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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Opinion: Menendez case sounds the alarm on foreign influence on | |
Congress | |
Opinion by Casey Michel | |
Updated: | |
10:15 AM EDT, Mon May 13, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
On Monday, for the , a for allegedly conspiring to act as a . The | |
trial centers on the allegations swirling around New Jersey Democratic | |
Sen. Bob Menendez, who faces a range of accusations about his | |
connections to and . | |
Earlier this month, of Texas and his wife were charged with | |
accepting bribes from two foreign entities. Cuellar said he and his | |
wife are innocent. | |
Both of these cases are shocking and unprecedented, marking the only | |
times sitting congressmen have ever been formally accused of working on | |
behalf of foreign regimes. But they shouldn’t necessarily be a | |
surprise, given how much foreign influence scandals have grown in | |
recent years. | |
The against Menendez includes bribery and obstruction of justice, | |
but it all centers on one question: Was Menendez — who spent years | |
serving as the chair of the , the most powerful congressional official | |
helping steer American foreign policy — secretly working as an agent | |
of Middle Eastern regimes? | |
According to prosecutors, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Per the | |
indictments, Menendez allegedly not only passed along internal | |
information to Egyptian contacts — including highly sensitive details | |
about the staff at the American embassy in Cairo — but he further | |
acted as a ghost writer for , helping them sway Menendez’s Senate | |
colleagues to support the country. Prosecutors that Menendez acted | |
to help the Qatari government by issuing statements publicly | |
supporting Qatar. | |
In return, prosecutors allege that Menendez and his wife received | |
gifts, including gold bars, hundreds of thousands of dollars in and | |
a . Both have pleaded . | |
The filings are, on their own, shocking. According to prosecutors, a | |
sitting American senator secretly worked at the behest not of his | |
constituents, but for a pair of foreign countries. Rather than turn to | |
traditional lobbyists, these regimes infiltrated the highest ranks of | |
Congress’s policy-making community and allegedly flipped Menendez, | |
one of the most prominent figures directing American foreign policy, | |
all to their benefit — and all without Menendez’s colleagues or the | |
rest of us being aware. | |
Because again, Menendez wasn’t a simple, back-bench politician. From | |
his perch atop the Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez was the most | |
powerful congressional official dedicated to shaping American foreign | |
policy, ranging from questions about to to . | |
Outside of the White House, Menendez was the most prominent American | |
politician foreign regimes could target to sway him to their side, so | |
it’s little surprise that both Egyptian and Qatari interests launched | |
such bribery efforts. What’s surprising — and what’s so | |
unprecedented, and so galling — is that they allegedly got to | |
Menendez in the first place. | |
Then again, it’s possible that these kinds of practices have actually | |
been in place for years, and go far beyond Menendez — and that | |
we’re only just now learning about them. After all, it was only a few | |
years ago that prosecutors finally became interested in enforcing even | |
basic disclosure requirements about Americans working as agents for | |
foreign regimes. | |
The first regulations forcing Americans to disclose their links to | |
foreign governments were enacted in 1938 with the passage of the � | |
(FARA). A remarkably progressive piece of legislation, FARA didn’t | |
ban Americans — even congressional officials — from working as | |
lobbyists for foreign regimes. Instead, it simply required that they | |
disclose their efforts to US authorities — and to the American | |
public. | |
Unfortunately, however, FARA quickly transformed into an afterthought. | |
For decades, the number of FARA-related prosecutions remained few and | |
far between. There were a handful of prosecutions targeting secret � | |
and agents, and a few related to those trying to lift sanctions on | |
places like , but that was it. FARA was, in many ways, forgotten — | |
even as the foreign lobbying industry itself exploded in the 21st� | |
century. | |
Then, in 2016, then-President Donald Trump entered the White House,� | |
and thanks to the number of in his administration, prosecutors | |
finally began focusing on how wide-open Washington was to these kinds | |
of foreign agents — and how necessary enforcing FARA was. | |
As a result, by the late 2010s, prosecutors began launching a number | |
of FARA-related prosecutions among a wide range of figures close to | |
Trump. Among the figures targeted for their secret foreign lobbying | |
links were individuals such as , Trump’s former campaign chairman, | |
who was later convicted for failing to disclose his work (among | |
other charges). Trump’s former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, | |
acknowledged failing to register as a foreign agent as part of his for | |
lying to the FBI, before the Justice Department the case and cleared | |
his record. Prosecutors targeted others along the way, including | |
former Trump adviser Tom Barrack, who was , and former Trump campaign | |
adviser . While not all of the prosecutions were successful, the | |
efforts breathed new life not only into , but shone a new light on | |
how target and corrupt American politicians overall. | |
Which is where Menendez and his trial enter the picture. It’s not | |
just that the allegations against Menendez illustrate how bipartisan | |
such foreign lobbying efforts are. But they further illustrate just how | |
far these efforts go beyond figures like Trump or his inner circle — | |
and just how successful these regimes can be, if they target the right | |
Americans. | |
Regardless of this trial’s outcome, the allegations should be a | |
wake-up call not only for American officials, but also for Americans | |
across the country. After all, if foreign regimes could target and | |
recruit the most important congressional official tasked with crafting | |
American foreign policy — and if they could do it as successfully as | |
Egypt and Qatar allegedly did — then no congressional official is | |
off-limits. | |
This story has been updated with the latest news developments. | |
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