Factually! with Adam Conover - The U.S. Politicians Selling Out to Foreign Dictators Factually with Casey Michel

Episode Date: September 4, 2024

Politicians are meant to serve the people, but let’s be real—sometimes they just end up serving whoever’s got the deepest pockets, even if those pockets are overseas. Believe it or not, foreign powers have been messing with our political system for years through entirely legal means: good old-fashioned lobbying. This week, Adam sits with Casey Michel, author of Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, to dive into how our politicians are getting sold off to the highest bidder—and what that means for all of us. Find Casey's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. You know, in the last couple years, a lot of people have been on red alert for foreign influence in American government. There were a lot of people worried about Russian bot farms, and then Iranian or Chinese sponsored hacking networks. Now Russians did not steal the 2016 election for Trump, that is not the case, but it is the case that foreign governments will try to bribe a U.S. official for information or access. Espionage like that is a real thing.

And other countries really do use nefarious means to sow chaos and advance their interests here. But something that has been far less reported on is that these countries also use entirely legal means to influence American government and society. You see, there's actually an entire industry of foreign influence in America. It's called lobbying. This industry, which makes massive amounts of money,

helps the worst and shittiest governments on the planet, we're talking dictatorships and autocracies to alter American policy and manipulate public opinion. And even crazier, these governments hire Americans to do this work for them. Foreign lobbying of this kind has real impacts. It is really fucked up and it explains a lot of what has gone wrong in American government

in the past few years. Well, this week on the show, we are gonna dive deep into that story and all of the filthy, filthy details. But before we do, I just wanna remind you that if you wanna support this show and all of the incredible stories we bring you week in and week out,

head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show, ad free, and you can join our awesome online community as well, we would love to have you. And just as a reminder, if you want to come see me do stand up comedy on the road, head to AdamConover.net for all my tickets and tour dates. Coming up soon, I'm headed to Providence, Rhode Island, Batavia, Illinois, just outside Chicago. I'm going to Toronto, San Francisco, a bunch of other great cities as well. Head to AdamConover.net for all those tickets and tour dates. And now let's get to this week's episode.

So how did this massive foreign lobbying industry spring up? Who in America profits from it? How does it hurt democracy both here and abroad? How does America do the exact same thing to other countries? And is there anything we can do about it? Well, to answer all of those questions and more, we have an incredible guest on the show today. He is a journalist who just wrote a new book on this massive and massively corrupt system

called Foreign Agents, How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World. Please welcome Casey Michelle. Casey, thank you so much for being on the show. So great to be here. Thanks for having me. Okay, so let's imagine I'm a foreign dictator, right? I'm doing human rights abuses all the time.

I'm awful. I'm enriching myself, right? I'm taking money from all my people and I'm building myself palaces. I wanna improve my reputation in the United States because the United States is so powerful. I wanna get some policies passed or maybe I want the US to take a little bit

of a softer approach or something along those lines. What do I do if I'm in that predicament? You know, you are in luck, Adam, because there is this whole industry that has been built up over the past years called the foreign lobbying industry. It's now worth billions of dollars, and these are all kinds of Americans at PR firms

and law firms and consultancies, even places like think tanks and even universities these days that are more than happy. Take some of that money that you have stolen from your populace used to enrich yourselves and your family members to act as your mouthpiece in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in the United States and act as your lobbyist, your go-to point person for getting those policies you wanna see passed, keeping yourselves in power for as long as you want. How much is that gonna run me? Is that expensive or?

The sad news is I think these foreign lobbyists are kind of underselling themselves, given just how wealthy some of these dictators abroad are. I mean, again, you think of people like Vladimir Putin, you think of people like Xi Jinping in China, you know, them and their families are worth billions and billions of dollars and kind of for pennies on the dollar, really for a couple million dollars here and there,

you can get the best PR firm, the best law firm, you can donate to the most prestigious think tanks to universities. It's really pocket change for these dictators to get them the best of the best in Washington, to get them the best lobbyists that they can find. And this is legal for them to do and it's happening right now. Well this is the, the, the kind of the, someone has the phrase, right? The scandal isn't what is illegal.

The scandal is what is legal. And that's exactly right. This has been going on for years and years and years, decades really at this point. And it is perfectly legal for all of these Americans, these American individuals, these American firms to lobby on behalf of some of the world's worst dictators, world's worst tyrants. Because at the end of the day,

lobbying is a constitutionally protected right. It's right there in the First Amendment, the right to petition the government. And just so happens, these dictators are happy to take advantage of that. Hold on, I never thought of it that way because everybody hates lobbying. Lobbying is a dirty word.

Lobbyists is, if you're a politician on the campaign trail and you say the word lobbyist, you are only mentioning them as an inimical force that everybody hates. And often people want to get rid of lobbyists, but I've never thought about that, that it's literally protected under the first amendment. Yeah, this is the kind of the catch 22 of lobbying.

And look, I am as, look, I wrote a whole book about the foreign lobbying sector. God knows I have no love lost for these people. But when it comes to trying to ban these practices, ban lobbying in of itself, that is a steep hill to climb because a lot of folks do forget that it is right there in the first amendment, right? The right to petition the government for your redress of grievances, which is just kind of an old timey way of saying you can go or you can organize a group to go to your legislator or your senator

or even the White House itself to advocate for certain causes. And look, lobbying goes all the way back to the very foundation of the United States. The earliest examples we know of are in the 1790s, right? George Washington is president. You have these old Revolutionary War veterans that are lobbying for better pay and back pay. Right. The problem is, of course, what lobbying has evolved into.

And of course, also now who's taking advantage of it with all these despots abroad sending their people to Washington. Yeah. And I also think about in those early days like the U.S.'s relationship with France and all the back and forth influence between the two countries, famous stuff. I saw the HBO minseries about John Adams. I saw, he goes to France and he talks to the people with the funny powdered wigs and stuff,

and they come over here, et cetera. So that's a tale as old as time. So what is so bad about this? Let me be devil's advocate, is that I'm sure there are plenty of foreign governments who we don't mind so much. I'm sure the British government has lobbyists here who just say like, oh, could you buy more tea or whatever, you know,

something that we don't mind. We're not, we're not that upset about it. It's just normal lobbying. And then of course, once you have other countries doing it, well, sure, the countries who you might like less get to do it as well, but hey, that's in the first amendment is freedom of speech. You know, what's the big deal?

Sure, Vladimir Putin gets to hire a PR guy just like anybody else that's the system, right? Yeah, no, look, you're exactly right. And this is certainly the argument that these lobbyists put forth. I'm personally, you know, I wrote, again, I wrote this book about it, but I'm not focused on the Canada's or the Australia's

or the UK's of the world, the other democracies that are very much doing this themselves. You know, I'm focused on the Canada's or the Australia's or the UK's of the world, the other democracies that are very much doing this themselves. You know, I'm focused on the dictators, I'm focused on the autocrats, I'm focused on those regimes that are dedicated to pillaging their populations, enriching themselves and keeping themselves in power in perpetuity, destabilizing entire countries, entire regions,

immiserating entire populations, right? Looting from the health budget, the education budget, the infrastructure budget. You know, schools don't get built, hospitals don't get built. You know, that money obviously ends up with the dictators themselves. But also some of that, again, goes to these lobbyists. So what we're talking about is on the one hand, a very moral kind of concern, moral consideration. Look, I'll get a little earnest right now. You know, these regimes. Look, I'll get a little earnest right now. You know, these regimes, again, are pillaging these populations and going to these

lobbyists because what they want at the end of the day is to use those lobbyists to remain in power as long as they possibly can. And then obviously within that pushing policy that they prefer, you know, using these lobbyists to advocate for military aid, for economic aid to keep these regimes in power. That's that's kind of the moral case against it. But you have also these kind of broader national security concerns, you know, just basic democracy 101, which I think a lot of folks have gotten a real taste of in the last few years, realizing that these dictators in places like Moscow are not gonna remain only within their borders. And the longer they're in power, the likelier it is.

They cause some great national security concern or a war on the ground in the middle of a place like Europe, which obviously we kind of thought was a thing of the past, but here it is in the 21st century, it's very real. So you have the moral considerations, but you also have these very real national security concerns about what threats these dictators that have been able to remain in power for so long, what they pose not only to their population, but the populations outside of their countries,

including in the United States of America. Well, to your first point lobbyist taking this money from, you know, a dictator who's immiserating their own people. That's some of the dirtiest of dirty money. You're taking money that was sort of extracted from a population or from natural resources and is now being funneled to the United States. And so that as a moral issue is,

it's legal, but it's like, don't do it. Yeah, yeah. We can criticize that, right? As being something that perhaps we should use our own First Amendment rights, shed some light on, even though it's legal to do. Maybe we'll talk about this later in the conversation, Adam, but the main regulation around this

is it's called the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It goes all the way back to the 1930s when Americans realized that the Nazis were doing this and were actually benefiting from these foreign lobbying networks. And the reason that it was passed, again, it's not ban passed, again, it's not banning the practice. It's not making it illegal. But the reason that they passed this legislation

to shine a light on these networks was, and it's almost kind of this quaint notion for shame. They were trying to shame these lobbyists into no longer accepting these funds. And look, I know as well as anyone, we live in an extremely shameless day and age and extremely shameless society, but I think there was something to be said about that. As you just said, using our first amendment rights to highlight who these people are, who these firms are, and where that money is coming from at the end of the day.

All right, well, let's get into some examples. Like what are some of the most egregious examples of this in your book? Sure, so there's a of examples that come to mind. Um, you know, there's, there's a figure some folks might remember. There was a guy named Paul Manafort. I remember Paul Manafort. It's always really funny when you, uh, remember, uh, like a bad scandal guy, like a corrupt

politician from like 10 years ago. Like every once in a while, I think about Rod, go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, I know what it is. I just can't say it. Rod Bluboyevich. Or I think about Jack Abramoff. Remember Jack Abramoff? Who I only ever think of because I think of Jack Abramoff.

I hardly even know Abram. Horrible joke that I can't get out of my head. That's part of my comedian's disease. I might ask them to cut that out of the episode. I'm ashamed I even said that. But so I only, I remember these, I remember Paul Manafort, comically corrupt fellow from what, early Trump administration, right?

Early Trump administration. He's kind of famous now for being the Trump campaign manager in 2016 who helped launch Trump to the edge of the presidency in 2016 itself. Now that ended up falling apart. There were all these court cases, all these details of his offshore payments came out.

He ended up going to jail for a little bit until Trump in one of his final acts as president before the attempted insurrection on January 6th. Just a few days before that, he pardoned Manafort, wiped the slate clean. He also pardoned Rod Blagojevich, which I didn't understand. I still don't understand, because that was like an unrelated corruption case

from like 2008, and I'm just like, oh, Trump just likes corrupt guys? He's just like, ah, you know, corrupt politicians, let him free, you know? It's birds of a feather. He saw kindred soul in Rod Blagojevich and said, sure, there's no reason for you to go to prison. Just like there's no reason that Trump himself thinks he should ever go to prison, of course. But, you know, metaphor before that, he made his

name as kind of the go to for lobbyist in Washington. He was working with dictators from Nigeria to Democratic Republic of Congo to the Philippines, to Somalia, I mean, over and over and over again. There was no dictator that he was gonna say no to. So the dictators are calling each other up, which they do because they're friends, like dictators like dictators. And they're like, hey, I'm thinking about getting into Washington, you know, do you know anybody?

And then like a dictator in whatever, the other country is like, oh yeah, you gotta talk to my guy, you gotta talk to Paul. He's a really good guy, in the other country is like, oh yeah, you gotta talk to my guy. You gotta talk to Paul. He's a really good guy. He'll give you a discount. You tell him, you know me. This is what I think a lot of people

are beginning to realize. You know, the more news stories, the more books that come out about this, you know, the more conversations Adam, you have with folks like this, is that these dictators, again, they don't exist in a vacuum. They are talking to one another.

They are learning from one another. And of course these foreign lobbyists in Washington are also talking to all of these dictators as well. Happy to be that go between. I just like the idea that dictators getting together being like, you know, no one else understands me and my problems. Like the people are so annoying.

They complain all the time. Your concubines are always, they always want more things. You know? You know, heavy is the head that wears the crown. And, you know, God knows I don't have any sympathy for them, but it can be an isolating experience. And yes, I'm sure they're having, I mean, that, you know, speaking of metaphor.

Your number two's always trying to kill you. They're always trying to assassinate you and take over and do coups all the time. It's terrifying. You know, there's aiforte. Your number two is always trying to kill you. They're always trying to assassinate you and take over and do coups all the time. It's terrifying. You know, there's a scene that I was reporting on in the book of Maniforte. You know, he has all these dictators and the one that he's most infamously known for before Trump is the guy in Ukraine who is this pro Kremlin autocrat in the making. Very clearly, he wanted to kind of cement his own dictatorship.

And he brought Maniforte aboard for that. But Maniforte had what were called walk-in rights. He could just go in at any point to talk to this dictator. And there's this one scene where they're in the hot tub with one another. And I can't remember if they're wearing clothes or not. The autocrat did have a naked portrait of himself in the house where the hot tub was.

And again, this is all- If I'm a dictator and I got a hot tub. There's no swimsuits in the hot tub. It's like people, people got to look at your dick if they're coming to your dictator house, you know, to get in your hot tub. You're not there's no modesty. They need to know who the boss is at the end of the day. What are they going to do?

You know, overthrow you, which is, of course, what ended up happening to this guy in Ukraine and really kind of- What was his name? Viktor Yanukovych. I remember that name, yeah. Yeah, and that was Manafort's best buddy. And again, to have that kind of extremely close, almost intimate relationship with the dictator is what Manafort had time and again.

And then obviously 2016 he has Trump and launches him to the White House. And so this guy like, this guy is like repeatedly taking custom from different dictators around the world and what is he doing for them in the United States? Let's leave the Trump part aside for now because Manafort has a long history, right? Sure, no, absolutely he does.

They are doing a few things. One, they are laundering the reputation of these dictators. They're saying, no, no, no, they're not. They're not tyrants. No, they're not repressing the population. No, they're not assassinating political opponents. These are stabilizing figures. These are democratizing figures.

The country is transitioning to democracy. Just just give them more time. And oh, by the way, shouldn't they be our partners in the region? I mean, this is something we still see. Here we are talking in August of 2024. And you see this in plenty of autocracies around the world, places like Rwanda, places like the United Arab Emirates, these regimes have these lobbyists

that are making these exact same arguments. I think about the reputation of the Saudi prince, I'm blanking on his name. MBS, yes. MBS, yeah, thank you, who for a long time, it was like, oh, this is the hot new prince. He's modernizing the region. And then of course, he's another dictator,

we learned a little bit later, right? With the Jamal Khashoggi story and everything. What's his nickname? Prince Bonesaw or Prince Chop me up or whatever it was, right? He assassinated an American journalist, literally dismembered this guy. And what was funny about that, Adam, is that at the time everyone said, Oh my God, we don't want anything to do with the Saudis. They are regime persona non grata. And here we are just a few years later, and they have one of

the biggest fleets of foreign lobbyists in Washington. And it is in a very, very dark way, an incredible success story for the regime in Saudi Arabia and for MBS himself. Yeah, and that's another example of this foreign lobbying operation that you're talking about. 1000%. So what these lobbyists for Saudi or for other regimes do

is again, they say, look, maybe he made a mistake or maybe that journalist wasn't who he said he was. Maybe he was actually an agent of whatever other regime opposed America or opposed the Saudis. And by the way, at the end of the day, don't we want to be partners with the Saudis for X reason, Y reason, Israel, Iran, oil, you name it. These are the talking points that they peddle out there. And then of course, also keeping the spigots of military aid, of economic aid open and flowing, things like arms sales, things like votes in their favor

in the United Nation. I mean, there's this whole playbook that these lobbyists have created for themselves that they shop around to dictator after dictator, again, and make good money for them in the process. So this is really like, hey, I just took over a country somewhere. I have a new dictator.

I want to make sure the US isn't going to fuck with me. And here come the lobbyists in the front door with their like glossy portfolio. Hey, here's what we'll do. We got a system. Look at what we did for MBS. You know, we'll we pop up a nice little embassy. People could drop by. If anyone criticizes you, we yell at them or whatever, right?

This was, yes, I mean, look, you're 100% right. Again, they're all learning from one another. This is the playbook. There's one story that I write about in the book, the country of Azerbaijan, which not a lot of folks think about. You know, it's, you know, this post- I'm always thinking about Azerbaijan.

Look, I'm very sorry to hear that. I promise the world is more interesting. Actually, I live in Los Angeles. There's a big Armenian population. I hear about it pretty often because there's a bit of a big conflict there. It actually comes up a lot in L.A. because we've got such a such a large expat population who cares a lot about the conflict in that region.

So just so you fucking know, I know about Azerbaijan. No, I'm sorry. I actually know very little. Please go on. No, no, no, I was gonna say, so part of that, I mean, it's a great point to bring up because the Azeris, you know, the regime in Azerbaijan looks at the Armenian community in the United States and says, Jesus Christ, we're being outnumbered,

we're being outvoted, we're being silenced, we gotta hire these foreign lobbyists, or we gotta use some of these foreign lobbying networks. And what they did, you know, 10 years ago, this is the biggest scandal of the 2010s, was they set up these fake nonprofits in the United States, and those fake nonprofits then went to Congress and said, "'We would love to pay for congressional travel

"'to Azerbaijan so you can see what the country is like, "'so you can see why they should be our partner, "'so you should see, and you can see why you shouldn't be listening to those Armenians. And there was something like 10 or 12 members of Congress. It was the biggest trip to the region ever in American history. They ended up flying them out to Azerbaijan. And it's funny, I was invited on that trip by one of these lobbyists who, and I was working as a journalist at the time, and they said, look, we'll pay for everything. We'll pay for your flights, your hotels. Just don't

write anything negative about us and we'll be fine. I said, yeah, thanks, but no thanks. I do kind of regret not going because what ended up happening is not only did they get wine to dine, these lavish dinners, they got these DVDs of the country's dictator about how wonderful he is. They got these incredible rugs and tea sets and over and over again. But then they come back to Washington and they're talking about how Azerbaijan should be our partner and how wonderful the country is. I mean, it was an incredible success until the details of the payment came out and it ended up blowing up in their faces.

And then there's investigations, there's recrimination. And anyways, it made for great fodder for the book. But that's just one example of many, many, many regimes. That's wild. I mean, look, I've heard about shit like that. Here in Hollywood, there's sometimes groups that wanna lobby writers to like write better stories about XYZ.

The military does this sometimes. They're like, hey, why don't we take a bunch of TV writers in a submarine and then you guys can learn about how great the Navy is or whatever. And like, first of all don't we take a bunch of TV writers in a submarine and then you guys can learn about how great the Navy is or whatever. And like, first of all, that really overrates the amount of power that writers have. Like TV writers, mostly writing what the executives tell us to.

We don't really, you know, the executives want us to, you know, do a good story or a bad story. That's what it turns out to be. But a lot of writers go on these things and whatever. It's like, you know, that's just private enterprise. But it's a propaganda trip is what it is. And they're pretty upfront about it in that world. But it's a really different thing for a foreign government to that is engaged

in like a conflict with another country that has a, again, large American expat population to bring a bunch of lawmakers on a little propaganda trip. That's wild. Yeah, 100%. I think the kind of, I don't know if it's the worst element of it, but one of the congressional members that went over was on the House Ethics Committee,

which is supposed to be the ethics governing body. Didn't even bother to file the proper paperwork with her colleagues. They still signed off on it in any way. She's on the Ethics Committee. That means it's ethical. Of course, it is the most about the ethics. Like she's the one who would be prosecuting it.

So she knows it's fine. Yes, it is 100%. And look, it ended up being a clusterfuck. But in the long run, Azerbaijan still our preferred partner. So who are the real losers anyway? Wow. Yeah, that is absolutely wild. Are there any other good examples of this or any other specific Manafort stories to return to?

Well, does an evil sounding name that guy has it's like a name of the Lord of the Rings like Manafort. It is it absolutely it's Italian. I don't know what it translates to maybe asshole. Who knows? But clearly my Italian is very very rusty these days. I mean, no offense to the Italians. No, of course not. One of my you know, one of the stories

that the book opens up with is there's this guy, this warlord in the country of Angola, which is going through its own civil war in the 1980s, 1970s, 1980s, who the Americans want nothing to do with. I mean, this guy is using child soldiers. He's using, you know, sexual slavery. They have, even though he's technically opposed to the communists, they still don't want anything

to do with him. And then Manafort steps in and says, look, I can be your guy. I can change your image. And I can open the doors to Washington to you. And lo and behold, all of a sudden this guy's showing up in Washington and he is no longer treated as a pariah. He's no longer treated as someone that the Americans shouldn't touch. Suddenly he's having meetings with the highest ranks of the American

political establishment. There's this this lavish dinner that he has with one of the think tanks in town and the the host. And I'm going to have to paraphrase the quote. She says he is not only a freedom fighter, he is a poet. He is a philosopher. He is now the person that we need to be supporting in the country of Angola.

And there's this scene of him sitting up there with George H.W. Bush. And they're just like, they're just laughing it up. And it is one of those things, again, child soldiers, sexual slavery, an absolute despot in the making, which is what he ends up becoming at the end of the day. And it was all thanks to Paul Manafort that he made all these new contacts and

all these new friends in Washington, DC. So Paul's like the fixer. This is the guy you call to make your shit happen. Um, and so let's go back to Trump a little bit because look in the, uh, aftermath of 2016, you had a lot of liberals who could not accept that America voted for this guy, that millions and millions of Americans voted for this guy. And they were like, it had to be something else.

It had to be malfeasance. It had to be. And they latched on to the, you know, Russia stole the election, Russian bought farms, et cetera. And, you know, there's the Mueller investigation. We went through like three years of this, right? And at the end, basically nothing. And my view, and a lot of people's view, ended up being that, at least politically,

it was a distraction from the real issue. That it was like, let's just pretend it didn't happen and see if we can undo it, rather than grapple with the fact that this guy fucking beat you, and you need to figure out a way to beat him back. But at the same time, all this shit with Manafort was real. Like Manafort was actually Trump's campaign manager

and actually has all those relationships you're talking about. So in terms of foreign influence around Trump world, what do we actually know actually happened apart from all the conspiracy theories that you see on Twitter? Sure, I mean, look, Adam the conspiracy theories that you see on Twitter. Sure, I mean, look, Adam, everything you're saying is exactly right.

It might even be worse because Trump was perceived to have gotten off from that investigation, that it was kind of a falsified investigation. He ended up maybe even looking better. And in that sense, some of the indictments that have come since, and of course, the conviction and the felonies, haven't really made a dent in his overall popularity,

maybe a little bit here and there, but I do think a lot of it can track back to those investigations kind of going nowhere. But of course, part of that, and again, as detailed in the book and certainly congressional investigations is because Manafort was one of, if not the key interlocutors of this entire affair in terms of Trump world, connecting with, communicating with those in Moscow, those surrounding the Kremlin. His primary contact was a guy named Konstantin Kalimnik, who trained at the KGB training grounds, who, according to multiple congressional investigations, including

those led by Republicans, was a Kremlin intelligence officer. We know that Manafort was passing along internal documentation, including internal polling data. We know they were in very close contact throughout the campaign. The problem is, you know, Manafort's not an idiot. He was using encrypted chats. He was using what are commonly referred to as burner phones, all these messages that we can't unearth. Now, some of that we, some of that we know was unearthed, but remains classified for reasons that really escaped me. And I know their ongoing investigations are ongoing efforts to try to unearth that.

But there was a lot of material that just never saw the light of day because Manafort, again, in communication with this Kremlin asset was using the kind of techniques that are far closer to spy craft, to actual espionage than how you and I generally communicate with our buddies or with our pals. And so unfortunately, a lot of that's not going to see the light of day, and there's still going to be plenty of questions about what actually ended up happening in terms of the communication there. But what do you think as an overall gestalt, like the Russian interest in the 2016 election? And what do you think the effect was? If I mean, yes, we know that Manafort was communicating with these people and sharing information with them and like that there was, you know, we could even say, okay, we know that Putin preferred Trump's election. But like how much causal weight do you think it has even just as a, you know, ballpark for you? Right. I mean, negligible. I mean, very little, right? This was an American election with

American voters voting for an American citizen. And I obviously understand why people would take comfort in thinking that it was the Russians or whatever other foreign malign influence that placed Trump in the White House. It's easier to blame that than it is to accept your own failings, right? A thousand percent. And I think, and this is getting, you know, too far afield from the book itself. I think it, you know, it was kind of, it was a very cozy story that America was making all this, you know, whether it's racial progress

or societal progress with the election of someone like Barack Obama. And it's nothing but, you know, roses ahead for us. Without realizing there's this kind of world of reaction that we saw after the civil war, we saw after reconstruction, you know that we saw after the civil war, we saw after reconstruction, we saw in the 1920s, we saw even after the civil rights movement.

And in a certain sense, I think a lot of folks just weren't expecting me because they weren't familiar with that history to see that with someone like Donald Trump. We talk about that on this show all the time, talk to the historian Rick Perlstein about the backlash to the sixties. And yeah, so you've, you're a Nixon land reader as well

about how the hippies didn't win. The civil rights movement won some victories, but the backlash that Nixon rode to power overwhelmed so much of it. And then we forgot that history. And then we taught kids that, no, no, no, the hippies and the civil rights movement won and we're always moving towards a better America.

And as a result, we didn't see the backlash happening right under our noses until it was too late. No, look, you're a thousand percent right. Obviously, I'm a huge Rick Perlstein fan, very happy that he was on the podcast, but you know, he's right, you're right. You know, there was this high, I think things have changed a little bit now.

I think folks generally are a lot more familiar with these kind of, again, malign periods, these very unfortunate periods of American history of reaction, right? It's not just progress constantly forward, it's a constant push and pull. Yeah. But you really feel that like there was a,

Manafort did a lot of bad shit, but that is not the story of the 2016 election. No, it's not the story. Obviously there are multiple stories. And I actually make this point in the book that for as much damage as the Russians may or may not have done, or for as much kind of,

as many openings as they identified, I argue in the book, they weren't even necessarily the most successful foreign influence campaign in 2016 alone. Wow. I argued that instead it was the United Arab Emirates that again placed some extremely high level advisors. I described them as moles within Trump's orbit,

most spectacularly a figure named Tom Barrack who was very close to Trump. He was an economic advisor, foreign policy advisor, ended up being charged with foreign lobbying crimes, but apparently put on such a convincing performance that a jury found in his favor. So he was never jailed like Paul Manafort was. But I say that they were the most successful because what did we see with Russia? We saw all this attention. We certainly saw liberals swing hard against the Russians and certainly even some conservatives

as well. Meanwhile, no one's paying any attention to the United Arab Emirates, what they're doing. Again, they are our closest partner in the region. There has been no cost whatsoever for what they were doing. They didn't have the social media farms like the Russians did, but again, they had the high level contacts in Trump's orbit. They had these massive donations to think tanks

and to universities, again, laundering their reputation through 2016 and afterward. And again, I consider them the most successful foreign influence and interference operation from that time. That is fascinating. Beyond reputation laundering, are there any examples of these companies

actually being able to get policies passed or whether regulatory or legislative through this kind of foreign lobbying. There are, and at the very macro level, according to the most recent research that we have on this, every country that has lobbied for economic aid, used Americans to lobby for economic aid, they have succeeded.

Every country, nearly every country that has lobbied for military aid. And again, these are democracies, these are dictators across the board. Nearly every one of them has succeeded. So again, you see that kind of that level of success over and over again, at a very micro level in terms of specific countries themselves. You know, the one that comes to mind is a country like Turkey, which has been caught out doing all kinds of these foreign influence operations themselves. And again, hasn't seen nearly as much criticism as places like Russia.

You know, they lobbied for decades to make sure that the Americans and bringing things back to Los Angeles for a second, make sure that the American government never recognized the Armenian genocide as an actual genocide, right? Of the 1910s. And it wasn't until the Biden administration that the US finally said, yes, this was an actual genocide and right? Of the 1910s. And it wasn't until the Biden administration that the US finally said, yes, this was an actual genocide and it'll have policy responses. But again, that's one micro level example.

The other example that comes to mind is the Egyptian government and what they were doing most recently with a figure named Bob Menendez, who Adam you may have heard of, folks may have heard of. Senator from New Jersey? Is the great state from New Jersey is at the great, the great, great state of New Jersey.

It's been there for a home of Chris Christie, home of Tony Soprano, you know. Yeah. Menendez not doing anything to dissuade your undercut, the reputation of Jersey is a hotbed of corruption. I grew up on Long Island, so I always love a bad story about New Jersey. Look, there's not. And again, I'm calling you from from New York. So I got I got no love lost for New Jersey right there. But with the Egyptians we're doing, and again, this is kind of how the industry has grown, has really exploded.

These regimes have seen just how open Washington is, how Americans are to taking this money. And never before in American history had we seen them try to target a sitting senator, right? A sitting member of Congress. And again, Menendez, not just some like freshman senator, not some backbench politician. He was the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was for all intents and purposes the most important senator when it comes to American foreign policy. And if you're going to target anyone, you might as well target him. And that's what the Egyptians did.

And it's part of this kind of bigger, sprawling corruption story that he was recently convicted of and involved in a corruption now is involved, you know, luxury handbags, a brand new car, most spectacularly these gold bars that were given to Bob Menendez, you know, I don't know if you saw this. The guy was busted for gold bars. Literally gold bars. And they... I want my corruption to be too heavy to move.

You know, I want my corruption to be so obvious that I need like three strong guys to like lift it up with their pinky fingers, you know. Eww, boss, where do you want the gold bars? But make sure you do it at night so that the federal police don't fucking catch you. Jesus Christ. Unfortunately for him, he then Googled how much is a gold bar worth,

which prosecutors found out and used in their conviction. But all of this, or much of this, was because the Egyptians wanted him, the Egyptian government wanted him to be their man in Congress and to be a foreign agent, be what is effectively a foreign lobbyist in Congress. What he ended up doing was not only secretly lobbying for Egyptian interests on things like military aid, among other senators who had no idea he was having these backroom,

back channel conversations with the Egyptians, had no idea about these gold bars, but he was drafting things. He was he was ghostwriting things for the Egyptian government. And again, you know, it'd be one thing if it was Canada or New Zealand or Ireland or, you know, some other democracy somewhere else. That's still not great. But, you know, the Egyptian government is a military dictatorship, you know, responsible for gross human rights crimes that Menendez said, sure, I will do what you ask of me over and over and over again. And you know, unfortunately for him, he got found out and he ended up becoming the very first congressional member in all of American history charged with and now convicted on conspiring to act

as a foreign agent. And, you know, unfortunately he no longer has those gold bars with him. And why is there not more attention drawn to this? I mean, because I, look, I saw Menendez in the news, that his, but you're talking about this as a historic corruption case. He's the first member of Congress ever convicted in this way.

And you know, I've seen a story here or there. I know John Fetterman likes to yell at him when he passes by him in the Senate, right? But like, it's not like that big of a scandal compared to like everything else in the news. What is, why aren't people angrier about this? Look, to play, I guess devil's advocate for a second, of course, we're in an election season. Everyone's focused on the election. You know, the story about Menendez as a Democrat

and Egypt as a military dictatorship, it doesn't kind of fit with our priors, maybe about, you know, understanding what this entails. Like if it was again, you know, Donald Trump and the Russian government or, you know, someone from Trump's inner circle, you know, some other, you know, Hungary or some other Hungary or whatever it was that people are maybe familiar with already, maybe it would be a bigger deal. But I, I, I, good point. I mean, a lot more ink was spilled on a lot of, you know, Oh, was there a meeting kind of stuff about Trump than there has been about Menendez being convicted. I think it's tragic that there isn't more attention being paid to it. I will say just as maybe a final point on this is, you know, I've been doing this as a as a, you know, as a grad student, as a journalist, as a writer now.

You know, I've been doing this since the early 2010s. Like I feel very old now at this point saying I've been doing it this long. And the fact that we are where we are now, that you and I are having this conversation, that I got to write this book, that people are at least familiar with things like foreign lobbying or foreign influence or foreign interference, right? This was on absolutely no one's radar in the early 2010,

even through the mid 2010s. It really wasn't until Donald Trump came along. So if you take kind of a longer time horizon, it really is incredible just how far we've come in terms of raising awareness about this people being concerned. Now, yes, of course, I would love more concerned more ink spilled. But I do kind of have to remind myself at certain times that we have come an incredibly long way in a relatively short period of time.

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people listening might be wondering, hold on a second, doesn't the U S do this all around the world? Don't we conduct not just foreign lobbying, but overthrowing democratically elected leaders because we'd prefer to have the dictator who's on our side in there. If you look at countries like, I believe Venezuela, et cetera, lots of different countries where we are just taking

an active hand in the election, trying to adjudicate it or, you know, get one person in over another to say nothing of just straight up lobbying. I'm sure we must do tons of that, both legal and illegal. Yeah, look, Adam, you're a thousand percent correct. And God knows I'm not going to be the one to defend the American government's record as it pertains to interfering, let alone influencing foreign governments. I mean, just think about the entire Cold War period coup after coup in Guatemala, in Iran, in places like Chile, over and over and over again. And yes, there's this incredible lineage that the US government has on this. And in a certain sense, it's kind of reaping what we sowed

or whatever the phrase might be that you'd like. That's all perfectly well and true, of course. But for you and I, right, those of us outside the government or even those new members of Congress who are just stepping in, there's no reason we have to stand for, there's no reason we have to just kind of sit back and let this happen, of course.

We have every reason to be up in arms over and demanding more, demanding more transparency, demanding more enforcement, certainly for figures like Paul Manafort demanding more prosecution. I think if there's a silver lining to all of this, it is maybe that it does make Americans more aware of American influence and interference operations are even worse, uh, throughout much of certainly the 20th century and including, uh, you know, even in the 21st century itself, I mean, you can make the argument that like what Bob Menendez or Paul Manafort is doing is bad and immoral on the face of it,

regardless of whatever, whatever anybody else did. And if you're a voter in New Jersey or in the US, you should give a shit about that. Cause hey, at least you have a little bit of power over Bob Menendez and him doing that. You don't have as much power over what the CIA is doing overseas. We can look at Menendez and say, let's try to stop that.

But I also think that sometimes, I think when people have skepticism about this, about foreign interference, it's because they're wondering how much weight should we really give this, right? Because isn't everybody doing this? We are doing it to every other country. Every other country is doing it to us.

We don't, like, a lot of people are wary of nationalism, of us saying too strongly, oh my God, foreign influence, you know, you might say, whoa, what's so bad about foreign influence? We don't hate people from other countries. Yes, there are bad examples, but like, the general idea of being influenced by foreign countries is we don't wanna be xenophobes and be like, oh, how dare the French, you know,

spend a little money in Washington to try to get something done or whatever. Yeah, I got it. How do you weigh that? How do you weigh that? Look, it's all a slippery slope, right? There's plenty of gray areas and certainly there's plenty of unknowns, right?

This gets back to the kind of lack of transparency, which I'll circle back to in a moment. But you know, I got an email earlier today, Adam, talking about how, you know, because of all these concerns about foreign influence and foreign lobbying, we should ban all dual citizens, all Americans who also have citizenship elsewhere, not just from America, but, you know,

from governmental positions, from intelligence positions, right? You know, you slip into this kind of almost nativist xenophobic approach, which is not- Yeah, and you can even- Oh, go ahead. Yeah, you can even see,

it was really interesting when liberals got really upset about Russia, whereas a couple decades ago it would be conservatives who were upset about Russia. And then you saw like liberal institutions doing stuff like disinviting Russian musicians from playing concerts. And I was like, that is, that is weird, right? That is like, that is the, a genuine concern leeching into nationalism, you know, rolling down the slope towards xenophobia

in a way that made me uncomfortable. And it was interesting to see liberal institutions do that. No, you can't, as with most things in life, you can take it too far. And certainly we have seen it both as it pertains to what people think the actual threat of something like or impact of Russia's interference in 2016 was. I remember there was a, he's now deceased, the Senator Harry Reid, there's a book that came out a couple of years ago about the history of

election interference. And he was on record saying he thought the Russians actually changed votes in 2016. Again, there's no evidence of that whatsoever. You can get things into too much hyperbole. You can take things too far. But I do think, and this is what I was going to circle back to is, you know, in this book and other conversations, I'm not calling to ban this at all, right? We talked about earlier lobbying being a constitutional right. There's all these constitutional considerations about why banning lobbying writ large or foreign lobbying itself is actually a difficult venture in and of itself. There's this almost impossibility, if you're going to try to ban it, that's an almost impossible venture. But there's something to be said about actually knowing what is happening,

right? About calling for and requiring more transparency into these lobbying networks. How much are they being paid? Who are they doing it for? Who are they meeting on behalf of these clients, these dictators abroad? And letting Americans know what is actually taking place. So it's not about banning these practices. It's about shining more light on them. It's about transparency into what these networks are actually doing.

And again, this is what the regulations actually call for in terms of the lobbying sector. It is filing these disclosures, what these lobbyists are doing. But of course, that has to be enforced. These, you know, it has to be investigated and so on and so forth. So, you know, it does come down to, as far as I can tell, transparency at the end of the day. And I would love to see more transparency across the board, not just about foreign lobbying, but, you know, domestic lobbying as well.

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I imagine this is an industry that makes a lot of money. And that's when it starts to look more inimical to me, is cause you know, I'm whatever about other countries. I'm very mad about corporations that are hurting people for profit. That is the thing that usually gets me a little bit incensed. And so the idea that there are people out there going, ooh, my business model is getting money from dictators.

That's how I get my shareholders more money. Tell me more about that industry, how it started and how big it is. Well, look, of course, at the end of the day, when we're talking about these foreign lobbyists accepting this money from these regimes, of course, those regimes are quite literally hurting the people on the ground.

Again, looting from the health budget, the education budget, so on and so forth. But to bring things back to the United States for a second, I think one of the most, I the education budget, so on and so forth. This was, but to bring things back to the United States for a second, I think one of the most, I don't know, revelatory elements of putting this book together of researching all of this was the fact that these, the industry itself, the lobbying industry, as we understand it, it was not created

for these foreign regimes or foreign oligarchs or foreign networks. It was created for Americans. It was created for American companies. It was created for American constituents. So to bring things back to a figure like Paul Manafort for a moment, what he did, what his kind of malign genius really was,

he kind of began as a political consultant. He was helping politicians get power. He worked on Ronald Reagan's campaign in 1980. He worked with a number of other officials, but what he realized, especially in the 1980s, was that he didn't just have to get these people to power and then kind of wash his hands. He could then go to the major corporate conglomerates

and say, I know this person. I am intimately familiar with how this person operates and with how you can best convince these people. Let me be your lobbyist for X steel conglomerate or Y banking conglomerate. Let me take you directly to these politicians and lobby on your behalf. And that's exactly what he did, right?

That is how he kind of created modern lobbying as we understand it. But then how we close the circle is then he would go to those politicians and say, oh, you're running for reelection. Let me go to these corporate conglomerates and open up their wallets for you so they can donate to your reelection campaign. Keep you in power. Keep these policies these corporations prefer churning

and have this circle, have this cycle continue for as long as we want. Again, this was Paul Manafort's real genius. And of course he ended up taking that to the foreign clients themselves. And you know, he's, as I argue, one of, if not the key figures for why this foreign lobbying industry now is worth billions of dollars

and has only grown and grown and grown in recent years. Because that is really a virtuous cycle. The foreign governments, the foreign corporations get what they want. The politicians get what they want, which is the endless need for campaign donations. And then Paul Manafort's in the middle or whatever the more modern companies

that are probably doing the same thing, but a little bit less illegally than Paul Manafort's so they don't go to jail. Like he's sort of a clownish example or a very villainous example, but there are people doing this they don't go to jail. Like he's sort of a clownish example or a very villainous example, but there are people doing this who will never go to prison, presumably. Oh, 1000%.

1000, and look, and again- And they're all in the middle taking a cut of that circular trade. And I haven't meant to this earlier. This is very much a bipartisan affair. I know we've been talking about- Oh, good. Right, right.

Again, silver lining of all this. Of course we've been talking about Trump and Manafort, but this isn't just Republicans, it's not just Trump world that is doing this or that inaugurated this or that is taking advantage of this, right? I mean, Bob Menendez of course is a Democrat. There's a House representative

out of the great state of Texas just also charged with being a foreign agent on behalf of the country we've been talking about a few times, Azerbaijan. Right, these are also Democrats that are doing this at the end of the day, not just for foreign clients, but also for domestic clients. And again, the book isn't focused

on the American corporations or even multinationals writ large, but they're not lobbying for increased environmental oversight. They're not lobbying for increased labor restrictions. They're not lobbying for increased labor restrictions and labor regulations. They are lobbying for lower taxes. They are lobbying for loosening environmental restrictions.

They are lobbying, as we've seen some Republicans do recently, to lowering the bar for things like child labor, really taking us back to the 19th century. But, and again, all these lobbyists in the middle taking cut of this along the way. So is the problem, since we're not gonna eliminate lobbying, and we're not going to eliminate foreign influence overall

because we live in a globalized world. We live in a world with other countries. Other countries are gonna try to get other countries to do shit, like in some way it's gonna happen. We do it to other countries, they do it to us. Is it more about campaign finance, if that's something that we wanna fix? Like the, you know, Bob Menendez, you know,

wasn't, didn't constantly need money, both for greed, but to run again, I would presume, and house reps need even more, need it more often. Is that the way to, you know, reduce this influence? That is that the way to reduce this influence? That is certainly a way to do it. Look, I think there are certainly plenty of ways in terms of the transparency requirements, in terms of prosecution and enforcement,

which I mentioned earlier and certainly discussed in the book, that's certainly one element of it. But you're exactly right. The American campaign finance system, whether the congressional level, federal level, municipal level, it is a black box top to bottom. Yes, there are some transparency requirements and yes, there are some spending or donation

caps, but I suspect, and again, this is going to take either years of research or more revelations or more data leaks. I mean, I have every suspicion that foreign actors are taking full advantage of this and of these opaque systems to propel the politicians that they want into power. And of course, then use these lobbying mechanisms to keep them in power. Now, you know, there've only been a few scandals thus far, a few kind of revelations of how this is operating. One of them was also in 2016 when the United Arab Emirates, again, to use a case study we mentioned earlier,

the ruling dictator there was caught out. He was found out directing an American, a guy named George Nader, who got found out doing a couple other things, using him as a cutout to reroute these Emirati donations to American politicians and American campaigns. That is just one example that ended up coming out. It didn't end up costing the Emiratis anything. But the only reason we know about it is because Nader was discovered committing other crimes. And so frankly, who knows just how

wide and how spiraling this issue actually is. And it gets back to, and again, I've said this word a thousand times already, transparency about where this money is coming from, where it's going, and what it's being used for. Do you have any concern, though, about, I'm just curious, the focus on foreign influence, right? Because I think about, there's plenty of corporations that I'm just as skeptical of. Exxon is an American corporation that acts

as though it's its own country, right? That is how huge Exxon is an American corporation that acts as though it's its own country, right? Like that is how huge Exxon is. Like that kind of influence concerns me just as much as, you know, the UAE. And I do, you know, yeah, I'm just curious to hear you talk about that a little bit. As a shameless self-plug, you know, Foreign Agents is my second book.

My first book came out a few years ago. Folks can see it behind me. It's called American Kleptocracy. And it tells the story of how the United States of America ended up as, as I argue, the world's biggest offshore financial haven. And again, much of that looks at the foreign regimes and foreign kleptocrats, because that's my own kind of research interest and background as a researcher, how they took advantage of the anonymous shell companies in states like Delaware,

anonymous real estate purchases in places like New York and Miami, and these broader suite of offshoring services. And the reason that I mentioned that is because again, these systems were not created for foreign actors. They were created for the American companies, the American oligarchs, the American magnates, and the American politicians that wanted to take advantage of these financial secrecy services.

And then the foreign actors realized that they can get in on the act. To answer your question about that, one of the reasons I write about these foreign regimes and foreign networks themselves is because what I have, I guess, found, unfortunately, is that that is, at the end of the day, what moves the needle in terms of policy and policy responses in Washington, especially if you can get a national security concern. That's really the kind of sweet spot about, you know,

getting the kind of policy you want implemented. If you want to close a loophole and a foreign government that nobody likes was using the loophole, then you might have an easier time doing it than if it was a foreign government that's 50% of the lawmakers like, or if it was, I don't know, Uber or something like that, which is almost all the entire American political system

is in the pocket of American corporations. 100%. The only reason that you can't form American shell company, anonymous American shell companies anymore. It's not because folks in Delaware or Nevada or Wyoming or these states that are really perfected this, it's not because they were up in arms. It's because folks in Washington were all of a sudden worried about what Russian oligarchs were doing or those close to ruling figures in Beijing or Iran were doing with these shell companies. That's the only reason we saw that reform at the end of the day.

And I suspect that if and when we do see reform in the lobbying sector, it will be for similar reasons. Wow. Well, how then should we think about other countries? Like I've understood a news consumer, right? Watching the news and looking at a situation like, you know, the war in Ukraine, right? And seeing, I mean, I assume that the Ukrainian government has some amount of an influence operation.

I mean, the, you know, Zelensky keeps coming here to give speeches, he's reliant on the aid. He would be remiss if he was not trying to get the US government to work according to his purposes. And then you see a lot of Republicans don't trying to get the U.S. government to work according to his purposes. And then you see a lot of Republicans don't want to give the aid. And as you have said, the Russian government is constantly trying to exert influence

over the United States government as well. So let's assume as granted that there's some amount of influence happening on that side as well. And if you're just an American watching the news going like, what the fuck do I do about this? Or how do I think about it? Maybe I can't do anything about it. How do I think about it differently

after engaging with your work? Oh, absolutely. Look, I think at the end of the day, folks need to realize that every government is engaging with this. Again, I focus on, we've been talking about primarily the dictators, the kleptocratic regimes of the world doing this. But of course, the democracies and of course, places like Ukraine.

I mean, Zelensky would be an idiot if he wasn't taking advantage of these lobbying firms. And yes, Ukraine has as much of a lobbying apparatus in Washington as elsewhere. The Israeli government does as well. If you look at our relationship with that country is like hugely influential in American politics. 100 percent. I mean, it's possible the North Koreans are the only country that do this, but it's also I haven't checked recently. It's possible they've signed someone else up. What I wanted to say as a follow on though, it's not just being aware of that, but the information that is disclosed about this, like I'm not I don't have access to some like

secret files somewhere. This is all publicly available. All of the stories that I write about, all the networks that I write about, all the facts and figures that I write about, it's all publicly available because this is the beauty of the American system, which I would love to see replicated in other democratic countries elsewhere is in the United States of America, these foreign lobbyists are supposed to disclose what they are doing and share that information with the Department of Justice. Of course, this wasn't enforced for decades, and so you have figures like Paul Manafort.

Look, that's a far broader story that's in the book. What folks now in the 2020s have access to is right there on the Department of Justice website. You can just Google DOJ Foreign Agents Registration Act database and you can access what every country is doing, who they are hiring, how much they are paying them, what these lobbyists are doing. Look, this was the best resource that I had putting this book together.

It's the best resource that other researchers have. It has been criminally overlooked by other journalists and academics and so on and so forth. But it's right there. Any American, I mean, anyone with a computer really can access this and look at what the Israelis are doing and what the Ukrainians are doing or what the Russians are doing at the end of the day.

And it's all perfectly easily, freely accessible. I mean, that often is all that I plead for is so much of the time, all I want us to do is to look clearly at what is happening and say it out loud. You know what I mean? And not ignore it or brush it under the carpet, you know? But to say, hey, these governments are trying

to have an influence here. And when you know that, then you can push back against it a little bit or you can modulate how you think about it. Just holding it in your mind. I know, to bring things back to your concern as well, Adam, is if anything, the foreign lobbying sector, that transparency requirement, that is the model

that we should see replicated for the domestic lobbying sector, because there's different regulations where the domestic actors, the domestic lobbyists do not need to file nearly as much paperwork or transparency. So, so if anything, and who knows, maybe this was the subject of another book in the future, but if anything, those regulations that we have in the foreign lobbying sector, those should be replicated in the foreign lobbying sector, those should be replicated in the domestic sector.

And so a great example, let me just mention Uber again, because it was the company I randomly mentioned earlier, but Uber, you know, goes all across state governments across the country trying to get, you know, regulations that they want passed because they're worried about, you know, their workers organizing and having to pay, oh my God, they might have to pay them a living wage. These drivers might not lose money driving the cars because some law gets passed. So they get, they did it here first year in California,

they've been in Massachusetts, they've done it across the Midwest. And they are in many ways an outside organization trying to bend the laws of particular states to their will. And we don't have those same regulations requiring transparency so that we know what they're doing. And which means they're certainly doing stuff under the table.

That's such a great point. Yeah. Well, thanks. And look, I'm just, I'm repeating myself at this point, but what I have seen thus far, certainly what I saw after my first book and hopefully after this book is that sometimes or maybe oftentimes it does take those, you know, nominal foreign threats to move this kind of policy.

And that's again what I suspect we'll see in the in the lobbying sector as well. Well, I can't thank you enough for coming here to shed light on this. It's been absolutely fascinating. The name of the book is Foreign Agents. People can pick it up at our special bookshop factuallypod.com books. Where else can people find your work, Casey? They can special bookshop, FactuallyPod.com slash books. Where else can people find your work, Casey? They can go online to CaseyMichelle.com. They can certainly just Google me if they would like.

They can certainly go to my primary organization, Human Rights Foundation, HRF.org. Follow more of my colleagues' wonderful work. And of course, please, please, please pick up a copy now at Factually's bookshop of foreign agents. I promise you will enjoy it. Casey Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was a thrill to have you.

Adam, thanks so much for having me. My God, thank you once again to Casey Michelle for coming on the show. Once again, the URL to buy his book is factuallypod.com slash books. And if you buy a copy there, you'll be supporting not just this show, but your local bookstore as well.

Of course, if you want to support the show directly, please head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free for 15 bucks a month. I will read your name in the credits of the podcast and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues. This week I want to thank Angeline Montoya, Codename Italian, Matthew Reimer, Ethan Barak Pellet, Gabriel G, Kerry Hill, Ed Rubin, Solvang Vailen, and CryptocurrencyAttorneys.com.

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and we'll see you next time on Factually.