# FARA Registrant Map The crosswalk between K Street and foreign power: **which firms represent which foreign principals, from which countries, for how much.** Companion to the [[Lobbying Hub]] census (the domestic ledger) and front door from the lobbying layer into the [[Foreign Influence Hub]]. Definitional anchor: [[FARA]]. Two data grades below, kept explicit. **Live-verified** = pulled directly from the DOJ FARA eFile API on 2026-07-07. **Best-evidence** = triangulated from Quincy Institute, OpenSecrets Foreign Lobby Watch, and trade-press reporting; no clean public leaderboard of firm-by-firm FARA receipts exists, so treat rankings as ordered estimates, not gospel. --- ## Live-verified: census firms in the FARA system (API pull, 2026-07-07) | Firm | Reg # | Registered | Active foreign principals | |------|-------|------------|---------------------------| | [[Miller Strategies]] | 7423 | 2024-06-15 | Embassy of Japan; Emirates Global Aluminium (UAE) | | [[Continental Strategy]] | 7545 | 2025-02-24 | **11 active**: [[Kazakhstan]], Republika Srpska (Bosnia), [[Bahrain]] embassy, Japan embassy, Kenya, Thailand commerce ministry, Haiti, Guyana foreign ministry, Dominican Republic (intelligence directorate + free-zone ministry), Democratic Party of [[Albania]] | | [[Checkmate Government Relations]] | 7534 | 2025-02-05 | none yet — registered but no active principals | | [[S-3 Group]] | 7658 | 2025-10-07 | none yet — new registrant, no active principals | | [[K&L Gates]] | 7597 | 2025-05-22 | (principals not listed here) | | [[Williams & Jensen]] | 7568 | 2025-04-07 | registration **terminated 2026-04-30** | | [[Ballard Partners]] | 7070 (active), 6415 (hist.) | — | heavy book; Qatar contract ($115K/mo) is the one [[Pam Bondi]] personally worked | | [[BGR Group]] | 5430 | — | [[Azerbaijan]], Qatar, Bahrain, India, Panama ($2.46M/yr, 2025), Angola ($2.04M/yr, 2025), Serbia, South Korea | | [[Mercury Public Affairs]] | 6170 | — | book includes past China-linked work (Hikvision, 2024) | The [[Continental Strategy]] row is the story: [[Carlos Trujillo]]'s firm went from zero to **eleven sovereign clients in its first year** — including Kazakhstan (see [[Kazakhstan Tungsten Deal]]) and Milorad Dodik's Republika Srpska — making it the fastest-growing foreign-influence book of the Trump-world shops. The reverse signal matters too: institutional firms K&L Gates and S-3 *entered* the FARA system in 2025, while Williams & Jensen *left* it in April 2026. ## Best-evidence: the top FARA books | Firm | Reg # | Lead principals / countries | Fee evidence | |------|-------|-----------------------------|--------------| | [[Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld]] | 3492 | UAE embassy, Japan, Morocco, Cambodia, [[Uzbekistan]] | $3.86M from UAE in one 6-month period (2023); tops firms for in-person meetings secured | | [[BGR Group]] | 5430 | (above) | Most political activities of any FARA firm — 16,866 in 2022–23 (Quincy) | | [[Squire Patton Boggs]] | 2165 | Pakistan, Angola | Angola $312.5K/month (≈$3.75M/yr) signed Jan 2025 | | [[Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck]] | 5870 | Saudi Arabia (PIF), Egypt foreign ministry, UAE | Lead firm on Saudi PIF/LIV reputation work (fee not isolated) | | [[Qorvis]] | 5483 | Saudi Arabia (incl. Human Rights Commission), Gulf states | FARA-specialist PR shop; longtime top Saudi registrant | | [[Glover Park Group]] | — | Egypt intelligence — **funder of record: UAE** | $3M/yr since Oct 2013 | | [[Cassidy & Associates]] | — | Egypt intelligence | $50K/month, retained Jan 2026 | | [[Forbes Tate Partners]] | 6522 | Embassy of Japan; Hydro-Québec | — | | [[Capitol Counsel]] | 6328 | Turkey (2015–16), Turkish Aerospace (2020), Ontario (2024) | Alberta ($540K) + Ontario ($480K) also its top *LDA* clients — the FARA/LDA overlap case | | American Defense International | 6567 | UAE (arms-sales advocacy) | specialist defense registrant | | Nelson Mullins | — | Qatar | $110K/month (2025, UNVERIFIED secondary source) | | [[Cornerstone Government Affairs]] / [[Holland & Knight]] | — | Qatar embassy (named among 2024 top earners) | figures UNVERIFIED — confirm via OpenSecrets scrape | ## Country view — who buys Washington **2024 single-year (OpenSecrets data):** Japan #1 at **$48.5M** (bulk = JETRO; Hill work via Hogan Lovells + Akin Gump); China **$32.9M** — down sharply from $85.4M in 2023, and ~90% of it state-media operations (CCTV/China Daily), not lobbying; Saudi Arabia and South Korea both outspent Israel and Qatar, which fell from their usual top tier — a reversal worth recording. **The Qatar deep-dive** (Quincy, Sept 2025): ~$250M across **88 FARA-registered firms since 2016**; 74 currently registered agents; **627 in-person meetings with U.S. officials Jan 2021–Jun 2025 — the most of any country**; plus >$4.1M in campaign contributions from its registrants since 2023. See [[Qatar]]. > [!warning] Data caveat > Cumulative since-2016 country totals circulate in several versions (China ~$418–562M, Japan ~$436–505M, Liberia ~$353M+, South Korea ~$326M, Saudi ~$312M, Qatar ~$250M, UAE ~$243M) — the tidy top-10 list traces partly to secondary/AI summaries, not a primary OpenSecrets page. Treat as ranges pending a direct Foreign Lobby Watch pull. FARA dollars also measure *disclosure*, not influence: China's spend is mostly propaganda distribution, while a $50K/month access retainer can matter more than $5M of newsprint. ## The enforcement whipsaw (2025–26) The rules governing everything above swung twice in a year: 1. **The Bondi memo (Feb 2025).** Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]] — herself a former registered agent of Qatar at [[Ballard Partners]] — limited criminal FARA enforcement to "conduct similar to traditional espionage" and **disbanded the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force**. FARA has no civil-fine authority, so this effectively decriminalized routine non-registration; foreign-agent disclosures reportedly fell more than 30% afterward. 2. **[[NSPM-7]] (Sept 2025).** Reversed the direction of fire: directs agencies to use FARA against entities with foreign ties linked to what the administration deems political violence — aimed at **nonprofits, diaspora organizations, and academic groups** rather than K Street. Read together: FARA relaxed for paying clients, weaponized against civil society. 3. **The payer-mismatch case (Jul 2026).** DOJ filings show [[Cassidy & Associates]] ($50K/mo, Jan 2026) and [[Glover Park Group]] ($3M/yr) representing Egyptian intelligence with the **UAE as funder of record** on the GPG contract — the clean live illustration of FARA's "who really pays" blind spot. Detail and caveats on the [[Cassidy & Associates]] page. 4. Also on the record: former Rep. David Rivera convicted May 2026 (secret pro-Maduro campaign) — egregious cases still land; and five states (AR, TN, GA, TX, NE) enacted "baby FARA" laws creating parallel state-level exposure. ## Watchlist The firms tracked most closely here: Ballard, BGR, Mercury, Miller Strategies, Continental Strategy, Checkmate — **all six verified** against the FARA eFile API (2026-07-07) — plus Cassidy & Associates and S-3 Group. ## See also [[FARA]] · [[Lobbying Hub]] · [[Foreign Influence Hub]] · [[Foreign Influence Ecosystem]] · [[Qatar]] · [[NSPM-7]] · [[Influence Peddling]]