www.FARA.us

In January 2021, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed a criminal complaint charging political scientist Kaveh Lotfolah Afrasiabi with conspiring to act and acting as an unregistered agent of the Iranian government under FARA.

The Department of Justice signaled in its recently released 2026 Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions that it may soon issue final rules in a yearslong effort to rewrite its FARA regulations. 

In 1980, the Department of Justice pursued a civil action against William “Billy” Carter, brother of then-President Jimmy Carter, who had allegedly received payments from the Libyan government without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”).

Tongsun Park, a former businessman and well-known socialite in Washington, D.C., was indicted twice during his lifetime for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”). These two indictments, separated by nearly 30 years, were each part of larger scandals, but only the second prosecution resulted in a conviction.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”) was enacted by Congress in 1938 to require individuals doing political or advocacy work within the United States on behalf of a foreign principal, to register their activities and relationship with the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In 1941, Laura Ingalls, a famous American aviator and activist, was indicted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for failing to register as an agent of the German government after receiving a salary from the German Embassy to promote U.S. non-intervention in World War II.

In 1992, Sam Zakhem, a former U.S. ambassador to Bahrain (1986–1989), was indicted by a federal grand jury in Denver for willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and for several other charges, including violating federal tax laws. He was indicted along with two associates, William R. Kennedy Jr., former publisher of the political Conservative Digest magazine, and Scott Stanley Jr., a former editor of the same publication.

In 1951, the Peace Information Center (PIC) and five of its officers were indicted for willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The PIC was founded in April 1950 by several activists, including its chairman, author W.E.B. Du Bois, to educate Americans about peace and to gain support for a ban on nuclear weapons.

On May 1, 2026 a federal jury in Miami found former Florida Congressman David Rivera guilty after a five-week trial of conspiracy to violate FARA, failure to register under FARA, and other crimes. Esther Nuhfer, one of Rivera’s associates, was convicted of the same FARA offenses.

FARA.us now features an updated Index of all 199 FARA Advisory Opinions that have been released publicly by the Department of Justice.