Иностранные агенты. Как американские лоббисты и законодатели угрожают демократии по всему миру

30. Ibid., 9.

31. Ibid., 10.

32. Ken Silverstein, Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship (New York: Random House, 2008).

33. Comptroller General of the United States, “Effectiveness of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as Amended, and Its Administration by the Department of Justice,” report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate, B-177551, March 1974.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. “Improvements Needed in the Administration of Foreign Agent Registration,” enclosure I in J. K. Fasick to Benjamin Civiletti and Edmund S. Muskie, July 31, 1980, https://www.gao.gov/assets/id-80-51.pdf.

39. U.S. General Accounting Office, “Foreign Agent Registration: Justice Needs to Improve Program Administration,” Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management, Committee on Governmental Affairs, U.S. Senate, GAO/NSIAD-90-250, July 1990.

40. Ken Silverstein, “Their Men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.’s Lobbyists for Hire,” Harper’s, July 2007.

6. WISE MEN

1. Alan Taylor, American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021).

2. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

3. Ibid.

4. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

5. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

11. Lee Drutman, “How Corporate Lobbyists Conquered American Democracy,” The Atlantic, April 20, 2015.

12. Quoted in Lee Drutman, The Business of America Is Lobbying: How Corporations Became Politicized and Politics Became More Corporate (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 51.

13. Joshua Keating, “Get Used to Foreign Interference in Elections,” Slate, October 7, 2020.

14. John Adams, “Inaugural Address, 4 March 1797,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/99-02-02-1878.

15. Dov H. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020).

16. The nearest thing to a foreign interference scandal came during the American Civil War, in which both French and British officials openly toyed with recognizing the Confederacy before deciding against it. See Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 2017).

17. The Nazis didn’t use only Ivy Lee to target Americans. As Levin discovered, “In October 1940, the Nazis leaked a captured Polish government document, hoping to expose Franklin Roosevelt as a ‘criminal hypocrite’ and ‘warmonger.’ The German embassy in Washington gave a U.S. newspaper a bribe to publish the document.” The efforts, of course, went nowhere. See Dov H. Levin, “Sure, the U.S. and Russia Often Meddle in Foreign Elections. Does It Matter?,” Washington Post, September 7, 2016.

18. Author interview with Dov Levin. Years later, KGB archives revealed that Wallace’s preferred candidates for both secretary of state and treasury secretary were Soviet agents themselves. Roosevelt’s replacement of Wallace with Truman “deprived Soviet intelligence of what would have been its most spectacular success.” See Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999).

19. “Text of Wallace Letter to Stalin Calling for Peace Program,” New York Times, May 12, 1948.

20. Author interview with Dov Levin.

21. Jason Daley, “How Adlai Stevenson Stopped Russian Interference in the 1960 Election,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 4, 2017.

22. Casey Michel, “Russia’s Long and Mostly Unsuccessful History of Election Interference,” Politico Magazine, October 26, 2019.

23. David Shimer, Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference (New York: Vintage Books, 2021), 87.

24. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.

25. Alexander Feklisov, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (New York: Enigma Books, 2001).

26. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.

27. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to Six Cold War Presidents (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016).

28. Ibid.

29. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield.

30. Ibid.

31. Peter Baker, “‘We Absolutely Could Not Do That’: When Seeking Foreign Help Was Out of the Question,” New York Times, October 5, 2019.

32. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

33. Ibid.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid.

7. EXCESS IS BEST

1. T. J. Stiles, Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America (New York: Knopf, 2016), 310.

2. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

3. Thomas B. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm Typify Republican New Breed,” Washington Post, April 7, 1985.

4. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

5. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”

6. Meghan Keneally, “The Man Who Got Top Trump Aide into GOP Politics Recalls the Budding Talent,” ABC7 Bay Area, April 26, 2016.

7. To take one example: Baker’s negotiation with Nursultan Nazarbayev, dictator of the nuclear-armed and newly independent Kazakhstan, took place in the nude, as the two sweated together in a sauna. See J. A. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy (New York: Putnam, 1995), 538–539.

8. “James Baker and the Art of Power,” The Economist, September 24, 2020.

9. Franklin Foer, “The Quiet American,” Slate, April 28, 2016.

10. Franklin, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

11. Bernard Weinraub, “After Nixon and Reagan, Young Republicans Face ’88 with Uncertainty,” New York Times, July 11, 1987.

12. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”

17. Kenneth P. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure,” Politico Magazine, June 10, 2016.

18. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

19. Matt Labash, “Roger Stone, Political Animal,” Weekly Standard, November 5, 2007.

20. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”

21. In 1981 Atwater authored one of the most infamous quotes in American electoral history, describing the Republicans’ so-called Southern Strategy. As Atwater said, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘N*gger, n*gger, n*gger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘n*gger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites.… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘N*gger, n*gger.’” See Rick Perlstein, “Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy,” The Nation, November 13, 2012.

22. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”

23. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure.”

24. Michael Lewis, “Three Words a Lawyer Should Never Say to Clients,” Bloomberg, March 27, 1998.

25. Evan Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town,” Time, March 3, 1986.

26. Steven Mufson and Tom Hamburger, “Inside Trump Adviser Manafort’s World of Politics and Global Financial Dealmaking,” Washington Post, April 26, 2016.

27. Manuel Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders,” Washington Post, November 29, 2018.

28. Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town.”

29. Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”

30. One other element of the “swamp” refined by Manafort and his team: the political action committee. According to both Manafort’s memoirs and reportage elsewhere, Manafort’s colleagues formed the National Conservative Political Action Committee in the 1970s. Per Manafort, it was “the first real political action committee in the United States.” It was also a “precursor to the rise of super PACs,” according to The Washington Post, helping lay the groundwork for deep-pocketed donors to flood American elections with financing. See Manafort, Political Prisoner; Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”

31. Edsall, “Partners in Political PR Firm.”

32. Roig-Franzia, “The Swamp Builders.”

33. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

34. Katy Daigle, “Trump Criticizes Pequots, Casino,” Hartford Courant, October 6, 1993.

35. Shawn Boburg, “Donald Trump’s Long History of Clashes with Native Americans,” Washington Post, July 25, 2016.

36. Joseph Tanfani, “Trump Was Once So Involved in Trying to Block Indian Casino That He Secretly Approved Attack Ads,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2016.

37. Marie Brenner, “How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America,” Vanity Fair, August 2017.

38. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

39. Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s US Fixer,” Politico, March 5, 2014.

8. SHAME IS FOR SISSIES

1. David R. Gayton, “A Letter by Walt Whitman: ‘The Spanish Element in Our Nationality,’” Comparative Literature Undergraduate Journal (University of California, Berkeley), Fall 2022.

2. Spy, February 1992.

3. “Who’s the Sleaziest of Them All?,” Spy, February 1992, 55.

4. Ibid.

5. Filings can be found in the FARA database, available at FARA.gov.

6. Bill Berkeley, “Zaire: An African Horror Story,” The Atlantic, August 1993.

7. Art Levine, “Publicists of the Damned,” Spy, February 1992, 55.

8. K. Riva Levinson, “I Worked for Paul Manafort. He Always Lacked a Moral Compass,” Washington Post, November 1, 2017.

9. Cristina Maza, “Here’s Where Paul Manafort Did Business with Corrupt Dictators,” Newsweek, August 7, 2018.

10. Don Van Natta, Jr., and Douglas Frantz, “Lobbyists Are Friends and Foes to McCain,” New York Times, February 10, 2000.

11. Tom McCarthy, “Paul Manafort: How Decades of Serving Dictators Led to Role as Trump’s Go-To Guy,” The Guardian, October 30, 2017.

12. Levine, “Publicists of the Damned,” 62.

13. Kenneth P. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure,” Politico Magazine, June 10, 2016.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Evan Thomas, “The Slickest Shop in Town,” Time, March 3, 1986.

17. Mark Fineman and Doyle McManus, “Vote Fraud on Grand Scale Reflected in Manila Area,” Los Angeles Times, February 16, 1986.

18. Ibid.

19. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure.”

20. Fineman and McManus, “Vote Fraud.”

21. Vogel, “Paul Manafort’s Wild and Lucrative Philippine Adventure.”

22. J. C. Sharman, The Despot’s Guide to Wealth Management: On the International Campaign Against Grand Corruption (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017).

23. Pamela Brogan, “The Torturers’ Lobby: How Human Rights–Abusing Nations Are Represented in Washington,” Center for Public Integrity, Washington, DC, 1992, https://cloudfront-files-1.publicintegrity.org/legacy_projects/pdf_reports/THETORTURERSLOBBY.pdf.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. Levine, “Publicists of the Damned.”

27. Ibid., 58.

28. Racial realities were an underlying theme of the growing foreign lobbying industry; as one photo caption in the Spy investigation, featuring all of the lobbyists and their despotic clients, read, “Rich white lobbyists and the despots who love them.” Ibid.

29. Ibid., 59.

30. Ken Silverstein, Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship (New York: Random House, 2008), 10.

31. Art Levine, “Shame Is for Sissies,” Mother Jones, September–October 2005.

32. Adam Bernstein, “Tyrants’ Lobbyist, Flamboyant to the End,” NBC News, May 2, 2005.

33. Richard Leiby, “Fall of the House of von Kloberg,” Washington Post, July 31, 2005.

34. Levine, “Publicists of the Damned,” 57.

35. Ibid.

36. Levine, “Shame Is for Sissies.”

37. “WWYD 2/2,” YouTube, posted by UnkownNickelodeon, April 29, 2011, https://youtu.be/-CsOyAzdURM.

PART III: REVOLUTIONS

1.Leo Perutz, The Marquis of Bolibar, translated by John Brownjohn (New York: Arcade, 1989).

9. SAFE FOR DICTATORSHIP

1. Quoted in Elizabeth A. Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–82 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).

2. Matthew T. Sanderson, “A History of the FARA Unit,” Caplin & Drysdale, May 5, 2020, https://www.fara.us/a-history-of-the-fara-unit.

3. Craig Holman, “Origins, Evolution and Structure of the Lobbying Disclosure Act,” Public Citizen, May 11, 2006.

4. Tarun Krishnakumar, “Propaganda by Permission: Examining ‘Political Activities’ Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Journal of Legislation 47, no. 2 (2021): 44–74.

5. Cynthia Brown, “The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA): A Legal Overview,” Congressional Research Service report R45037, December 4, 2017.

6. Lydia Dennett, “Closing the Loophole on Foreign Influence,” Project on Government Oversight, April 13, 2018.

7. Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, “Audit of the National Security Division’s Enforcement and Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Audit Division 16–24, September 2016.

8. Alexander Dukalskis, Making the World Safe for Dictatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. “Hotel Rwanda Hero Paul Rusesabagina Convicted on Terror Charges,” BBC News, September 20, 2021.

15. Adele Del Sordi and Emanuela Dalmasso, “The Relation Between External and Internal Authoritarian Legitimation: The Religious Foreign Policy of Morocco and Kazakhstan,” Taiwan Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2018): 95–116.

16. Dukalskis, Making the World Safe for Dictatorship.

17. Ibid.

18. Ben Freeman, The Foreign Policy Auction: Foreign Lobbying in America (n.p.: CreateSpace, 2012).

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid.

26. According to DLA Piper, describing the Turkish massacre of the Armenians as genocide—one of the first of the twentieth century, in which Turkish forces killed approximately 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children—is “a matter of genuine historic dispute.” But most Western nations regard it as genocide. See Thomas de Waal, “What Next After the U.S. Recognition of the Armenian Genocide?,” Carnegie Europe, April 30, 2021.

27. Freeman, The Foreign Policy Auction.

28. Ibid.

29. Erik Wemple, “Former Congressman and Azerbaijan Advocate Finds Receptive Audience at Daily Caller,” Washington Post, April 3, 2015.

30. Freeman, The Foreign Policy Auction.

31. Ken Silverstein, Turkmeniscam: How Washington Lobbyists Fought to Flack for a Stalinist Dictatorship (New York: Random House, 2008).

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid.

34. “APCO Wins Agency of the Year at 2006 PRWeek Awards,” PRWeek, March 3, 2006.

35. Silverstein, Turkmeniscam.

36. Ibid.

37. Ken Silverstein, “Alexander Haig’s Last Years,” Mother Jones, September–October 1999.

38. Silverstein, Turkmeniscam.

39. Ibid.

40. Ibid.

10. UKRAINIAN COCKTAILS

1. Aodogán O’Rahilly, The O’Rahilly: A Secret History of the Rebellion of 1916 (Gill, Ireland: Lilliput, 2016).

2. Polina Devitt, Anastasia Lyrchikova, and Katya Golubkova, “Biting the Bullet, Not the Dust: Deripaska Gives Up His Aluminum Empire,” Reuters, December 20, 2018.

3. Rosalind S. Helderman and Alice Crites, “The Russian Billionaire Next Door: Putin Ally Is Tied to One of D.C.’s Swankiest Mansions,” Washington Post, November 29, 2017.

4. “Treasury Designates Russian Oligarchs, Officials, and Entities in Response to Worldwide Malign Activity,” press release, U.S. Department of the Treasury, April 6, 2018. To date, Deripaska has not been indicted for bribery, though he has been indicted for sanction evasion and obstruction of justice. Deripaska has denied these allegations.

5. John S. Gardner, “Bob Dole: Soldier, Politician and Republican of the Old School,” The Guardian, December 5, 2021.

6. Katharine Q. Seelye, “Bob Dole, Old Soldier and Stalwart of the Senate, Dies at 98,” New York Times, December 5, 2021.

7. “Reaction to Bob Dole’s Death from US Dignitaries, Veterans,” Associated Press, December 5, 2021.

8. Dole’s foreign lobbying filings can be found on FARA’s digital database, such as https://efile.fara.gov/docs/5549-Exhibit-AB-20030401-HDWQXY01.pdf.

9. Carrie Levine, “Bob Dole, Trump Campaign Aide to Lobby for Congolese Government,” Center for Public Integrity, Washington, DC, May 11, 2017.

10. Glenn R. Simpson and Mary Jacoby, “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington,” Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2007.

11. “Grave Secrecy: How a Dead Man Can Own a UK Company and Other Hair-Raising Stories About Hidden Company Ownership from Kyrgyzstan and Beyond,” Global Witness, London, June 2012.

12. Author interview.

13. Levine, “Bob Dole, Trump Campaign Aide to Lobby.”

14. Azure Hall, “Bob Dole’s Net Worth at the Time of His Death Might Surprise You,” The List, December 5, 2021.

15. Joseph J. Schatz and Benjamin Oreskes, “Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’? Serve in Congress First,” Politico, October 2, 2016.

16. Lee Fang, “John Boehner Cashes Out, Joins Corporate Lobbying Firm That Represents China,” The Intercept, September 20, 2016.

17. Anna Massoglia and Karl Evers-Hillstrom, “Joe Lieberman Formally Registers as Lobbyist for Chinese Telecom Giant ZTE,” Open Secrets, January 2, 2019.

18. Schatz and Oreskes, “Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’?”

19. Michael Kelly, “Breaking Convention,” New Yorker, August 4, 1996.

20. “Press Release—Transcript of Press Conference by Paul Manafort, Dole Convention Manager,” July 31, 1996, American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.

21. One other foreign, but not necessarily foreign lobbying, scandal that Manafort was involved in by the turn of the century involved a Lebanese national named Abdul Rahman el-Assir. Acting as a global arms broker, el-Assir enlisted Manafort’s help on a range of topics, including a financial deal involving a Portuguese bank and an American biometrics company that ended up imploding the bank. El-Assir and Manafort were later accused of taking part in a kickback scheme involving French officials shipping submarines to Pakistan, and then redirecting income from the sales to a French political campaign. It was, as one analyst said, “one of France’s biggest political scandals.” Manafort allegedly made at least $200,000 from the deal. See Joshua Keating, “Paul Manafort Was Also Involved in One of France’s Biggest Political Scandals,” Slate, October 31, 2017.

22. Karen Yuan, “A Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Career,” The Atlantic, February 6, 2018.

23. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

24. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,” 116th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 116-XXX.

25. Ibid.

26. Seth Hettena, Trump/Russia: A Definitive History (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2018), 148.

27. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

28. Jim Rutenberg, “The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine,” New York Times, November 2, 2022.

29. Associated Press, “Before Trump Job, Manafort Worked to Aid Putin,” Florida Times-Union, March 22, 2017.

30. Alayna Treene, “Manafort Memo: ‘Can Greatly Benefit the Putin Government,’” Axios, March 22, 2017.

31. Casey Michel, “Ukraine’s Corrupt Oligarchs Are Looking Toward the West to Rehab Their Reputations,” New Republic, May 12, 2022.

32. Tom Winter, “DOJ: Ex-Manafort Associate Firtash Is Top-Tier Comrade of Russian Mobsters,” NBC News, July 26, 2017.

33. Michel, “Ukraine’s Corrupt Oligarchs.”

34. “How a Putin Ally Is Aiding Giuliani in Ukraine,” editorial, Washington Post, December 22, 2019.

35. Laura Kusisto, “Unmasking Three Mismatched Heavies Who Won and Lost the Drake,” Observer, June 7, 2011.

36. Robert Waldeck, The Black Ledger: How Trump Brought Putin’s Disinformation War to America (New York: Cobra y Craneo, 2020).

37. The entire lawsuit can be found here: Yulia Tymoshenko et al. v. Dmytro Firtash et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Civ. No. 11-02794 (RJS), 2011, https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/manafort-complaint-2.pdf.

38. Casey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021).

39. Tom Winter and Ken Dilanian, “Donald Trump Aide Paul Manafort Scrutinized for Russian Business Ties,” NBC News, August 18, 2016.

40. Ken Silverstein and Adam Weinstein, “How Trump Aide Paul Manafort Got Ridiculously Wealthy While Aiding a Ukrainian Strongman,” Fusion, August 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160820050122/http://fusion.net/story/337482/trump-manafort-ukraine-mansions-movies-mobsters/.

41. Waldeck, The Black Ledger.

42. Clifford J. Levy, “U.S. Political Strategists Help Shape Ukraine Parliamentary Campaign,” New York Times, September 28, 2007.

43. Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s US Fixer,” Politico, March 5, 2014.

44. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

45. Ibid.

46. Adam Weinstein, “Trump Aide Connected to 2006 Attack on US Marines in Ukraine,” Task & Purpose, December 23, 2020.

47. Adam Weinstein and Ken Silverstein, “Trump Aide Manafort Implicated in Pro-Russian Protests Against US Troops,” Fusion, August 18, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160821164541/http://fusion.net/story/338016/trump-manafort-marines-nato-protests/.

48. Weinstein, “Trump Aide Connected to 2006 Attack.”

49. Ibid.

50. Weinstein and Silverstein, “Trump Aide Manafort Implicated.”

51. “Ukraine: Opposition Creates Tempest over ‘Sea Breeze’ in Crimea,” June 6, 2006, WikiLeaks, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06KIEV2190_a.html.

52. Casey Michel, “The Crime of the Century,” New Republic, March 4, 2015.

53. “Ukraine: Opposition Creates Tempest over ‘Sea Breeze’ in Crimea.”

54. Maxim Tucker, “Trump Campaign Chief Linked to Secret Kiev Cash Payments,” Times (London), August 17, 2016.

55. Weinstein and Silverstein, “Trump Aide Manafort Implicated.”

56. Waldeck, The Black Ledger.

57. Barry Meier, “Lawmakers Seek to Close Foreign Lobbyist Loopholes,” New York Times, June 12, 2008.

58. Silverstein and Weinstein, “How Trump Aide Paul Manafort Got Ridiculously Wealthy.”

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Kenzi Abou-Sabe, Tom Winter, and Max Tucker, “What Did Ex-Trump Aide Paul Manafort Really Do in Ukraine?,” NBC News, June 27, 2017.

62. Meier, “Lawmakers Seek to Close Foreign Lobbyist Loopholes.”

63. Burns and Haberman, “Mystery Man.”

11. BLOOD MONEY

1. Joshua L. Reid, The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015).

2. Yanukovych’s zoo would not be Manafort’s only brush with an ostrich. As investigators later discovered, Manafort owned an ostrich-skin jacket worth $15,000, as well as a separate ostrich-skin vest worth $9,500. He further owned a python-skin jacket worth $18,500. See Ashley Hoffman, “The Internet Can’t Stop Plucking at Paul Manafort’s $15,000 Ostrich Jacket,” Time, August 3, 2018.

3. Darmon Richter, “Occupy Mezhyhirya: Squatting the Mansion of Ukraine’s Ex-President,” Ex Utopia, July 29, 2020.

4. Julia Ioffe, “Of Course the Ousted President of Ukraine Commissioned a Nude Portrait of Himself,” New Republic, April 30, 2014.

5. “Monument to Corruption: Ukraine’s Most-Wanted Man Built $75M Home on a $25G Salary,” Fox News, December 5, 2015.

6. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

7. Michael Kranish and Tom Hamburger, “Paul Manafort’s ‘Lavish Lifestyle’ Highlighted in Indictment,” Washington Post, October 30, 2017.

8. Shortly thereafter, I sat with a friend in a Marquis de Sade–themed café in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv. On the televisions—which were draped by lace stockings, high heels, and whips—played Tymoshenko’s prosecution and perp walk on loop. It remains one of the strangest, most surreal meals of my life.

9. It didn’t hurt that, around the same time, U.S. attorneys also become key tools in transnational money-laundering networks, providing attorney-client privilege for kleptocratic clients looking to inject their wealth into the American economy. See Alexander Cooley and Casey Michel, “U.S. Lawyers Are Foreign Kleptocrats’ Best Friends,” Foreign Policy, March 23, 2021. As elsewhere, all lobbying-related filings are located in the FARA digital database, such as Baker McKenzie’s filing to lobby on behalf of the regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6821-Exhibit-AB-20200508-1.pdf.

10. Casey Michel and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, “The Dictator-Run Bank That Tells the Story of America’s Foreign Corruption,” Foreign Policy, July 7, 2020.

11. All filings regarding Skadden’s work in Ukraine are located in the FARA digital database, including https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Exhibit-AB-20190118-1.pdf.

12. Sharon LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig Exposes Seamy Side of Washington’s Elite,” New York Times, August 26, 2019.

13. Craig initially connected with Manafort because of another bipartisan link. Doug Schoen, a leading Democratic pollster, had offered to help Manafort in Ukraine—and personally recruited Craig to Yanukovych’s cause. See ibid.

14. FARA filing regarding Skadden’s work in Ukraine: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Exhibit-AB-20190118-1.pdf.

15. Greg Farrell and Christian Berthelsen, “Skadden Settlement for Manafort Work Suggests Ex-Partner’s Peril,” Bloomberg, January 17, 2019.

16. U.S. Department of Justice, “Prominent Global Law Firm Agrees to Register as an Agent of a Foreign Principal,” press release, January 17, 2019. For the most detailed examination of Skadden’s work for Yanukovych, see the Skadden settlement agreement, January 15, 2019, at https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.

17. The entire Skadden report on the Tymoshenko trial can be found at https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/538591/tymoshenko.pdf.

18. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Grand Jury Indictment, April 11, 2019, www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1153646/download.

19. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Memorandum Opinion and Order, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Crim. Action No. 19-0125 (ABJ), August 6, 2019, https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000016c-686c-da83-a96c-fafd98ff0000.

20. Skadden’s intimate relationship with Manafort didn’t end just in Ukraine; around the same time, Skadden hired Manafort’s daughter, placing her in the “same bureau housing the attorneys who had produced the Tymoshenko report.” See Ken Silverstein and Adam Weinstein, “How Trump Aide Paul Manafort Got Ridiculously Wealthy While Aiding a Ukrainian Strongman,” Fusion, August 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160820050122/http://fusion.net/story/337482/trump-manafort-ukraine-mansions-movies-mobsters/. Craig initially helped Manafort’s daughter land interviews, and said he was “pissed” when she was initially turned down. See LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”

21. Skadden settlement agreement, January 15, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.

22. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Notice of Intent to File Motion In Limine to Exclude Hearsay Testimony from Richard Gates and Jonathan Hawker, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:19-cr-0125 (ABJ), June 24, 2019, https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.206162/gov.uscourts.dcd.206162.45.0.pdf.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid. A separate filing said that Craig did not find Sanger at home, and instead “left the document behind Sanger’s storm door.” Josh Gerstein, “Mueller Fallout Continues as Greg Craig Trial Opens,” Politico, August 12, 2019.

25. David M. Herszenhorn and David E. Sanger, “Failings Found in Trial of Ukrainian Ex-Premier,” New York Times, December 12, 2012.

26. Gerstein, “Mueller Fallout Continues.”

27. Robert Waldeck, The Black Ledger: How Trump Brought Putin’s Disinformation War to America (New York: Cobra y Craneo, 2020).

28. Another company that worked on Yanukovych’s behalf was the behemoth American consulting company McKinsey. The organization didn’t work for Manafort, but instead served in parallel to Manafort’s efforts, helping “polish [Yanukovych’s] battered image” and working toward “resurrecting Mr. Yanukovych’s career.” Like Manafort, McKinsey connected with Yanukovych via oligarch Rinat Akhmetov. Yanukovych’s government was but one of a series of loathsome regimes that McKinsey worked closely with, from China to Saudi Arabia. McKinsey has never disclosed how much money it made from its arrangement with Yanukovych. See Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, “How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments,” New York Times, December 15, 2018.

29. Pinchuk’s American lobbyist? The aforementioned Schoen, who had worked as Bill Clinton’s political consultant before joining Pinchuk—and, later, Manafort. See Kevin Bogardus, “Ukrainian Billionaire Hires Clinton Pollster,” The Hill, October 29, 2011.

30. Amy Chozick and Steve Eder, “Foundation Ties Bedevil Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign,” New York Times, August 20, 2016.

31. Maximilian Hess, “Wooing the West: Who Is Ukraine’s Viktor Pinchuk?,” Eurasianet, February 26, 2020.

32. Katya Soldak, “Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk: The Oligarch in the Middle of the Crisis,” Forbes, March 3, 2014.

33. LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”

34. “Skadden Stink,” editorial, Kyiv Post, September 13, 2019.

35. Josh Gerstein, “Democratic Pollster Divulges Details to Jurors About Greg Craig’s Ukraine Work,” Politico, August 16, 2019.

36. Skadden registration statement, January 18, 2019, https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6617-Registration-Statement-20190118-1.pdf.

37. LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”

38. The entire financing for Skadden’s operations in Ukraine was rife with odd, alarming behavior. As The New York Times reported: “Publicly, Ukraine’s financially strapped government said [Skadden] would be paid only the legal limit for outside contracts of $12,000. In an August 2012 editorial with the headline, ‘Skadden Stink,’ The Kyiv Post called that assertion ‘ridiculous,’ noting that would cover only about 12 hours of Mr. Craig’s services alone at his standard rate. Ms. Tymoshenko’s lawyer refused to cooperate with the project unless Skadden disclosed more information. Scrambling, Mr. Craig and Mr. Manafort agreed to raise the ‘official’ fee to $1.25 million. Bypassing his own firm’s billing system, Mr. Craig submitted a new invoice for that amount, although the firm had already collected more than three times that sum from Mr. Pinchuk, routed through offshore bank accounts controlled by Mr. Manafort. At Mr. Manafort’s request, Mr. Craig backdated the document to before the newspaper editorial was published.” See LaFraniere, “Trial of High-Powered Lawyer Gregory Craig.”

39. Skadden settlement agreement, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.

40. Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler.”

41. Kenneth P. Vogel, David Stern, and Josh Meyer, “Manafort’s Ukrainian ‘Blood Money’ Caused Qualms, Hack Suggests,” Politico, February 28, 2017.

42. As the Los Angeles Review of Books noted, the texts revealed that Manafort was a “sexual abuser” who engaged in “over a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior” regarding his wife. See Maya Gurantz, “Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort’s Hacked Texts,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 18, 2019.

43. Punctuation has been added to make the text messages read more smoothly. The unedited versions of the text messages can be found at https://bit.ly/ManafortDaughterTexts.

12. NOT FOR PROFIT

1. Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (New York: Riverhead Books, 2015).

2. “A Brief History of Nonprofit Organizations (And What We Can Learn),” Nonprofit Hub, n.d., https://nonprofithub.org/a-brief-history-of-nonprofit-organizations/, accessed 3 March 2023.

3. Juliana Kaplan, “Inequality Flamethrower Anand Giridharadas on Why Billionaires Shouldn’t Exist and His Hopes for the Biden Administration,” Business Insider, December 8, 2020.

4. “President Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton Release 2017 Impact Report on the Work of the Clinton Foundation,” Clinton Foundation, New York, May 24, 2018.

5. “Clinton Foundation Impact Report 2021,” Clinton Foundation, New York.

6. The Clinton Foundation tax documents are found on the IRS’s Tax Exempt Organizations Search database, at https://apps.irs.gov/app/eos/details/. For a more legible look at Clinton Foundation finances, see “Bill Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation,” Nonprofit Explorer, ProPublica, https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/311580204, accessed 3 March 2023.

7. “Bill Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.”

8. David Hilzenrath, “How Foreign Influence Can Corrupt a President. Legally,” Project on Government Oversight, June 7, 2021.

9. Sarah Chayes, On Corruption in America: And What Is at Stake (New York: Vintage Books, 2020), 15.

10. “Clinton Foundation Donors,” Wall Street Journal, December 18, 2008.

11. “A Vast Network for Donors,” Washington Post, March 18, 2015.

12. United States Attorney’s Office, Central District of California, “Lebanese-Nigerian Billionaire and Two Associates Resolve Federal Probe into Alleged Violations of Campaign Finance Laws,” press release, March 31, 2021.

13. Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger, “Foreign Governments Gave Millions to Foundation While Clinton Was at State Department,” Washington Post, February 25, 2015.

14. “Donors Tied to Foreign Governments Gave Millions to Clinton Foundation,” Philanthropy News Digest, March 23, 2015.

15. Jack Greenberg, “Ethics Experts Alarmed by 93% Decrease in Clinton Foundation Donations Since $250 Million Peak in 2009,” Daily Caller, December 5, 2021.

16. Chayes, On Corruption in America.

17. Michael Weiss, “The Corleones of the Caspian,” Foreign Policy, June 10, 2014.

18. Accepting funds from a foreign dictatorship to whitewash the regime remains something of a red line for most journalists. However, around this time a number of pro-Azerbaijan lobbyists had begun writing their own op-eds for a series of American media outlets, including The Hill and Roll Call, which never bothered to disclose that the authors were being paid by Azerbaijan’s dictatorship—and which were never included in any FARA filings. See Casey Michel, “All the Shills Money Can Buy: How Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan Use Useful Idiots, Crooked Academics, and Law-Breaking Lobbyists to Whitewash Their Police States,” MA thesis, Harriman Institute, Columbia University, 2015.

19. Larry Luxner, “Azerbaijan Rolls Out Red Carpet for Visiting U.S. Lawmakers,” Washington Diplomat, July 2013.

20. “Ilham Aliyev: 2012 Person of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

21. Will Fitzgibbon, Miranda Patrucić, and Marcos Garcia Rey, “How Family That Runs Azerbaijan Built an Empire of Hidden Wealth,” International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, April 4, 2016.

22. Anastasia Tkach, “The Real Scandal of Congressional Junkets to Azerbaijan,” Freedom House, May 26, 2015.

23. Casey Michel, “Azerbaijani Kleptocrats Have Been Getting Their Money’s Worth in Washington for a Long Time,” New Republic, January 26, 2022.

24. Office of Congressional Ethics, U.S. House of Representatives, “Report: Review No. 15-5316,” April 22, 2015.

25. Ibid. See also Committee on Ethics, U.S. House of Representatives, “In the Matter of Officially-Connected Travel by House Members to Azerbaijan in 2013,” July 31, 2015.

26. In the Matter of Officially-Connected Travel by House Members to Azerbaijan in 2013: Report of the Committee on Ethics, House Report 114-239 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Publishing Office, 2015).

27. Ibid.

28. Author interview with Meredith McGehee.

29. Casey Michel, “US/Azerbaijan: Lobbyists Continue to Flout Travel Rules,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, April 24, 2016.

30. Amanda Becker, “Africa Trip Blurs Lines on Travel Propriety,” Roll Call, October 18, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20170422025553/https://rollcall.com/issues/57_44/Africa-Trip-Blurs-Lines-On-Travel-Propriety-209590-1.html?pg=1&dczone=influence.

31. Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau, “Rules for Congress Curb but Don’t End Junkets,” New York Times, December 6, 2009.

32. Author interview with Jack Abramoff.

33. John Bresnahan, “House Ethics Panel Clears Lawmakers over 2013 Azerbaijan Trip,” Politico, July 31, 2015.

34. Russ Choma, “Lawmakers Who Traveled to Azerbaijan Urged Action Benefiting State Oil Company That Funded Trip,” Open Secrets, May 26, 2015.

35. Casey Michel, “The Man Behind One of the Most Controversial Congressional Trips This Decade Finally Pleads Guilty,” ThinkProgress, December 14, 2018.

36. Author interview.

37. Michel, “US/Azerbaijan.”

38. Ibid.

39. Author interview.

40. Michel, “US/Azerbaijan.”

41. Committee on Ethics, U.S. House of Representatives, “In the Matter of Officially-Connected Travel by House Members to Azerbaijan in 2013,” July 31, 2015.

42. U.S. Department of Justice, “Former Non-Profit President Pleads Guilty to Scheme to Conceal Foreign Funding of 2013 Congressional Trip,” press release, December 10, 2018.

43. Paul Singer and Paulina Firozi, “Turkish Faith Movement Secretly Funded 200 Trips for Lawmakers and Staff,” USA Today, October 29, 2015.

44. Author interview.

45. Singer and Firozi, “Turkish Faith Movement Secretly Funded.”

46. Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s US Fixer,” Politico, March 5, 2014.

47. Rob Crilly, “Can Trump’s New Campaign Manager Do for The Donald What He Did for African Tyrants and a Ukrainian Kleptocrat?,” The Telegraph, April 23, 2016.

48. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

49. David Voreacos and Chris Dolmetsch, “Manafort Sued by Russian Billionaire Deripaska over TV Deal,” Bloomberg, January 10, 2018.

50. The unedited versions of the text messages can be found at https://bit.ly/ManafortDaughterTexts.

51. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

52. The unedited versions of the text messages can be found at https://bit.ly/ManafortDaughterTexts.

PART IV: INSURRECTIONS

1. Gregory P. Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

13. POT OF GOLD

1. “Will: Disharmony Is Our Creed,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, January 23, 2011.

2. Kristen Holmes, “Trump Calls for the Termination of the Constitution in Truth Social Post,” CNN, December 4, 2022.

3. Ben Freeman and Lydia Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement: How the Foreign Agents Registration Act Falls Short,” Project on Government Oversight, Washington, DC, December 16, 2014.

4. Ibid.

5. “Sunlight Foundation Recommendations to the Dept. of Justice Regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Sunlight Foundation, Washington, DC, April 8, 2014.

6. Freeman and Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement.”

7. Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, “Audit of the National Security Division’s Enforcement and Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Audit Division 16–24, September 2016.

8. FARA’s digital database can be found at https://efile.fara.gov/ords/fara/f?p=1381:1:32995461174955

9. Ibid.

10. Freeman and Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement.”

11. Ken Dilanian, Tom Winter, and Kenzi Abou-Sabe, “Ex-Trump Aide Manafort Bought New York Homes with Cash,” NBC News, March 28, 2017.

12. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

13. Casey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021).

14. Ben Jacobs, “Leader of Pro-Trump Super PAC Had Mortgage on Paul Manafort Property,” The Guardian, November 1, 2017.

15. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,” 116th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 116-XXX.

16. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

17. Ibid.

18. Glenn Thrush, “To Charm Trump, Manafort Sold Himself as an Affordable Outsider,” New York Times, April 8, 2017.

19. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Nolan D. McCaskill, Alex Isenstadt, and Shane Goldmacher, “Paul Manafort Resigns from Trump Campaign,” Politico, August 19, 2016.

23. Meghan Keneally, “Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Role in the Trump Campaign,” ABC News, October 30, 2017.

24. Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner, and Matt Zapotosky, “Roger Stone Trial: Former Top Trump Official Details Campaign’s Dealings on WikiLeaks, and Suggests Trump Was in the Know,” Washington Post, November 12, 2019. Trump later pardoned Stone before he served time in prison.

25. Ken Dilanian, Charlie Gile, and Dareh Gregorian, “Prosecutor Says Roger Stone Lied Because ‘the Truth Looked Bad for Donald Trump,’” NBC News, November 6, 2019.

26. Stone sent his email to Manafort on August 3, 2016. The next day, Stone wrote “that he had dinner with Assange the night before,” according to CNN. See Andrew Kaczynski and Gloria Borger, “Stone, on Day He Sent Assange Dinner Email, Also Said ‘Devastating’ WikiLeaks Were Forthcoming,” CNN, April 4, 2018; Darren Samuelson and Josh Gerstein, “What Roger Stone’s Trial Revealed About Donald Trump and WikiLeaks,” Politico, November 12, 2019.

27. Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger, and Rachel Weiner, “At Height of Russia Tensions, Trump Campaign Chairman Manafort Met with Business Associate from Ukraine,” Washington Post, June 19, 2017.

28. Aaron Blake, “‘How Do We Use [This] to Get Whole?’: The Most Intriguing New Paul Manafort–Russia Email,” Washington Post, September 20, 2017.

29. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

30. Ibid.

31. Robert Waldeck, The Black Ledger: How Trump Brought Putin’s Disinformation War to America (New York: Cobra y Craneo, 2020).

32. Ibid.

33. Philip Bump, “New Evidence Revives an Old Question: What Counts as Trump-Russia Collusion?,” Washington Post, August 18, 2020.

34. Mattathias Schwartz, “Exclusive: Paul Manafort Admits He Passed Trump Campaign Data to a Suspected Russian Asset,” Business Insider, August 8, 2022.

35. Ibid.

36. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Escalates Sanctions Against the Russian Government’s Attempts to Influence U.S. Elections,” press release, April 15, 2021.

37. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Manafort has continued to claim that Kilimnik is “not a Russian agent.” See Manafort, Political Prisoner.

38. Jim Rutenberg, “The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine,” New York Times Magazine, November 2, 2022.

39. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

40. Federal Bureau of Investigation to Jason Leopold, BuzzFeed News, March 2, 2022 (“Litigation_6th_Release_-_Leopold.pdf”), https://buzzfeed.egnyte.com/dl/gbuL8jn18Z/.

41. Sharon LaFraniere, “Mueller Report Leaves Unanswered Questions About Contacts Between Russians and Trump Aides,” New York Times, April 18, 2019.

42. Salvador Rizzo, “What Attorney General Barr Said vs. What the Mueller Report Said,” Washington Post, April 19, 2020.

43. U.S. Department of Justice, “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” (Mueller Report), March 2019.

44. Waldeck, The Black Ledger.

45. Andrew E. Kramer, Mike McIntire, and Barry Meier, “Secret Ledger in Ukraine Lists Cash for Donald Trump’s Campaign Chief,” New York Times, August 14, 2016.

46. Jonny Wrate, “Trump’s Ex-Campaign Chief Accused of Money Laundering in Ukraine,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, March 21, 2017.

47. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

48. Ibid.

49. McCaskill, Isenstadt, and Goldmacher, “Paul Manafort Resigns.”

14. BLACK HOLE

1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

2. Brenda Shaffer, “Russia’s Next Land Grab,” New York Times, September 9, 2014.

3. Brenda Shaffer, “Stopping Russia from Cornering Europe’s Energy Market,” Washington Post, November 3, 2014.

4. Casey Michel, “This Professor Refuses to Disclose Her Work for an Autocratic Regime. Here’s What Happened When I Confronted Her,” New Republic, January 22, 2015.

5. Robert Coalson, “Azerbaijan’s Opinion-Shaping Campaign Reaches ‘The New York Times,’” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, September 18, 2014.

6. Carl Schreck, “Sparks Fly over Scholar’s Azerbaijani Ties at Columbia University Event,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 24, 2014.

7. Till Bruckner, “How to Build Yourself a Stealth Lobbyist, Azerbaijani Style,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, June 22, 2015.

8. Collin Binkley, “Feds Say US Colleges ‘Massively’ Underreport Foreign Funding,” Associated Press, October 20, 2020.

9. U.S. Department of Education, “Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” last modified July 19, 2022.

10. Alexander Cooley, Tena Prelec, John Heathershaw, and Tom Mayne, “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation: Reputation Laundering in the University Sector of Open Societies,” working paper, National Endowment for Democracy, May 2021.

11. Brendan O’Brien, “Harvard and Yale Universities Investigated for Possible Non-Disclosure of Foreign Money,” Reuters, February 12, 2020.

12. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, U.S. Senate, “China’s Impact on the US Education System,” February 27, 2019.

13. Office of the General Council, U.S. Department of Education, “Institutional Compliance with Section 117 of the Higher Education Act of 1965,” October 2020.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Phillip Martin, “MIT Abandons Russian High-Tech Campus Partnership in Light of Ukraine Invasion,” All Things Considered, WGBH, February 25, 2022.

18. Jessica Shi, “MIT Removed Russian Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg from Corporation in April 2018,” The Tech, January 18, 2019.

19. Cooley et al., “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation.”

20. The database can be found at https://sites.ed.gov/foreigngifts/. There remains ample room to improve the database, such as adding contracts, detailing which entities formalized the donations, and noting any additional requests or meetings that accompanied the donations.

21. Office of the General Council, “Institutional Compliance with Section 117.”

22. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, “China’s Impact on the US Education System.”

23. Linda Yeung and Ng Kang-chung, “Harvard University Receives Largest Ever Donation from Hong Kong Foundation,” South China Morning Post, September 8, 2014.

24. Ben Rooney, “Harvard Gets Record $350 Million Donation,” CNN Money, September 8, 2014.

25. Cooley et al. “Paying for a World-Class Affiliation.”

26. Guillermo S. Hava, “The Other Chan: Donation Sanitization at the School of Public Health,” Harvard Crimson, October 19, 2020.

27. Jonathan L. Katzman, “Distasteful Donations,” Harvard Crimson, September 6, 2019.

28. “Ronnie & Gerald Chan,” Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/profile/ronnie-gerald-chan/?sh=4704cc285948, accessed 3 March 2023.

29. Author interview.

30. Austin Ramzy, “Asia Society Blames Staff for Barring Hong Kong Activist’s Speech,” New York Times, July 7, 2017.

31. “Statement on PEN Hong Kong Event, Joshua Wong,” Asia Society, July 6, 2017.

32. “Asia Society Staff Survey 2019,” uploaded by Casey Michel, https://www.scribd.com/document/495683135/Asia-Society-Staff-Survey-2019.

33. Author interview.

34. Casey Michel and David Szakonyi, “America’s Cultural Institutions Are Quietly Fueled by Russian Corruption,” Foreign Policy, October 30, 2020.

35. John de Boer, “What Are Think Tanks Good For?,” Centre for Policy Research, United Nations University, March 17, 2015.

36. Ben Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America,” Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative, Center for International Policy, Washington, DC, January 2020.

37. “Our Mission,” Aspen Institute, https://www.aspeninstitute.org/what-we-do/#:~:text=The%20Aspen%20Institute%20is%20a,United%20States%20and%20the%20world, accessed 3 March 2023.

38. Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America.”

39. “About the Atlantic Council,” Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/, accessed 3 March 2023.

40. Freeman, “Foreign Funding of Think Tanks in America.”

41. Author interview.

42. “International Advisory Board,” Atlantic Council, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/international-advisory-board/, accessed 3 March 2023. As mentioned earlier, Pinchuk denies any financial links to Manafort’s network.

43. Ryan Grim and Clio Chang, “Amid Internal Investigation over Leaks to Media, the Center for American Progress Fires Two Staffers,” The Intercept, January 16, 2019.

44. Eric Lipton, Brooke Williams, and Nicholas Confessore, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks,” New York Times, September 6, 2014.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Casey Michel, “Congress Takes Aim at Think Tanks and Their Corrupt Money,” New Republic, June 27, 2022.

48. Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas, “No such thing as a free donation? Research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis,” International Relations, December 22, 2022.

49. In the Matter of the Search of Information Stored Within the iCloud Account Associated with DSID/Apple Account Number 1338547227, Application for a Warrant by Telephone or Other Reliable Electronic Means, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Case No. 2:22-MJ-1530, April 15, 2022, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22062338-allen-search-warrant?responsive=1&title=1.

50. Alan Suderman and Jim Mustian, “FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related to Qatar Lobbying,” Associated Press, June 7, 2022.

51. In the Matter of the Search of Information…, Application for a Warrant.

52. Michel, “Congress Takes Aim at Think Tanks.”

53. Associated Press, “FBI Seizes Retired General’s Data Related to Qatar Lobbying,” Politico, June 7, 2022.

54. Lipton, Williams, and Confessore, “Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks.”

55. Ibid.

56. Nahal Toosi, “Trump Administration Demands Think Tanks Disclose Foreign Funding,” Politico, October 13, 2020.

57. Michael R. Pompeo, “On Transparency and the Foreign Funding of U.S. Think Tanks,” press statement, U.S. Department of State, October 13, 2020.

58. Secretary Pompeo (@secpompeo), “The @StateDept will henceforth request think tanks that accept money from foreign governments disclose this information to the public. The purpose is simple: to promote free and open dialogue, untainted by the machinations of authoritarian regimes,” Twitter, 11:47 a.m. October 13, 2020, https://twitter.com/secpompeo/status/1316042794411196417.

15. YOU’RE FUCKED

1. “Bloomberg: Would Be Godsend if More Billionaires Moved to NYC,” NBC 4 New York, September 20, 2013.

2. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

3. Ibid.

4. U.S. Department of Justice, “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election” (Mueller Report), March 2019.

5. Another vector of Russian meddling that the Mueller Report overlooked was Moscow’s cultivation of American secessionists in places like Texas and California, though this was less an influence or lobbying campaign and more simply a matter of sowing chaos in the United States—and potentially fracturing the United States outright. This, unexpectedly, was how I initially uncovered the social media prong of Russian interference efforts—including a grammatically challenged post that read, memorably, “IN LOVE WITH TEXAS SHAPE.” See Casey Michel, “How the Russians Pretended to Be Texas—and Texans Believed Them,” Washington Post, October 17, 2017.

6. One area the Mueller Report overlooked, for instance, was how the Kremlin was firmly embedded in leading nonprofit organizations among America’s so-called Religious Right. One organization in particular, the US-based World Congress of Families (WCF), offered entrée for a range of pro-Kremlin oligarchs and their proxies—and allowed them to directly access, and lobby, American politicians and allies within the Religious Right. As Alexey Komov, the Russian representative for the WCF—which has accepted funding from multiple now-sanctioned Russian oligarchs—told me, “We’re often shown as a strange people like we’re homophobic fascists or something.” Given the Kremlin’s recent manifestation, “homophobic fascist” remains an apt description. See Casey Michel, “How Russia Became the Leader of the Global Christian Right,” Politico Magazine, February 9, 2017.

7. Unsurprisingly, cultivation of evangelical organizations and groups like the NRA carried significant overlap. For instance, Russian agent Maria Butina originally connected with the NRA because of a Tennessee lawyer named Kline Preston. When I spoke with Preston, he revealed that he believed Putin was, quite literally, a gift from God. “I think there are certain people throughout history … who have been placed on this planet, once about every five hundred years, who are difference-makers, without whom things would be much different and worse,” Preston told me. “In the history of our nation, I believe firmly that George Washington was one of those people. Had he not lived, this would be a totally different scenario. There are two people in Russian history in the last days that I believe were God-sent. One was Boris Yeltsin, and one was Vladimir Putin. And the reason I say Yeltsin … he was the guy that anointed Putin, and, man, that was a world-changer right there. Him. Yeltsin did it. And from whence it came, I can only think, you know, that it was divine.”

8. Casey Michel, “Tom Barrack Suggests Trump’s White House Was Even More Vulnerable than We Thought,” NBC News, July 25, 2021.

9. Sharon LaFraniere and William K. Rashbaum, “Thomas Barrack, Trump Fund-Raiser, Is Indicted on a Lobbying Charge,” New York Times, July 20, 2021.

10. U.S. Department of Justice, “Former Advisor to Presidential Candidate Among Three Defendants Charged with Acting as Agents of a Foreign Government,” press release, July 20, 2021.

11. U.S. v Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi et al., Indictment, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York, Case No. 1:21-cr-00371, July 15, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1413381/download.

12. Tom Winter and Dareh Gregorian, “Tom Barrack, Former Trump Inaugural Chair, Released on $250 Million Bond,” NBC News, July 23, 2021.

13. Michel, “Tom Barrack Suggests.”

14. Rebecca Davis O’Brien, “Trump Adviser’s Trial May Shed Light on Foreign Influence Campaigns,” New York Times, September 17, 2022.

15. Debra J. Saunders, “Steve Wynn Named RNC Finance Chairman,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 30, 2017.

16. Isaac Stanley-Becker and Spencer S. Hsu, “U.S. Sues to Compel Casino Mogul Steve Wynn to Register as Agent of China,” Washington Post, May 17, 2022.

17. Attorney General of United States of America v. Stephen A. Wynn, Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 22-1372, May 17, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1506786/download.

18. U.S. Department of Justice, “Elliott Broidy Pleads Guilty for Back-Channel Lobbying Campaign to Drop 1MDB Investigation and Remove a Chinese Foreign National,” press release, October 20, 2020.

19. Spencer S. Hsu, “Major RNC, Trump Fundraiser Elliott Broidy Pleads Guilty to Acting as Unregistered Foreign Agent,” Washington Post, October 20, 2020.

20. Attorney General of United States of America v. Stephen A. Wynn, Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief.

21. Mark Hosenball, “Trump Ex-Fundraiser Elliott Broidy Pleads Guilty in 1MDB Foreign Lobbying Case,” Reuters, October 20, 2020.

22. Attorney General of United States of America v. Stephen A. Wynn, Complaint for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief.

23. Ken Dilanian, “Russians Paid Mike Flynn $45K for Moscow Speech, Documents Show,” NBC News, March 16, 2017.

24. Carol E. Lee, “Mueller Gives New Details on Flynn’s Secretive Work for Turkey,” NBC News, December 5, 2018.

25. Isaac Arnsdorf, “Trump’s New Spy Chief Used to Work for a Foreign Politician the U.S. Accused of Corruption,” ProPublica, February 21, 2020.

26. U.S. Department of the Treasury, “Treasury Targets Corruption and the Kremlin’s Malign Influence Operations in Moldova,” press release, October 26, 2022.

27. Arnsdorf, “Trump’s New Spy Chief.”

28. Casey Michel, “The Law That Could Take Down Rudy Giuliani,” New Republic, October 15, 2019.

29. Jo Becker, Maggie Haberman, and Eric Lipton, “Giuliani Pressed for Turkish Prisoner Swap in Oval Office Meeting,” New York Times, October 10, 2019.

30. Aram Roston, Matt Spetalnick, and Brian Ellsworth, “Exclusive: Giuliani Told U.S. His Client Deserves Leniency for Financing Venezuela’s Opposition—Parnas,” Reuters, January 22, 2020.

31. Casey Michel, “The Kleptocrat Who Bankrolled Rudy Giuliani’s Drive for Dirt on Biden,” New Republic, August 4, 2022. Firtash is currently fighting extradition to the United States.

32. Nick Penzenstadler, Steve Reilly, and John Kelly, “Most Trump Real Estate Now Sold to Secretive Buyers,” USA Today, June 13, 2017.

33. Craig Unger, “Trump’s Russian Laundromat,” New Republic, July 13, 2017.

34. Richard C. Paddock and Eric Lipton, “Trump’s Indonesia Projects, Still Moving Ahead, Create Potential Conflicts,” New York Times, December 31, 2016.

35. “Trump’s Luxury Condo: A Congolese State Affair,” Global Witness, April 10, 2019.

36. Luke Broadwater and Eric Lipton, “Documents Detail Foreign Government Spending at Trump Hotel,” New York Times, November 14, 2022.

37. Details of Malaysian government expenditures at Trump International Hotel, Washington, DC, for September 10–19, 2017, prepared December 19, 2018, https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/pages-from-malaysian-government-expenditures-trump-hotel/c3e82c1247e1ccc8/full.pdf.

38. Broadwater and Lipton, “Documents Detail Foreign Government Spending.”

39. Melissa Zhu, “Najib Razak: Malaysia’s Ex-PM Starts Jail Term After Final Appeal Fails,” BBC News, August 23, 2022.

40. Broadwater and Lipton, “Documents Detail Foreign Government Spending.”

41. Katherine Sullivan, “How a Nigerian Presidential Candidate Hired a Trump Lobbyist and Ended Up in Trump’s Lobby—‘Trump, Inc.’ Podcast,” ProPublica, February 27, 2019.

42. Scott Bixby, “Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Came from Paul Manafort During his 2016 Campaign: Mueller Notes,” Daily Beast, November 4, 2019.

43. Jim Rutenberg, “The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine,” New York Times, November 2, 2022.

44. Radley Balko, “No-Knock Raids Like the One Against Paul Manafort Are More Common than You Think,” Washington Post, August 10, 2017.

45. U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort Jr. and Konstantin Kilimnik, Superseding Indictment, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, Case No. 1:17-cr-00201-ABJ, June 8, 2018, www.justice.gov/archives/sco/page/file/1070326/download.

46. U.S. v. Paul J. Manafort Jr. and Richard W. Gates III, Indictment, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, Case No. Case No. 1:17-cr-00201-ABJ, October 30, 2017, www.justice.gov/file/1007271/download.

47. Ibid.

48. Sharon LaFraniere, “Paul Manafort’s Prison Sentence Is Nearly Doubled to 7½ Years,” New York Times, March 13, 2019.

49. Dartunorro Clark, Gary Grumbach, and Charlie Gile, “Manafort Gets 7.5 Years in Prison, After Additional 43 Months in Second Sentencing,” NBC News, March 13, 2019.

50. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

51. Theodoric Meyer, “Flynn Admits to Lying About Turkish Lobbying,” Politico, December 1, 2017. Trump later pardoned Flynn, who was never imprisoned.

52. U.S. Department of Justice, “Elliott Broidy Pleads Guilty.”

53. Soo Rin Kim, “Trump Associates Who Have Been Sent to Prison or Faced Criminal Charges,” ABC News, January 17, 2020.

54. Skadden settlement agreement, January 15, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1124381/download.

55. Kenneth P. Vogel and Matthew Goldstein, “Law Firm to Pay $4.6 Million in Case Tied to Manafort and Ukraine,” New York Times, January 17, 2019.

56. Kenneth P. Vogel, “Skadden Said to Have Paid $11 Million to Settle Ukraine Dispute,” New York Times, May 10, 2020.

57. David D. Kirkpatrick and Mark Mazzetti, “Prosecutors Add Details to Foreign Lobbying Charges Against Trump Ally,” New York Times, May 17, 2022.

58. Eric Tucker, “US Sues Casino Mogul Steve Wynn over Relationship with China,” Associated Press, May 17, 2022.

59. Erica Orden, “How Federal Prosecutors Are Pursuing Rudy Giuliani,” CNN, May 22, 2021.

60. Julia Ainsley, Andrew W. Lehren, and Anna Schecter, “The Mueller Effect: FARA Filings Soar in Shadow of Manafort, Flynn Probes,” NBC News, January 18, 2018.

61. Katie Benner, “Justice Dept. to Step Up Enforcement of Foreign Influence Laws,” New York Times, March 6, 2019.

62. Office of Senator Elizabeth Warren, “Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act,” August 21, 2018.

63. “The Biden Plan to Guarantee Government Works for the People,” https://joebiden.com/governmentreform/#, accessed 3 March 2023.

16. THE REPUBLIC ITSELF IS AT RISK

1. Quoted in Scott Weidensaul, Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).

2. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. “Trump Pardons Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner,” BBC News, December 24, 2020.

6. Franklin Foer, “The Triumph of Kleptocracy,” The Atlantic, December 23, 2020.

7. David L. Stern, “FAQ: Who Is Konstantin Kilimnik and Why Does His Name Appear 800 Times in a Senate Report?,” Washington Post, August 18, 2020.

8. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,” 116th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 116-XXX.

9. Ibid.

10. Aaron Blake, “The Senate’s ‘Grave’ Russia Report: What We Learned, and What It Means,” Washington Post, August 18, 2020.

11. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

12. Charlie Savage, “Trump Pardons Michael Flynn, Ending Case His Justice Dept. Sought to Shut Down,” New York Times, November 25, 2020.

13. Theodoric Meyer, “Emails Give New Detail About Mercury, Podesta Role in Manafort’s Lobbying,” Politico, September 13, 2018.

14. It’s worth noting that there’s no evidence that Hunter’s work in Ukraine or elsewhere affected his father’s policies. If anything, in Ukraine, such a scheme appeared to backfire; Biden publicly called for Ukrainian authorities to specifically investigate the firm his son was affiliated with. See Casey Michel, “Trump’s Big Lie About Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine Falls Apart,” The Daily Beast, September 29, 2019.

15. Casey Michel, “The Emerging Artistry of Hunter Biden,” The Atlantic, September 28, 2021.

16. Sarah Chayes, “Hunter Biden’s Perfectly Legal, Socially Acceptable Corruption,” The Atlantic, September 27, 2019.

17. Theodoric Meyer, “How Lobbyists Are Supporting Biden,” Politico, April 26, 2019.

18. Mark Paustenbach and Mark Skidmore, “Larry Rasky: A Legendary Democratic Operative Who Boosted Joe Biden,” Politico Magazine, December 26, 2020.

19. Casey Michel, “Biden’s Super PAC Buddy Has a Paul Manafort Problem,” New Republic, November 1, 2019.

20. Author interview with Larry Rasky.

21. Karin Fischer, “Far-Reaching Investigations of Colleges’ Foreign Ties Could Be Closed,” letter to the editor, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 5, 2022.

22. Jimmy Quinn, “Biden Admin Winds Down Probes into Universities’ Foreign Gifts,” National Review, October 18, 2022.

23. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division, email to [addressee redacted], “Re: [Company] Request for Advisory Opinion Pursuant to 28 C.F.R. § 5.2,” April 12, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/page/file/1526096/download.

24. The State Department did not respond to my questions regarding requirements or requests about think tanks and foreign funding disclosure.

25. U.S. v. Gregory B. Craig, Grand Jury Indictment, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, April 11, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/press-release/file/1153646/download.

26. Matthew Continetti, “The Shameful Saga of Greg Craig,” Commentary, October 2019.

27. Sharon LaFraniere, “Gregory Craig Acquitted on Charge of Lying to Justice Department,” New York Times, September 4, 2019.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Instead of FARA, Barrack was charged with violating a statute known as Section 951, a related lobbying- and espionage-related regulation. Section 951 was used against others involved in the 2016 interference campaign, such as Maria Butina, the Russian agent who infiltrated the National Rifle Association (NRA). See 18 U.S. Code § 951, “Agents of Foreign Governments.”

31. Department of Justice, “Former Advisor to Presidential Candidate Among Three Defendants Charged with Acting as Agents of a Foreign Government,” press release, July 20, 2021.

32. Rebecca Davis O’Brien, “Former Trump Adviser Acquitted on Charges of Acting as Emirati Agent,” New York Times, November 4, 2022.

33. Ibid.

34. Jacqueline Thomsen, “Casino Tycoon Wynn Defeats U.S. Lawsuit over Chinese Agent Claims,” Reuters, October 12, 2022.

35. Devan Cole, “Steve Wynn Can’t Be Forced to Register as a Foreign Agent of China, Judge Rules,” CNN, October 12, 2022.

36. McKinsey’s filings can be found in the FARA database, including: https://efile.fara.gov/docs/6852-Registration-Statement-20200810-1.pdf.

37. Katie Benner, Mark Mazzetti, Ben Hubbard, and Mike Isaac, “Saudis’ Image Makers: A Troll Army and a Twitter Insider,” New York Times, October 20, 2018.

38. Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe, “How McKinsey Has Helped Raise the Stature of Authoritarian Governments,” New York Times, December 15, 2018.

39. Sheelah Kolhatkar, “McKinsey’s Work for Saudi Arabia Highlights Its History of Unsavory Entanglements,” New Yorker, November 1, 2018.

40. Taylor Giorno and Anna Massoglia, “Saudi Arabia Ramped Up U.S. Influence Operations During Biden’s Presidency,” Open Secrets, October 7, 2022.

41. Ben Freeman, “It’s Time to Silence the Saudi Lobbying Machine in Washington,” Washington Post, October 22, 2018.

42. Ben Freeman, “The Saudi Lobby Builds Back Better,” The Intercept, August 25, 2022.

43. Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, “Retired U.S. Generals, Admirals Take Top Jobs with Saudi Crown Prince,” Washington Post, October 18, 2022.

44. Jeremy Herb, “Mattis Advised UAE Military Before Joining Trump Administration,” CNN, August 2, 2017.

45. Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, “UAE Relied on Expertise of Retired U.S. Troops to Beef Up Its Military,” Washington Post, October 18, 2022.

17. MR. LEE’S PUBLICITY BOOK

1. Quoted in Sean Wilentz, Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

2. Dan Mangan, “Federal Authorities Bar Ex-Trump Campaign Chief Paul Manafort from Dubai Flight Because of Invalid Passport,” CNBC, March 23, 2022.

3. John Hudson, “U.S. Intelligence Report Says Key Gulf Ally Meddled in American Politics,” Washington Post, November 12, 2022.

4. Jonathan Guyer, “Where in the World Are Russians Going to Avoid Sanctions?,” Vox, August 9, 2022.

5. Eugene Daniels, “Politico Playbook: Biden Braces for Brutal Inflation Numbers,” Politico, April 12, 2022.

6. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

7. “Foreign Lobby Watch,” Open Secrets, https://www.opensecrets.org/fara, accessed 3 March 2023.

8. Much of the spike in these Russian expenditures stems from the fact that the federal government forced RT’s parent company to register with FARA in 2017. See Devlin Barrett and David Filipov, “RT Agrees to Register as an Agent of the Russian Government,” Washington Post, November 9, 2017.

9. Casey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021).

10. Hailey Fuchs, “How Russian Entities Are Retaining Much of Their D.C. Lobbying Influence,” Politico, March 22, 2022.

11. Josh Rogin, “It’s Time to Shut Down the Foreign Dictator Lobbying Racket,” Washington Post, October 5, 2022.

12. Office of Rep. Steve Cohen, “Representatives Cohen, Wilson, Banks, and Slotkin Introduce the Bipartisan Stop Helping Adversaries Manipulate Everything (SHAME) Act,” press release, October 5, 2022.

13. Office of Rep. Jared Golden, “Golden, Bipartisan Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Combat Foreign Influence in Washington,” press release, June 16, 2022.

14. Casey Michel, “Congress Takes Aim at Think Tanks and Their Corrupt Money,” New Republic, June 27, 2022.

15. Emily Wilkins, “GOP Changes Stir Fears About the Future of House Ethics Office,” Bloomberg Government, January 17, 2023.

16. Ivy Lee with Burton St. John III, Mr. Lee’s Publicity Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Public Relations (New York: PRMuseum Press, 2017).

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. “#EthicsMatter—Ivy Lee and the First Code of Ethics,” Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communication Management, Zurich, February 19, 2021.

20. “Rise of the Image Men,” The Economist, December 16, 2010.

21. Gary McCormick, “Merely ‘Image Men’? Hardly,” Public Relations Society of America, December 20, 2010.

22. For instance, the “Code of Ethics” for McCormick’s organization is silent as it pertains to American PR specialists aiding dictators. See “Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Member Code of Ethics,” n.d., https://web.archive.org/web/20140115230822/https://www.prsa.org/AboutPRSA/Ethics/CodeEnglish/#.UtcU7XbP23A.

23. Adam Lowenstein, “The American PR Firm Helping Saudi Arabia Clean Up Its Image,” The Guardian, December 22, 2022.

24. Hailey Fuchs, “The Daily Show Meets Riyadh! How a Giant PR Firm Is Pitching the Saudis,” Politico, July 17, 2022.

25. Lowenstein, “The American PR Firm Helping Saudi Arabia.”

26. Aziz El Yaakoubi, “Saudi Woman Gets 45-Year Prison Term for Social Media Posts, Rights Group Says,” Reuters, August 30, 2022.

27. Marcus Baram, “How Saudi Arabia Restored Its U.S. Influence Machine After the Khashoggi Murder,” Foreign Policy, January 27, 2021.

28. Lowenstein, “The American PR Firm Helping Saudi Arabia.”

29. Ibid.

30. Fuchs, “The Daily Show Meets Riyadh!”

31. In May 2022, Edelman CEO Richard Edelman wrote that he was “more convinced than ever about the global rift between democracy and autocracy.” A few days later, the company signed its new deal with Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear how Edelman views its own role in this rift between democracy and autocracy. See Richard Edelman, “Davos Mid-Year,” June 2, 2022, https://www.edelman.com/insights/davos-mid-year-6-am, and Lowenstein, “The American PR Firm Helping Saudi Arabia.”

32. Lee, Mr. Lee’s Publicity Book.

33. Ibid.

AFTERWORD

1. Bob Lee, “They Came for the Gold and Stayed for the Grass,” Rangelands, October 1996, https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/11303/10576.

2. Peter Duffy, “The Congressman Who Spied for Russia,” Politico, October 6, 2014.

3. Casey Michel, “We’ve Never Seen Anything Like the Menendez Indictment,” The Atlantic, October 26, 2023.

4. Nina Burleigh, “Nadine and Bob Menendez’s Flashy, Allegedly Corrupt, Romance,” New York Magazine, October 31, 2023.

5. Ben Penn, “Menendez Indicted as Foreign Agent After Thwarting Related Bill,” Bloomberg Law, October 13, 2023.

6. Alexander Hamilton, “Federalist No. 21: Other Defects of the Present Confederation” (1787).