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.
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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.
Some, including House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the conservative group America First Legal, prominent professor Jonathan Turley, and veteran IRS criminal investigator Gary Shapley, have also zeroed in on FARA.
The law requires those who work as agents of a “foreign principal” to register with the Justice Department and disclose records related to their work.
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.
Prosecutors described Hunter Biden as someone who at one point earned “handsomely” and spent “wildly” while failing to pay his taxes, noting millions in income from his work with Ukrainian energy company Burisma and a Chinese oil tycoon.
They told the judge he could still be charged for failing to register with FARA, to which Hunter Biden’s attorney objected. The judge decided to defer the plea deal until the attorneys revisit it and file briefings on it in the coming weeks.
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.
Below are prominent FARA cases the department has brought since 2016.
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. He served two years in prison before Trump pardoned him in 2020.
Sam Patten, an associate to Manafort, pleaded guilty in a FARA case in August 2018.
Richard Gates, former deputy campaign manager for Trump, was indicted alongside Manafort in 2017 for charges that including violating FARA by acting as an unregistered agent to Ukraine. He pleaded guilty the following year to conspiring against the U.S. and lying to the FBI and was sentenced to 45 days in jail.
Tom Barrack, a former Trump adviser and friend, was charged in July 2021 with violating FARA by illegally acting as an agent of the United Arab Emirates. Barack was acquitted the following year.
Matthew Grimes, a former assistant to Barrack, was charged and acquitted in a FARA case during the same timeframe, also for work for the UAE.
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.
Bijan Rafiekian, Flynn’s business partner, was convicted in July 2019 on charges stemming from illegally lobbying for Turkey. The conviction was thrown out, reinstated, then thrown out again, and Rafiekian is now awaiting a new trial.
Prakazrel “Pras” Michel, a Grammy-winning rapper best known as a member of the Fugees, was found guilty in April of all 10 counts the government charged him with, including FARA-related violations for using shell entities to receive millions of dollars from a Malaysian financier for the purpose of funneling money to support former President Barack Obama's 2012 campaign.
Gal Luft, who has been named by Republicans as a potential witness in their Biden family investigation, was indicted in July for a number of charges, including acting as an unregistered agent of "China-based principals," including CEFC, the same now-bankrupt company from which Hunter Biden and his associated businesses received nearly $5 million.
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Additionally, George Papadopoulos, an unpaid Trump foreign policy adviser, pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI but claimed in a memoir that Mueller prosecutors threatened him with FARA charges.
“I was faced with a choice: accept the charges that I lied or face FARA charges,” he wrote.