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

29. Casey Michel, “US/Azerbaijan: Lobbyists Continue to Flout Travel Rules,” Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, April 24, 2016.

30. Amanda Becker, “Africa Trip Blurs Lines on Travel Propriety,” Roll Call, October 18, 2011, https://web.archive.org/web/20170422025553/https://rollcall.com/issues/57_44/Africa-Trip-Blurs-Lines-On-Travel-Propriety-209590-1.html?pg=1&dczone=influence.

31. Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau, “Rules for Congress Curb but Don’t End Junkets,” New York Times, December 6, 2009.

32. Author interview with Jack Abramoff.

33. John Bresnahan, “House Ethics Panel Clears Lawmakers over 2013 Azerbaijan Trip,” Politico, July 31, 2015.

34. Russ Choma, “Lawmakers Who Traveled to Azerbaijan Urged Action Benefiting State Oil Company That Funded Trip,” Open Secrets, May 26, 2015.

35. Casey Michel, “The Man Behind One of the Most Controversial Congressional Trips This Decade Finally Pleads Guilty,” ThinkProgress, December 14, 2018.

36. Author interview.

37. Michel, “US/Azerbaijan.”

38. Ibid.

39. Author interview.

40. Michel, “US/Azerbaijan.”

41. Committee on Ethics, U.S. House of Representatives, “In the Matter of Officially-Connected Travel by House Members to Azerbaijan in 2013,” July 31, 2015.

42. U.S. Department of Justice, “Former Non-Profit President Pleads Guilty to Scheme to Conceal Foreign Funding of 2013 Congressional Trip,” press release, December 10, 2018.

43. Paul Singer and Paulina Firozi, “Turkish Faith Movement Secretly Funded 200 Trips for Lawmakers and Staff,” USA Today, October 29, 2015.

44. Author interview.

45. Singer and Firozi, “Turkish Faith Movement Secretly Funded.”

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

47. Rob Crilly, “Can Trump’s New Campaign Manager Do for The Donald What He Did for African Tyrants and a Ukrainian Kleptocrat?,” The Telegraph, April 23, 2016.

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

49. David Voreacos and Chris Dolmetsch, “Manafort Sued by Russian Billionaire Deripaska over TV Deal,” Bloomberg, January 10, 2018.

50. The unedited versions of the text messages can be found at https://bit.ly/ManafortDaughterTexts.

51. Franklin Foer, “Paul Manafort, American Hustler,” The Atlantic, March 2018.

52. The unedited versions of the text messages can be found at https://bit.ly/ManafortDaughterTexts.

PART IV: INSURRECTIONS

1. Gregory P. Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

13. POT OF GOLD

1. “Will: Disharmony Is Our Creed,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, January 23, 2011.

2. Kristen Holmes, “Trump Calls for the Termination of the Constitution in Truth Social Post,” CNN, December 4, 2022.

3. Ben Freeman and Lydia Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement: How the Foreign Agents Registration Act Falls Short,” Project on Government Oversight, Washington, DC, December 16, 2014.

4. Ibid.

5. “Sunlight Foundation Recommendations to the Dept. of Justice Regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Sunlight Foundation, Washington, DC, April 8, 2014.

6. Freeman and Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement.”

7. Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice, “Audit of the National Security Division’s Enforcement and Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” Audit Division 16–24, September 2016.

8. FARA’s digital database can be found at https://efile.fara.gov/ords/fara/f?p=1381:1:32995461174955

9. Ibid.

10. Freeman and Dennett, “Loopholes, Filing Failures, and Lax Enforcement.”

11. Ken Dilanian, Tom Winter, and Kenzi Abou-Sabe, “Ex-Trump Aide Manafort Bought New York Homes with Cash,” NBC News, March 28, 2017.

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

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

14. Ben Jacobs, “Leader of Pro-Trump Super PAC Had Mortgage on Paul Manafort Property,” The Guardian, November 1, 2017.

15. “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.

16. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

17. Ibid.

18. Glenn Thrush, “To Charm Trump, Manafort Sold Himself as an Affordable Outsider,” New York Times, April 8, 2017.

19. Manafort, Political Prisoner.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. Nolan D. McCaskill, Alex Isenstadt, and Shane Goldmacher, “Paul Manafort Resigns from Trump Campaign,” Politico, August 19, 2016.

23. Meghan Keneally, “Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Role in the Trump Campaign,” ABC News, October 30, 2017.