Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World

8. Dole’s foreign lobbying filings can be found on FARA’s digital database, such as https://efile.fara.gov/docs/5549-Exhibit-AB-20030401-HDWQXY01.pdf.

9. Carrie Levine, “Bob Dole, Trump Campaign Aide to Lobby for Congolese Government,” Center for Public Integrity, Washington, DC, May 11, 2017.

10. Glenn R. Simpson and Mary Jacoby, “How Lobbyists Help Ex-Soviets Woo Washington,” Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2007.

11. “Grave Secrecy: How a Dead Man Can Own a UK Company and Other Hair-Raising Stories About Hidden Company Ownership from Kyrgyzstan and Beyond,” Global Witness, London, June 2012.

12. Author interview.

13. Levine, “Bob Dole, Trump Campaign Aide to Lobby.”

14. Azure Hall, “Bob Dole’s Net Worth at the Time of His Death Might Surprise You,” The List, December 5, 2021.

15. Joseph J. Schatz and Benjamin Oreskes, “Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’? Serve in Congress First,” Politico, October 2, 2016.

16. Lee Fang, “John Boehner Cashes Out, Joins Corporate Lobbying Firm That Represents China,” The Intercept, September 20, 2016.

17. Anna Massoglia and Karl Evers-Hillstrom, “Joe Lieberman Formally Registers as Lobbyist for Chinese Telecom Giant ZTE,” Open Secrets, January 2, 2019.

18. Schatz and Oreskes, “Want to Be a ‘Foreign Agent’?”

19. Michael Kelly, “Breaking Convention,” New Yorker, August 4, 1996.

20. “Press Release—Transcript of Press Conference by Paul Manafort, Dole Convention Manager,” July 31, 1996, American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.

21. One other foreign, but not necessarily foreign lobbying, scandal that Manafort was involved in by the turn of the century involved a Lebanese national named Abdul Rahman el-Assir. Acting as a global arms broker, el-Assir enlisted Manafort’s help on a range of topics, including a financial deal involving a Portuguese bank and an American biometrics company that ended up imploding the bank. El-Assir and Manafort were later accused of taking part in a kickback scheme involving French officials shipping submarines to Pakistan, and then redirecting income from the sales to a French political campaign. It was, as one analyst said, “one of France’s biggest political scandals.” Manafort allegedly made at least $200,000 from the deal. See Joshua Keating, “Paul Manafort Was Also Involved in One of France’s Biggest Political Scandals,” Slate, October 31, 2017.

22. Karen Yuan, “A Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Career,” The Atlantic, February 6, 2018.

23. Paul Manafort, Political Prisoner: Persecuted, Prosecuted, but Not Silenced (New York: Skyhorse, 2022).

24. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election, Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,” 116th Cong., 1st Sess., Report 116-XXX.

25. Ibid.

26. Seth Hettena, Trump/Russia: A Definitive History (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2018), 148.

27. “Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence.”

28. Jim Rutenberg, “The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine,” New York Times, November 2, 2022.

29. Associated Press, “Before Trump Job, Manafort Worked to Aid Putin,” Florida Times-Union, March 22, 2017.

30. Alayna Treene, “Manafort Memo: ‘Can Greatly Benefit the Putin Government,’” Axios, March 22, 2017.

31. Casey Michel, “Ukraine’s Corrupt Oligarchs Are Looking Toward the West to Rehab Their Reputations,” New Republic, May 12, 2022.

32. Tom Winter, “DOJ: Ex-Manafort Associate Firtash Is Top-Tier Comrade of Russian Mobsters,” NBC News, July 26, 2017.

33. Michel, “Ukraine’s Corrupt Oligarchs.”

34. “How a Putin Ally Is Aiding Giuliani in Ukraine,” editorial, Washington Post, December 22, 2019.

35. Laura Kusisto, “Unmasking Three Mismatched Heavies Who Won and Lost the Drake,” Observer, June 7, 2011.

36. Robert Waldeck, The Black Ledger: How Trump Brought Putin’s Disinformation War to America (New York: Cobra y Craneo, 2020).

37. The entire lawsuit can be found here: Yulia Tymoshenko et al. v. Dmytro Firtash et al., U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Civ. No. 11-02794 (RJS), 2011, https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/manafort-complaint-2.pdf.

38. Casey Michel, American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021).

39. Tom Winter and Ken Dilanian, “Donald Trump Aide Paul Manafort Scrutinized for Russian Business Ties,” NBC News, August 18, 2016.

40. Ken Silverstein and Adam Weinstein, “How Trump Aide Paul Manafort Got Ridiculously Wealthy While Aiding a Ukrainian Strongman,” Fusion, August 17, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20160820050122/http://fusion.net/story/337482/trump-manafort-ukraine-mansions-movies-mobsters/.

41. Waldeck, The Black Ledger.

42. Clifford J. Levy, “U.S. Political Strategists Help Shape Ukraine Parliamentary Campaign,” New York Times, September 28, 2007.

43. Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman, “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s US Fixer,” Politico, March 5, 2014.