Risch bill would close FARA loophole
US senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have introduced a bill – the Preventing Adversary Influence, Disinformation and Obscured Foreign Financing (‘PAID OFF’) Act – which aims to ‘help close Foreign Agents Registration Act loopholes that allow unregistered agents of foreign adversaries to lobby in the United States.’
Risch said: ‘For years, the United States’ biggest adversaries have exploited loopholes in U.S. lobbying laws to influence senior government officials and advance their geopolitical goals,’ citing Russia’s efforts to prevent sanctions against its Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Chinese surveillance firm Hikvision’s attempts to avoid sanctions as ‘Well-known examples’.
‘This bill,’ he said, ‘will close key loopholes to ensure transparency and accountability of malign foreign lobbying efforts in the United States.’
In background notes, the senators added: ‘The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) has not been amended since the 1990s, and the law has not kept up with modern foreign adversary influence campaigns using commercial activities and registration loopholes as subterfuge to spread disinformation. Currently, agents representing foreign adversaries are able to avoid FARA registration by taking advantage of the commercial activities and Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) exemptions to avoid disclosing their lobbying efforts to the Department of Justice.
‘This legislation would make it easier for the U.S. government to catch these unregistered agents in the act by removing the commercial activities and LDA registration exemptions that make it easy for foreign agents to lobby for America’s adversaries without having to disclose that they are being paid off by a foreign adversary government. This legislation would apply to agents lobbying on behalf of countries of particular concern, defined in statute as China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Syria.’
