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Foreign lobbying oversight found lax

By Philip Ewing

Lobbyists working on behalf of foreign interests regularly evade laws that require registration and disclosure of their activities, a new report charges, and the Justice Department lets many violations slide.

The report, out Tuesday from the Project on Government Oversight, also found “loopholes” in U.S. influence laws that “often make it difficult, if not impossible, for the government to police compliance or to discipline lobbyists who fail to comply.”

“Around the edges, there’s a lot of loosey-goosey stuff going on,” one lobbyist said in the report. “People representing foreign interests and not reporting.”

Foreign “principles” — governments or other groups — use more than 1,000 lobbyists in the U.S. and spend about $500 million each year trying to influence Congress and U.S. public opinion, POGO found. U.S. laws require such lobbyists to file promptly with the Justice Department, but most of them submit their disclosures late, many documents are incomplete and some are not filed at all.

Some lobbyists for foreign interests violate at least the spirit of U.S. law by not disclosing the work they’re doing in the “materials” they distribute, the report said. And the Justice Department compounds these problems by failing to enforce lapses or breaches, relying on “voluntary compliance” and also makes it difficult for people to access the public records of foreign lobbying in the U.S.

Responding, the Justice Department says it wants to upgrade its electronic filing system and beef up other requirements and oversight, but has not yet done so.

“We agree that the Foreign Agents Registration Act is important and continue to evaluate possible enhancements that would strengthen enforcement,” said spokesman Marc Raimondi.

One example described in the report is an effort by the Egyptian government to kill a Senate Foreign Relations Committee resolution supporting democratic protestsin Cairo during the Arab Spring. The Egyptian government retained the D.C. lobby shop The Livingston Group, founded by former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Livingston (R-La.), to try to quash support in Congress for the revolutionaries.

Livingston’s firm sent letters to Senate Foreign Relations Committee members warning the resolution under consideration was “not conducive to the ongoing, open and frank dialogue on issues related to human rights” in Egypt. The push worked and the resolution did not come to a vote.

But Livingston’s firm did not file the letters with the Justice Department within the 48 hours required under U.S. law, POGO found. They were mailed to senators during the 2010 lame-duck session, which began Nov. 15, but didn’t appear in government files until Jan. 31, 2011. And a loophole in the law means the Livingston Group does not have to disclose the members to whom it send the letters on behalf of Egypt.

Livingston told POLITICO that particular letter filing may have been late, but overall he and his firm are “meticulous” about compliance with regulations. The report does not say that the Livingston Group dropped Egypt as a client shortly afterward, he said, after the government’s heavy-handed tactics became clear and the regime threatened the son of then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

“We ended up terminating the contract with Egypt the next day,” Livingston said.” Frankly, it cost a hell of a lot of money, but the last thing in the world we wanted to represent was [a] client running afoul of the U.S. government.”

There are legal loopholes and incomplete oversight in the lobbying world, Livingston acknowledged — but he said he and his firm always take care to follow the law and comply.

“If you want to make this point, that people are violating the law, you can make it, because there are a lot of people out there who aren’t complying at all,” he said, giving the example of lobbyists who don’t call themselves by that name and don’t register. With those kinds of cases, some of the examples cited in the POGO report are small potatoes, he argued.

“If they had said, ‘Bob Livingston didn’t file on Egypt for two years, and yet continued to do that work — that would be something to talk about. But for a friggin’ letter that was late? I just don’t understand it. I’m not the poster child for this problem. The problem I do not not deny has existed, but we have always bent over backwards to comply.

”POGO’s report also documents examples of lobbyists making contributions to members of Congress on the same day they met to advocate for their foreign clients. U.S. law prohibits foreign contributions to American political campaigns. But in many cases, the report says, a lobbyist often meets with a member and then makes a political contribution only hours later.

In 2009, a lobbyist for DLA Piper advocating for the United Arab Emirates met with three members – Democratic Reps. Robert Wexler of Florida and Ciro Rodriguez of Texas and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) – and then gave $100, $200 and $100, the report said.

POGO describes other cases in which lobbyists working on behalf of foreign governments gave lawmakers $1,000 after meetings or discussions and, in one case, $4,250 to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton.
DLA Piper did not respond to a request to comment.

The report acknowledges that political contributions by lobbyists to members of Congress are routine in Washington, no matter the identity or nationality of the client.