www.FARA.us

Just two weeks before jury selection was scheduled to begin, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York filed a Deferred Prosecution Agreement with Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and National Security Council official the Department of Justice had charged in July 2024 

In 1943, the government indicted the German-American Vocational League, its subsidiary DAB Recreational Resort, Inc., and 27 individual members for conspiring to violate FARA. This case is still the largest ever FARA prosecution.

The FARA Conference convened last Thursday, September 24th, in Washington, D.C., bringing together legal practitioners, scholars, and others who encounter the Foreign Agents Registration Act for a full day devoted to the statute.

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.