Partner Josh Rosenstein speaks with Business Insider on overall FARA enforcement.
“There’s a sense of anxiety surrounding FARA compliance that really began post-Manafort but has not waned,” said Josh Rosenstein, a partner at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein and Birkenstock and FARA expert.
“In my experience, a lot of firms are trying to get ahead of the DOJ a little bit,” Rosenstein said, “They don’t want to wait for an inquiry letter and have to incur the cost of that process when there’s an argument to be made that they should have done something in the past.
Josh Rosenstein shares his thoughts with Open Secrets on LDA exemptions.
The Justice Department’s treatment of the “LDA exemption” has been “less than consistent,” according to Joshua Rosenstein, an attorney with Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock. “It is clear from most of the Advisory Opinions that simply having a foreign corporation with upstream government ownership isn’t always enough to treat the foreign principal as a governmental entity,” he said.
“The principal beneficiary analysis is perhaps even murkier,” Rosenstein added, “but given DOJ’s positions on lobbying related to foreign banks, trade sanctions, and core national industries, it’s not clear to me that the LDA exemption would be appropriate in this case.”
Is the Justice Department putting foreign lobbyists in harms way? Partner Josh Rosenstein shares this thoughts with Foreign Lobby.
The public disclosure of residential addresses, particularly where there are legitimate, well-founded safety concerns, doesn’t seem to serve any legitimate public policy ends. And in a hyper-partisan age where doxing leads to violence, it may well put registrants at risk.
The Justice Department has the tools to address this without violating the spirit of the law. It had done so in the past, in this area as well as in less significant ones, and it needs to be able to administer the law in ways that don’t lead to absurd or even dangerous results.
Josh Rosenstein expresses his concerns surrounding the $2 million Myamar lobbying contract, that is under legal scrutiny.
“[The] bigger question for me is … why this arrangement isn’t a prohibited contingent fee, if the lobbying includes efforts to get them off the sanctions list,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lobbying expert with Sandler Reiff. “The only way to be paid would be if the lobbying were successful, in that case.”
Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock P.C. (Sandler Reiff), the pre-eminent political law boutique law firm in Washington, D.C., is pleased to announce the promotion of Dara Lindenbaum to the position of Member of the Firm. Sandler Reiff advises clients involved in the business of politics, including political committees, party committees, non-profit organizations, advocacy groups, candidates and officeholders, communications, consulting, and government relations firms, and non-profits, as well as major contributors to political and non-profit groups. As Founding Member Joe Sandler noted, “We are excited to announce this promotion, which reflects Dara’s outstanding legal work, her contribution to our Firm, and her prominence in the field of political law.”
Dara advises her clients on compliance with state and federal campaign finance laws and serves as outside counsel to a number of political organizations. She represents candidates and ballot measures across the country in recounts, canvasses, petition/ballot access challenges and other electoral disputes. She also assists clients with general business matters including corporate governance and employment issues.
While at Sandler Reiff, Dara served as General Counsel to Stacey Abrams’ campaign for Governor of Georgia in 2018 and Deputy General Counsel to Martin O’Malley’s campaign for President in the 2016 election cycle. Prior to joining Sandler Reiff, Dara was an associate in the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Dara graduated from the George Washington University Law School and is a member of the bars of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Georgia. Dara was named a 2019 and 2020 Rising Star in the District of Columbia edition of Super Lawyers.
Partner Josh Rosenstein shares his thoughts on Trump’s pardons.
At first glance these pardons, while perhaps unseemly, appear to amount to little more than political expedience: The president rewarding loyal supporters whom he viewed as having been targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller‘s probe into Russian influence in the 2016 election. These include van der Zwaan, who has no known ties to the Trump administration.
But buried in the pardons issued in December was that of former Republican Rep. Mark Siljander(R-Mich.). Siljander pled guilty in 2010 for serving as an unregistered agent for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), in one of the rare early 2000s examples of criminal FARA enforcement. The US government at the time had designated the relief agency as a terrorist organization and accused it of funneling more than $1 million to Iraq, in violation of US sanctions .When these pardons are viewed together, a stark reality emerges. In the course of a few months, the president’s pardons wiped clean the records of some of the most prominent foreign influence actors in recent history, and undid much of the last decade’s successful FARA enforcement activity.
Partner Josh Rosenstein shares his opinion on the DOJ’s second known LDA investigation.
But the disclosure of any investigation at all is notable and, taken together with charges brought against disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff earlier this summer, could signal that DOJ is “actively now looking into potential LDA violations,” said Josh Rosenstein, a lawyer with Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock who advises clients on lobbying laws. That, along with prosecutions in recent years targeting high-profile figures’ failure to register as foreign agents, “very well may reveal a trend in DOJ’s renewed focus broadly on enforcing laws concerning advocacy.”
Partner Joe Birkenstock comments on court battles leading up to the 2020 election.
“They’re not going to be shutting down in two, six, eight months,” said Joe Birkenstock, who previously served as chief counsel of the Democratic National Committee, of the Trump campaign. “Think of it in terms of years.”
Partner Josh Rosenstein comments on controversial Trump fundraiser Elliot Broidy, as he is charged for lobbying conspiracy.
“These allegations read almost like a textbook FARA violation,” Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein and Birkenstock who specializes in the Foreign Agents Registration Act, tells Rolling Stone. “Based on what DOJ laid out, Broidy and his co-conspirators appear to have flouted this crucial national security statute with sheer impunity, actively seeking to shield their lobbying of the White House and their illegal payments from public view. The question remains whether the President may end up intervening in this process in behalf of another old friend of his.”