a comparatively tiny 8,547 reported political activities. Their presence on the list helps illustrate the limits of the new tool, which still doesn’t solve for Grand Canyon-sized differences in the level of detail provided on FARA filings. According to the analysis, more than 90 percent of the political activities reported on behalf of the DRC “simply say ‘update’ without further elaboration.” — The FARA Unit could push for that to change by providing clearer guidance about the level of specificity required in filings, Freeman said, leveling a playing field that currently can leave firms with more detailed disclosures feeling penalized for their transparency. Still, real improvement may not be possible without congressional intervention to allow DOJ to issue civil fines for lax disclosures. — The report also calls for better standardization in how registrants disclose who they reached out to on behalf of their clients, which would make it even easier to tally which offices are being targeted. Happy Wednesday and welcome to PI, where it’s certainly a big week for fireworks in Washington. Send your best influence tips and gossip: coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X: @caitlinoprysko. WHICH FOREIGN AGENTS ARE WRITING CHECKS: In addition to cataloging foreign agents’ political activities, the Quincy Institute ranked which firms with foreign clients have been the biggest political benefactors in recent years. Cornerstone Government Affairs tops the list at almost $1.5 million in political contributions in 2022 and 2023, followed by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld with $1.4 million and Greenberg Traurig with $1 million. — In all, the report tallied $14.3 million in political contributions reported by all FARA registrants during that time period. Many of those came in below the FEC’s $200 threshold for disclosure, which offers another layer of transparency. Meanwhile, the report found a number of instances in which donations occurred on the same day a FARA registrant reported meeting with the recipient of their donation. (For comparison, FARA registrants made $8.5 million in political donations during the entire 2020 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.) EXECS NUDGE BIDEN TOWARD THE EXIT: “A group of business leaders is calling on President Biden to step aside and make way for a replacement atop the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket,” The New York Times’ Ken Vogel reports. — “Leadership Now Project, a coalition of 400 politically active current and retired executives who mostly but not entirely lean left, issued a statement on Wednesday urging Mr. Biden to ‘pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.’” — “The statement is unsigned, but Daniella Ballou-Aares, the group’s founder and chief executive, said that it was supported by an overwhelming majority of the members of Leadership Now Project,” whose ranks include Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams founder Jeni Britton Bauer, Weyco Group CEO Thomas W. Florsheim Jr.; Eddie Fishman, the managing director of investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co.; former Procter & Gamble CEO John Pepper and former National Football League Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. — “The statement comes as major Democratic donors are increasingly concluding that the party would stand a better chance of holding the White House with a different nominee in the wake of Mr. Biden’s weak performance in last week’s presidential debate with Donald J. Trump. But most donors and big money groups on the left have refrained from going public out of concern about generating a backlash.” ON THE OTHER HAND: Semafor’s Kadia Goba reports that “top Democratic consultants debated Wednesday, before an audience of large Democratic donors, whether they could push Joe Biden from the race for president — and whether Vice President Kamala Harris would be worse than a ‘comatose’ or ‘dead’ Biden.” — On an hourlong conference call, donors to the Democratic opposition group and super PAC American Bridge “took turns asking [strategist James] Carville, Paul Begala, and Reid Hoffman adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn how they could push Biden out.” — “While Carville offered them advice on pushing Biden out and Begala stayed neutral on the question, Biden had one advocate. Mehlhorn, whose key patron LinkedIn founder Hoffman has been a staunch advocate for sticking with the president, argued that Biden should stay in the race — if in the darkest possible terms. Swing voters, he said, already believed Biden is feeble — but they like Vice President Kamala Harris even less.” ANNALS OF DARK MONEY: “Mark Meadows’ employer helped form and fund a nonprofit that paid legal bills for Meadows as investigators probed his involvement in alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election results,” NOTUS’ Maggie Severns reports. — “The group, Personnel Policy Operations, was formed in 2022 with a $1.15 million grant from the Conservative Partnership Institute, which employs Meadows, tax documents show. That year, Personnel Policy Operations gave $1.13 million — most of its budget — to a little-known organization called Constitutional Rights Defense Fund. A spokesperson for Personnel Policy Operations told NOTUS the money that year went to pay lawyers for Meadows and Jeffrey Clark, another ex-Trump administration official.” — “The payments were revealed in tax returns for two of the nonprofits and offer a glimpse into the obscure networks that have quietly funded legal aid for some Trump defendants, whose bills can run in the six figures.” — “Transferring the funds between the organizations put a layer of distance between Meadows and the payment, said Brendan Fischer, a lawyer and deputy executive director at Documented, a watchdog group that has studied the Conservative Partnership Institute” — whose work is supposed to primarily be for charitable purposes. IF YOU MISSED IT TUESDAY: NOTUS’ Byron Tau dove into one of the ways in which K Street has risen from the ashes of the earmark, in which lobbyists and policymakers push for the inclusion of language for pet projects that is then buried in congressional reports that accompany spending or authorization bills. — “Insiders call the secretive inclusion of these provisions as ‘shadowmarking,’ ‘softmarking’ or ‘fauxmarking.’ While these reports do not carry the force of law, Hill veterans and agency staff say it is taken seriously and often treated as somewhere between a suggestion and an order. Agencies, after all, have to go hat in hand to Congress every year for funds to operate. As a result of this power dynamic, they will often do what Congress asks in nonbinding reports, just without the scrutiny of lawmakers, bureaucrats, journalists or the legal community.” — “And because they come out of a closed-door appropriations process and are rarely, if ever, modified by the full House or Senate, they’ve attracted the interest of lobbyists, trade associations and other special interests — who see them as a low-profile way to nudge the bureaucracy in a favorable direction without actually needing to pass a law.”
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