Casey Michel's "Foreign Agents"

Casey Michel is the Director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation, as well as a writer, analyst, and investigative journalist working on topics ranging from kleptocracy, illicit finance, dark money, foreign lobbying, and foreign interference to the legacies of Russian and Soviet colonialism.

He applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, and reported the following:

The premise of page 99 is simple: Moscow has, for decades, attempted to interfere in the highest ranks of American politics, and attempted to aid specific American presidential candidates wherever and however it can. From Josef Stalin's efforts to launch Henry Wallace to the presidency in 1948 to Moscow's efforts to support Adlai Stevenson in 1960 and beyond, the Kremlin's efforts to steer American politics long predates its interference and influence operations in 2016. But there is one clear difference: before 2016, every major American candidate the Kremlin attempted to cultivate previously had turned them down. And then Donald Trump came along, and opened the doors to as much Kremlin aid as he could.

And that, in a sense, summarizes what much of Foreign Agents is about: foreign regimes have tried for decades—in some cases centuries—to access leading American politicians, and to lobby and influence them for specific policy outcomes. In the process, they've built the foreign lobbying industry into the multi-billion-dollar behemoth it now is. But it is only in recent years—and thanks especially to America's most prominent politicians, such as Trump—that these regimes have achieved a level of success they've only dreamed of, injecting themselves directly into the White House in ways we're only just now learning about.

All of this is why I wrote Foreign Agents: to reveal what the foreign lobbying industry once was, and what it's since become, and how it's become so wildly, devastatingly successful. Because it's no longer just traditional lobbyists themselves who are helping these regimes. It's now PR agents and law firms, consultancies and former congressional officials, even think tanks and universities who've transformed into vehicles of influence for foreign regimes. In the process, they've opened untold doors to the most kleptocratic regimes on the planet—all of whom are bent on tilting American policy, remaining in power, and pillaging their populations as long as they possibly can.

It's not a new effort, as page 99 of Foreign Agents makes clear. But it's one that's found unmitigated success—and one that would make figures like Stalin green with envy.

Visit Casey Michel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue