Reform #7. Stop lobbying for foreign governments

Since 2000, exactly one hundred former members of Congress have gone to work for foreign governments.¹ They have represented the interests of nearly half the countries on earth. Turkey has hired the most, sixteen of them, followed by South Korea with twelve and Taiwan with eleven, then China and Saudi Arabia with eight apiece.² The two governments just behind Turkey are democracies, but they are the exception. Across all hundred former members, eighty-five percent registered as agents of governments that Freedom House rates "not free" or "partly free."³

This is the same revolving door described earlier, with one turn added. The Exit Interview section followed Dick Gephardt from championing recognition of the Armenian genocide in Congress to signing a contract, after he left, with the government of Turkey to help defeat the recognition resolution. Gephardt was an early entry in a long pattern, one the Quincy Institute, drawing on Foreign Agents Registration Act filings, counted to exactly one hundred by 2026. The work is legal, and it is disclosed. FARA, passed in 1938 to track foreign propaganda, requires an American working for a foreign government to register with the Justice Department and file what he is being paid to do.⁴ It stops there. A former House member waits one year before lobbying his old colleagues, a former senator two; once the wait is over, a foreign government may hire him on the same terms as a trade association or a drug company. The filing goes in, and that is the whole of the safeguard.

The filing can make for strange reading. In December 2024, as Pete Hegseth's nomination for secretary of defense neared a contested Senate vote, a former Republican senator named Norm Coleman served as his guide on Capitol Hill, escorting the nominee through meetings with the senators whose votes would decide the confirmation.⁵ Coleman was a registered lobbyist for the government of Saudi Arabia, working through Hogan Lovells, a firm the Saudi embassy had paid roughly $2.7 million in 2019.⁶ A former United States senator, on a foreign government's payroll, was helping to seat the man who would run the American military. Every part of it was disclosed, and every part of it was lawful.

Americans, asked about the practice, want it stopped. In the 2022 University of Maryland Program for Public Consultation survey, the series behind the figures on stock trading and the lobbying cool-off period, seventy-one percent of respondents said former senior officials should be barred for life from lobbying for a foreign government, with 71 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats agreeing.⁷ PPC asked the question about former executive branch officials, the group named in the bill it was testing. The legislation that has gathered the most support since reaches former members of Congress and retired military officers too.

Several versions of that legislation exist. Jared Golden and Mike Gallagher wrote one in 2021, the Congressional and Executive Foreign Lobbying Ban, which would bar former members of Congress, senior executive officials, and retired generals and admirals from ever registering as foreign agents.⁸ The bipartisan Fighting Foreign Influence Act, six sponsors split evenly between the parties, would do the same and also require American think tanks to disclose large gifts from foreign governments.⁹ Both have sat without a floor vote.

One related bill has moved. The CLEAR Path Act, from Senators John Cornyn and Peter Welch, would bar former senior executive officials from lobbying for a short list of adversary nations: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba. It passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in January 2026 with votes from both parties.¹⁰ Its reach is narrow by design. It covers no former members of Congress, and the list of five adversaries leaves out Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the two governments that have hired the most of them. The hundred former lawmakers this section began with would be free to keep working under a CLEAR Path Act signed into law tomorrow. The bill written to reach them has been introduced and reintroduced across multiple Congresses, and not once has it been called for a vote.

Footnotes

1. Nick Cleveland-Stout and Ben Freeman, "These 100 Former US Lawmakers Have Become Foreign Lobbyists," Responsible Statecraft (Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft), April 17, 2026. https://responsiblestatecraft.org/revolving-door-congress/. See also https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/06/28/the-revolving-door-from-congress-to-foreign-interest-lobbyist-is-well-traveled/ ↩

2. Nick Cleveland-Stout and Ben Freeman, "The Well-Traveled Road from Member of Congress to Foreign Agent," Responsible Statecraft, June 28, 2022. Note: the per-country counts (Turkey 16, etc.) reflect this 2022 analysis when the total was approximately 90; the April 2026 update raised the total to 100 but did not publish revised per-country counts. ↩

3. Cleveland-Stout and Freeman, "These 100 Former US Lawmakers Have Become Foreign Lobbyists," April 17, 2026. https://freedomhouse.org/countries/freedom-world/scores ↩

4. Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, 22 U.S.C. §§ 611–621. https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10499. See also https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/IN10625.html ↩

5. Spencer Ackerman, "Pete Hegseth's 'Sherpa' Is Never Trumper Who Lobbies for Saudis," The Daily Beast, December 5, 2024. https://www.thedailybeast.com/foreign-agent-for-saudis-is-trumps-sherpa-for-pete-hegseth/, https://www.thebulwark.com/p/pete-hegseths-congressional-sherpa, https://jewishinsider.com/2024/12/norm-coleman-pete-hegseth-trump-nomination-defense-secretary/ ↩

6. Hogan Lovells reported receiving approximately $2.7 million from the Embassy of Saudi Arabia in 2019 and roughly $13.7 million since 2014, per FARA filings. https://dawnmena.org/norm-coleman-former-u-s-senator-now-lobbyist-and-agent-for-the-saudi-government/ ↩

7. Program for Public Consultation, lobbying policy survey of 2,606 registered voters fielded June 13–29, 2022. https://publicconsultation.org/united-states/large-bipartisan-majority-favors-increasing-lobbying-restrictions-on-former-members-of-congress-and-other-government-officials/ ↩

8. Congressional and Executive Foreign Lobbying Ban Act, H.R. 3389 (117th Congress), introduced May 20, 2021. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3389/text ↩

9. Fighting Foreign Influence Act, H.R. 8106 (117th Congress), introduced June 16, 2022. https://us.transparency.org/news/fighting-foreign-influence-act-statement/. See also https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8176 ↩

10. CLEAR Path Act, sponsored by Senators John Cornyn, Peter Welch, Jim Risch, and Sheldon Whitehouse. Passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 15, 2026. https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/news/cornyn-colleagues-bill-to-mitigate-foreign-influence-on-u-s-policymaking-passes-senate-judiciary-committee/ ↩