100 US lawmakers became foreign lobbyists, as revolving door opens America to enemies

One hundred former members of the United States Congress have registered as foreign agents since 2000. Their clients include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Kazakhstan, Russia, and China.

Eighty-five percent of these lawmakers now work for governments that Freedom House rates as “not free” or “partially free.” The top ten foreign patrons include just two democracies: South Korea and Taiwan.

The rest are autocracies, monarchies, and one-party states. They are paying American politicians – many of whom once sat on the committees that oversee the Pentagon, the State Department or the intelligence community – for access, for influence, and for the kind of inside knowledge that cannot be acquired from a trade journal.

With nearly one in six former lawmakers—who didn’t die in office or shortly after—ending up working for foreign governments, this is not a loophole. It is a national security hemorrhage.

The Saudi Pipeline

Consider Norm Coleman. The former Republican senator from Minnesota lost his seat in 2008. Today, he works for the Saudi government. His firm, Hogan Lovells, collected $3 million from the Saudi Embassy in a single year.

Coleman helped rehabilitate the kingdom’s image after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist dismembered inside a Saudi consulate. He lobbied for Saudi interests during the Yemen war, a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians.

Then, while still on the Saudi payroll, Coleman showed up to testify at Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense. He praised the nominee. He criticized Biden’s Yemen policy. He did not disclose his employer.

That is not an oversight. It is the system working exactly as designed.

The Committee Chairs Who Went to Work for the House’s Targets

Ed Royce, a California Republican, chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In 2017, while still in office, he read Saudi talking points on the House floor – verbatim – to argue against ending U.S. support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

The talking points came from a firm paid by Riyadh. Royce left Congress in 2019 and became a policy director at Brownstein, a lobbying firm that earned $1.8 million from Saudi Arabia that year. After a one-year cooling-off period, he registered as a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, also chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She now works for the United Arab Emirates.

In a filing to the Justice Department, she admitted she entered Congress as a “skeptic” of the UAE. Then she changed her mind. She now hosts Miami receptions, pitching former constituents on meetings with UAE diplomats.

Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor and congressman whom Donald Trump pardoned after a corruption conviction, now lobbies for Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled entity inside Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He has published op-eds in the Washington Times and the Daily Caller on behalf of his client. Neither newspaper disclosed that the author is a paid foreign agent.

Robert Torricelli, the former New Jersey senator who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has collected $2.7 million since 2013 from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an exiled opposition group once designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Torricelli recently spoke at a conference celebrating the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and declared that the NCRI should be installed by the US as the country’s provisional government.

The Access They Sell

Michael Beckel, who directs the Money in Politics Reform program at Issue One, explained why foreign governments pay such high prices for former members of Congress.

They bring “first-hand knowledge of the legislative process, strategic insights, and relationships with key power players in government.”

Craig Holman of Public Citizen put it more bluntly: authoritarian governments invest more in Washington lobbying because they have a “greater tendency to be at odds with the interests of the United States.”

In other words, America’s adversaries are buying access to American power. And American law allows it.

The Laws That Do Nothing

The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 was written to expose Nazi propaganda. It has not been meaningfully updated since. The Lobbying Disclosure Act allows foreign-backed lobbyists to register under a weaker, less transparent regime. The commercial exemption permits companies with substantial foreign ownership to pour money into U.S. elections without disclosing the foreign source.

A flurry of bills has tried to fix this. The Close the Revolving Door Act, introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Joe Neguse, would impose a lifetime lobbying ban on former members of Congress.

The Fighting Foreign Influence Act, from Rep. Jared Golden and Rep. Lance Gooden, would bar former American lawmakers, senior federal appointees, and military flag officers from ever registering as foreign agents.

The PAID OFF Act, from Sens. John Cornyn and Sheldon Whitehouse, would eliminate FARA exemptions for agents of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

The FARM Act, from Sen. Cynthia Lummis and Rep. Ro Khanna, would force the Justice Department to build a searchable public database of foreign agents.

In a remarkable moment of bipartisan clarity, Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Rep. Chip Roy agreed in a 2019 Twitter exchange to push for a lifetime ban.

“I’d be happy to co-sponsor,” Roy wrote.

None of these bills has passed.

The Man Who Blocked Reform

In October 2023, federal prosecutors charged Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey with acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Egypt.

At the time, Menendez chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He used that position to block the PAID OFF Act from being included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

He was the only committee leader in either party to refuse sign-off. A spokesperson said Menendez “planned to work on broader FARA reform.”

These actions occurred while Menendez was under investigation and subsequently indicted on federal corruption charges, which included allegations that he was acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.

Menendez blocked similar bipartisan efforts to reform FARA in 2020 and 2023.

Menendez has since been convicted. But his blockade succeeded. The bill stalled. The corrupt lawmaker’s son is now serving in the House of Representatives.

Democrats pushed Torricelli to step down over illegal donations from a businessman tied to North Korea, but many of those same party leaders stood by Menendez after his first indictment.

His reputation for being vindictive and the fact that Menendez’s resignation would have allowed Governor Chris Christie to appoint a Republican replacement played a big role in their support.

The Bottom Line

One hundred former members of Congress have become foreign lobbyists. Many of them work for authoritarian regimes that wish to bend U.S. policy in their favor. They exploit relationships built during years of public service, relationships that remain warm and lucrative long after they leave office.

The laws meant to expose this activity are riddled with exemptions.

The bills meant to close those exemptions appear to have bipartisan support but no floor votes. A single senator was able to kill a national security measure because it threatened his own client.

The revolving door is not a metaphor. It is a paid pipeline from the halls of Congress to the payrolls of foreign powers.

Until Congress shuts it down, American foreign policy will continue to be written in part by the very governments that wish to see the United States weakened.

Congress is unlikely to shut down this corrupt corridor until American voters demand that they put a stop to

That is not a conspiracy theory. That is a matter of public record.