Two men with ties to former President Trump's 2016 campaign were charged Tuesday with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
barry bennett unpaid advisor To the Trump campaign in 2016, and his colleague Douglas Watts They were charged with violating FARA, according to court documents.
Prosecutors allege that Bennett “knowingly and intentionally falsified, concealed, and concealed” information to obstruct federal FARA investigators, and that both he and Watts lied to investigators. did.
The complaint alleges that Mr. Bennett's lobbying firm, Avenue Strategies, submitted false information in documents provided to investigators. Prosecutors did not identify the countries that funded the undisclosed effort, but the Wall Street Journal first reported in 2021 that Bennett was under investigation for cooperating with the Qatari government.
The newspaper reported that the Qatari government paid Avenue Strategies approximately $3 million between 2017 and 2018 to run a Yemeni crisis monitoring group and publish ads and editorials criticizing Qatar's rivals over the Yemeni civil war. was published.
Bennett was personally paid $250,000 for the work “for the purpose of supporting humanitarian suffering relief in Yemen,” according to a 2021 Justice Department filing.
Despite the compensation, the group is not registered as a foreign lobbying organization and Bennett has not disclosed its affiliation, the Journal reported.
The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department for further comment.
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