Between September 1 and October 31 this year, seventeen registrants filed under FARA. Mexico, Turkey, Australia, and Ukraine were each involved in two filings apiece. Three filings revolved around tourism promotion, including one filed by a Saudi Arabian county. But the most lucrative arrangements centered around Hikvision USA, a subsidiary of the wholly-Chinese government owned surveillance company.
In this edition of the FARA Files, we will focus on the Hikvision filings and a joint filing on behalf of Albanian and Kosovo officials.
Hikvision
Sidley Austin LLP had been lobbying on behalf of Hikvision’s U.S. subsidiary since 2018, according to disclosures, but was compelled by the Department of Justice in October 2022 to also register with FARA thanks to reports of new sanctions from the White House against Chinese technology firms, according to Axios. The sanctions were meant to address the role the targeted firms play in the Communist regime’s genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang among other human rights concerns. That same day Sidley Austin filed with FARA, Hikvision’s other major lobbyist, Elevation Association, also registered.
Hikvision tasked both firms with the same lobbying objectives “regarding prohibitions on certain video surveillance equipment in the National Defense Authorization Act and other potential legislation and administrative action affecting Hikvision’s sale of video surveillance equipment” (p.6 for both documents).
The individual lobbyists from both firms have ties to the Republican and Democratic Parties. Sidley Austin’s point person, Michael Borden, worked for Republican House Representative Jim Leach (who recently became a Democrat) and included the former Democratic Representative Rick Boucher from Virginia on Borden’s team; a third member, Dora Hughes, worked with Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama when they were in the Senate. Sidley Austin reports that it has received almost $7.5 million in revenue from its partnership with Hikvision since 2018 (p.8).
Drew Willison, formerly Chief of Staff for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, is the sole partner at Elevation Association LLC (p.2); Willison was paid $300,000 between his hiring in May and his registration with FARA in October (p.8).
An attachment to Willison’s filing reveals he reached out to Michael Borden, from Sidley Austin, over the news of Hikvision potentially facing new sanctions to discuss a communications strategy (p.14). Willison argues that they should focus on lower-level administration staff and avoid any activity on Capitol Hill “whatsoever” as well as skirting any political appointees, saying that “White House staffers are far more anti-China than rank and file career staff” (p.14-15). Willison goes on to list two names, as part of his “quiet, targeted approach” but they are redacted (p.15).
Albania and Kosovo
On September 21, Roy Bailey, the sole member of his firm, Bailey Strategic Advisors LLC, filed for two foreign principals: the former Defense Minister of Albania Fatmir Mediu, and the Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti. Bailey is has relatively strong ties to the Republican Party, having donated to the likes of Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and served on Donald Trump’s transition team as part of the Finance Committee.
Bailey’s mission has been described by some as a “charm offensive” on behalf of Kosovo and Albania, two small countries in the southeast of Europe. The two countries are neighbors and share an ancient history together. Kosovo, which is also majority Albanian, was long a subject of Serbia, even when Serbia was dominated by larger empires such as Turkey or Austria-Hungary. The fall of Yugoslavia in the 1990s saw a rekindling of relations between the two Albanian majority nations, even while many countries friendly to Serbia continue to reject Kosovo’s independence from Serbia.
Both states are outside of the European Union and NATO, but with Kosovo’s limited international recognition its future inclusion in either body is heavily in doubt. There is a view that Albania and Kosovo are one nation, divided from without, and destined to be together again; and that view is succinctly expressed by Mediu in a speech to a joint session of the Albanian and Kosovan Assemblies about Serbia’s growing ties with Russia and China:
“We are the oldest nation in the Balkans. Today we are two states and a divided nation. If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. One day we will be together in the EU, an obligation to history and those who made history sacrificed their lives.”
However, in the case of Mediu, there is perhaps more at play with the charm offensive.
In 2021, he was charged for his alleged role in a deadly explosion at a munitions factory in 2008 that forced him to resign his role as Defense Minister. Just around the time Bailey registered his work for Mediu in October, he was summoned to testify on the incident.
Bailey’s filing notes that his relationship with Mediu and Kurti began in May of 2022 (p.5), and was terminated less than a fortnight before registering under FARA (p.2). Bailey’s work was done pro bono (p.5) and involved reaching out to at least two Senators, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (p.6).
For smaller countries, the kind of work that falls under FARA can provide a means of securing their interests that traditional diplomacy may not offer—and when used in tandem can signal to policymakers in Washington that a foreign government is committed to that interest. But using indirect methods of diplomacy can also generate more fog and less clarity as to who is ultimately responsible for implementing foreign policy.
