Hunter Biden’s refusal to register as a foreign agent while doing business abroad has raised questions about the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a once dormant law that saw a burst of high-profile violations during the Trump administration.
A federal judge in Delaware cited the law in a hearing last week when she rejected a plea deal between President Joe Biden’s son and U.S. Attorney David Weiss, questioning if the deal would protect the younger Biden from a future FARA charge.Hunter Biden had been wrapped up in business dealings in Ukraine, China, and Romania when his father was senator and vice president, and the pair have faced growing accusations of partaking in “influence peddling” and bribery during those ventures.
The language in Weiss’s now-failed plea deal, while not public, appeared to lack clarity on if it would preclude Hunter Biden from a future FARA charge, as indicated by his attorneys and prosecutors disagreeing on that point in court. From 1966 to 2015, DOJ brought seven FARA criminal cases, though only some resulted in convictions. After a DOJ OIG report on FARA and amid special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, however, DOJ became more aggressive with its enforcement.Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman for former President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty in 2018 to FARA-related charges as a result of raking in millions by working on behalf of a pro-Russia Ukrainian political party.
Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser, pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI before his case was dropped and he was pardoned by Trump in 2020. Flynn admitted in 2017 that he had made “materially false statements and omissions” on FARA documents when he retroactively registered as a lobbyist for Turkey.
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