Two top GOP members of the House Natural Resources Committee have opened probes into three high-profile U.S. environmental groups working on issues abroad. The Republican congressmen want to know whether during their advocacy work the groups have acted as agents of foreign governments and therefore violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Joshua Rosenstein, partner of the firm, argues that these environmental groups have not violated FARA.
“Merely agreeing with the policy position of a foreign government, as many environmental groups end up doing, does not mean an organization needs to register with the Justice Department,” Rosenstein said. “Just having overlapping issues with some third party,” Rosenstein said, “does not mean you’re acting as an agent for that third party.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
Joe Birkenstock was interviewed for a segment on All Things Considered on NPR about the changing landscape and enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
OVERBY: And Joe Birkenstock, who practices FARA law in Washington, said the capital city doesn’t seem much wiser – people who should know better acting as if FARA isn’t any tougher than the law on lobbying for domestic clients.
JOE BIRKENSTOCK: I think you’ll see hints of this, even in some of the statements around the case, about people saying, you know, but I never meet with public officials, or, I don’t engage in any lobbying.
You can listen to the full interview here.
Dara Lindenbaum successfully represented Liz Walsh, a candidate for Howard County Council in a recount. Ms. Walsh led her opponent by two votes going into the recount. At the end of the recount, Ms. Walsh was certified the winner by a margin of six votes.
The article and accompanying photos may be found here: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/howard/ph-ho-cf-walsh-weinstein-recount-0719-story.html
Sandler Reiff founding partner Joe Sandler was recently featured on Nathaniel G. Pearlman’s podcast The Great Battlefield, where he talked Campaign Finance Law, delegate selection, and and the changing landscape of political law in the Era of Trump. He also discussed his journey in the field of law, as well as the creation and evolution of Sandler Reiff.
You can listen to the podcast here.
Recent interviews with Trump attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani have revealed that Giuliani has continued to work with foreign clients through his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, while serving as President Trump’s attorney. Untraditional for the position, Giuliani’s dealings have blurred the lines of government service, and have called into question whether his dealings with foreign clients need to be registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), in order to protect government interests.
Sandler Reiff partner Josh Rosenstein believes that Giuliani’s actions, most specifically a paid speech given on behalf of Iranian Resistance group Mujahideen-e-Khalq, serves as an example of dealings needing registration under FARA, creating potential ethics violations for Giuliani.
“Political activity is a broad term,” Rosenstein said. “It includes any actions — including speeches, PR work and media outreach — that are intended to or anticipated to influence the U.S. government or the U.S. public with regard to the formulation, adoption, or modification of the policies of the U.S., or with regard to the political or public interests, policies, or relations of a foreign political party.”
You can read the article here.
As was recommended in 2016 by the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Justice, and recently announced by the Department, today DOJ released anonymized versions of several dozen opinions it has provided over the last few decades regarding the application of the Foreign Agents Registration Act to particular sets of circumstances. Copies of these opinions are now available here: https://www.justice.gov/nsd-fara/advisory-opinions.
To be sure: the realities of FARA’s opinion process and the limits of what DOJ was able to release necessarily limit the depth and range of the conclusions that can be drawn from these opinions. Nevertheless, both individually and as a whole, the opinions provide useful insights into how the Department has interpreted FARA itself and the regulations that implement it in a wide range of particular circumstances.
You can read the rest of Joe Birkenstock’s observations on the new FARA “Rule 2” Opinions here: Memo on New DOJ Rule 2 Opinion Release.
Every 10 years, the Census Bureau counts all people in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. That total is then used as the basis to figure out how many congressional seats each state gets. The 14th Amendment says congressional seats should be apportioned based on simply the number of “persons.”
However, Alabama is suing the Trump administration to force the Census Bureau not to count undocumented people as part of the tally used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. The plaintiffs in the suit argue that apportionment should exclude immigrants and be based on only the citizen population.
Jeffrey Wice, a Washington lawyer who has worked with Democrats on redistricting issues, said the case could go to the Supreme Court. He added that it was “fiction” that the Founding Fathers intended to exclude undocumented people from the census.
“Whoever filed the suit did not think this through,” he said.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Information released Tuesday on Michael Cohen’s activities, including his bank records, show that work he did for Swiss company, Novartis, may have triggered the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and made him criminally liable.
Rosenstein believes that given Novartis’ status as a Swiss company, public reporting and Novartis’ statements, it seems likely that Novartis would be treated as a foreign principal in this case. He continues,
“Novartis AG is a Swiss company, and from public reporting—and from Novartis’s own statements, it appears that the foreign company was directly involved in the agreement with Mr. Cohen,” he said. “Foreign corporations undertaking political activities in the US are treated as foreign principals under FARA.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
In February, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reached a settlement agreement with Syngenta Seeds LLC, a California company, to resolve violations of federal pesticide regulations. The fine reached from this settlement was dramatically lower than the fine that was imposed under the Obama Administration in 2016. Observers of the EPA noted that Jeff Sands, who was a top EPA agricultural adviser at the time of the reduced fine settlement, was previously a lobbyist for Syngenta.
The EPA’s decision to dramatically reduce the fine has raised concern about the ethical land mines of an administration filled with former lobbyist and business executives.
Rosenstein commented on the ethical dilemma:
“I think the optics are not particularly great, as become an apparent pattern with this administration,” said Joshua Ian Rosenstein, a partner at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock.
“There is a lot of lip service given to following ethical restrictions,” he continued, “but report after report seems to indicate that there is very little commitment to ensuring compliance. I think this feeds into an overall picture that the administration doesn’t take these issues very seriously at all.”
You can read the rest of the article here.
Last week, President Trump tapped former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani to join his legal team and assist in negotiating an end to Robert Mueller’s probe into 2016 election meddling. Vice News explores the possible connection between Rudy Giuliani and Robert Mueller’s investigation and explores the possibility that Guiliani may be joining the legal team to avoid being a witness for investigators.
On the topic, Rosenstein states:
“The investigation has so many moving parts that it’s hard to contemplate a way in which Giuliani would not have evidence that is relevant to Mr. Mueller’s investigation,” said Washington, D.C.-based attorney Josh Rosenstein, an expert in foreign lobbying regulation.
You can read the rest of the article here.