DOJ Signals Once More That FARA Is An Enforcement Priority

In another indication of the U.S. Department of Justice's increased focus on the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), Assistant Attorney General John Demers announced yesterday that the Department is overhauling its FARA enforcement unit and would assign a former prosecutor on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team, Brandon L. Van Grack, to oversee it.

The reorganization shows that the Department has shifted "from treating FARA as an administrative obligation and regulatory obligation to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority," Mr. Demers told a white-collar fraud conference in New Orleans yesterday. "We're being more aggressive about who we're requiring to register and we're confronting registrants who are resistant to registering," Demers said to reporters.

Given DOJ's stated policy that the "cornerstone of the [FARA] Registration Unit's enforcement efforts is encouraging voluntary compliance," Van Grack's appointment is notable in light of his background as a high-profile prosecutor. Van Grack was on the prosecution team in the case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which included FARA violations, as well as the case against former national security advisor Michael Flynn, for making false statements in connection with the FBI's investigation into coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Van Grack is now a deputy chief in the National Security Division's Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, which, among other things, oversees investigations and prosecutions of espionage statutes. Tapping him to lead the team focused on FARA enforcement signals that the Department will not shy away from criminal investigative tools, in addition to FARA's various administrative functions, in order to enforce the Act.

FARA is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in political or quasi-political capacity to register with DOJ and make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts, and disbursements in support of these activities. The purpose of the law is to protect the national defense and foreign relations of the United States, ensuring that the American public and its lawmakers know the sources of information intended to sway U.S. public opinion, policy, and laws.

Historically, there were few criminal prosecutions under FARA: between 1966...