DeSantis spokesperson didn't report all foreign agent activities to DOJ, could be criminally liable
A notable law professor says the omission could be a criminal offense.
The official press secretary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is risking significant, even criminal penalties, according to a legal expert.
Florida Gov. DeSantis’ spokeswoman Christina Pushaw registered as a foreign agent on June 6th, 2022, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
But when she did register, public records prove conclusively that she materially omitted a significant amount of her past foreign lobbying activities when belatedly registering with the United States Department of Justice’s National Security Division last month. (document at the bottom of the story)
Furthermore, the filings prove that some of her past political propaganda publishing apparently violates mandatory legal disclosure requirements.
Christina Pushaw is required by FARA to register her activities within 10-days of agreeing to be a foreign agent and prior to starting.
Yet, she registered four and a half years late, long after starting that she belatedly disclosed her paid relationship with the foreign principal Mikheil Saakashvili, the now-imprisoned former President of Georgia.
Pushaw submitted a 3-part 164-page filing to the DOJ’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit Public Office.
You can read her complete FARA filings here.
Her disclosures reveal the now-Press Secretary to the Florida Governor’s extensive ghost-writing campaign for Saakashvili and his wife.
Pushaw also reported her personal publication of her political propaganda to further Saakashvili’s goals in a prominent GOP-aligned think tank’s editorial journal, but her writing lacks legally required disclosures under FARA, another violation of the law.
A review of her resume and application for work submitted with her signed certifications of truthfulness to the State of Florida reveals something more troubling, according to national experts in foreign lobbying compliance.
When asked for comment, the Department of Justice issued this response from Wyn Hornbuckle, Deputy Director of the Office of Public Affairs, by email:
“Regarding your question about how FARA jurisdiction may or may not apply to someone living overseas, we’ll decline to comment. We typically will not comment on hypothetical scenarios as many unknown factors may apply.”
Foreign lobbying of U.S. officials was disclosed to the state of Florida, not to the Department of Justice
By Christina Pushaw’s own hand, she says that her foreign agency and lobbying efforts aimed at U.S. government officials were more extensive than she disclosed to the DOJ about her “political inspiration,” the now-imprisoned former president of Georgia.
The disclosures by Pushaw in a document submitted to obtain public employment raise the question of how many other foreign principals have directed the Mailbu-born graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
The Florida Governor’s press secretary’s resume has been a public record ever since the Tampa Bay Times requested it a year ago.
The Florida Governor hired her based upon that resume and her body of writing at an annual salary of $120,000, according to the official state employee disclosure website FloridaHasARightToKnow.com.
However, nobody else has reported on the details inside of it, in which Pushaw plainly admits to lobbying the Georgian U.S. embassy on behalf of a foreign political party and presumptively its leader.
It proves conclusively that she says she was a foreign lobbyist for a second foreign principal that she hasn’t disclosed to the DOJ.
The fifth bullet point in her listing as a Campaign Strategist for former Georgian presidential candidate Gregory Vashadze reads: “Managed strategic communications with international (US/EU) stakeholders, including government officials and multinational election observation missions (OSCE, Parliamentary Assemblies, etc.); wrote weekly memos for stakeholders; briefed diplomats, U.S. officials and monitoring delegations.”
The last line specifically denotes that she lobbied American government officials on behalf of a Vashadze, a foreign principal.
“When located outside the US, if she were continuing to lobby US officials in any way, that would strengthen the idea that she was acting as an agent within the United States,” explained University of Pennsylvania law professor Claire Finkelstein, who served as part of the American Bar Association’s task force on FARA reform in an interview conducted before Pushaw registered her foreign agency work at the DOJ’s insistence. “It sounds like she’s engaged in lobbying for a foreign principal, but there are other acts that might not be cognizable under FARA.”
When I brought this matter to Professors Finkelstein and University of Minnesota law professor Richard W. Painter's attention, it was without telling them the name, country, or state of the foreign lobbyist, but with an accurate description to them of the acts above which Pushaw omitted from her June 6th filing. Copies of all records were provided to them for their inspection and any further commentary afterward.
“There’s a lot here,” said Finkelstein referring to the rest of the resume, which mentions handling international affairs for Georgian political parties and her own nonprofit group activities, all of which do not explicitly say in Pushaw’s own words that they trigger a registration requirement. “The issue is whether or not the person was acting within the United States.”
“When you’re undertaking those activities for a foreign politician, I think they require registration because you’re contacting the US government on behalf of a foreign politician,” said Richard Painter, who served as chief ethics counsel in the Bush White House. “That goes to the core of what FARA is all about. It seems to me that needs to be disclosed.”
“There are two sets of issues,” Painter explained, “the reporting under the FARA and whether they met the statute. It’s obligatory, and failure to report can be criminal.”
“There’s a second issue,” the former White House ethics counsel said, continuing to outline the pitfalls of being a late registrant with the DOJ and making an incomplete filing, “is that when you do file a report with the US government, any part of the government, and it’s false. If you knowingly make false statements to any part of the US government, then you can be in violation of 18 USC 1001, the false statements statute.”
“If you file a FARA application and you say you’re doing A, and you don’t disclose AB & C, or you say your foreign principal is X, but it’s really XY&Z, then at some point you could have made a false representation to the DOJ,” explained Painter as a hypothetical example after hearing Pushaw’s situation but without names or countries.”
What meets the definition of a material omission that rises to the level of an act that the federal government can charge a citizen with a crime?
“A material omission is generally understood to be a misrepresentation,” explained Painter, “if the omission is something required to be said for something not to be materially misleading. If you’re concealing something intentionally, then I think that material omission would probably be a violation of 18 USC 1001.”
Perversely, Christina Pushaw has used her newfound Twitter following to jest about others being unregistered foreign-agent lobbyists, while she herself was a secretly and unlawfully unregistered foreign agent.
The Department of Justice’s website says that in addition to civil remedies, the penalty for a “willful violation of FARA is imprisonment for not more than five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. Certain violations are considered misdemeanors, with penalties of imprisonment of not more than six months, a fine of not more than $5,000, or both.”
Pushaw did not reply to requests for comment sent by email, SMS message, phone call or voicemail at the time of publication, nor has the Executive Office of the Governor responded to requests for comment by phone or email.
Disclosure problems
Christina Pushaw wrote a story about Ukraine and her boss Saakashvili in The National Interest, which she included in her FARA registrations.
Formerly known as the Nixon Center, the Center for the National Interest publishes that website. The Center gained national infamy for hosting a controversial meeting between then-presumptive 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Later, it was revealed that The National Interest had also published a story about Russian-American affairs and the GOP by eventually convicted spy Maria Butina, who infiltrated the NRA with Putin’s emissary and met with Donald Trump Jr.
Notably, Pushaw’s article “Ukraine's New President Prioritizes Campaign Promise to Change the Country” lacks any of the legally required notification to readers that it is political propaganda on behalf of a foreign principal under 22 U.S.C. § 614.
In fact, the only reason we know that article was a political propaganda piece is that she disclosed it to the DOJ in her informational materials.
Instead, it directly misrepresents her to the readers as a “former advisor” to Saakashvili.
Christina Pushaw holds a MA in European & Eurasian Studies from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She has served as an advisor to politicians in Eastern Europe, including Mikheil Saakashvili. She is based in Tbilisi, Georgia and Washington, DC.
That statute regulates the “filing and labeling of political propaganda.” Section (b) requires an identification statement on all materials.
The FARA unit maintains an FAQ to assist in compliance with this specific law on its website, which reads:
WHAT SHOULD THE CONSPICUOUS STATEMENT SAY?
This material is distributed by (name of registrant) on behalf of (name of foreign principal). Additional information is available at the Department of Justice, Washington, DC.
“It seems quite clear that she was acting as a foreign agent and that she didn’t fully disclose that,” says Painter, noting that her other ghostwritten stories do not require those disclosures to comply, merely filing them with the DOJ. “If she made a misleading FARA filing, she needs to fix it.”
The National Ineterest did not respond to an email request for comment, nor did the Center for the National Interest answer their phone during business hours or return a voicemail seeking comment.
Eighteen months ago, virtually nobody knew who Christina Pushaw was, but a media campaign she launched as a columnist in a right-wing blog named “Human Events” ultimately led her to become Fl. Gov. DeSantis’ mouthpiece.
She wrote a story about controversial whistleblower Rebekah Jones and followed it up with a puff piece on the Florida governor.
Then Christina Pushaw wrote a very nice message to Governor DeSantis on March 19th, 2021, the day after the publication of her second story entitled “RON DESANTIS VERSUS THE “PARTY OF SCIENCE.”
In her message to the former Congressman from Daytona Beach turned presidential front-runner today, she said that his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic inspired her to move to Florida (which he had not actually done).
She also then asked if there was an opening on his communications team, according to a Tampa Bay Times report last summer based on her employment application.
Between her email and her eventual start date, Pushaw became entangled in a legal matter with Jones, who accused her of cyberstalking and harassment last April. It ended four months later in a nolle prosequi decision from the Montgomery County District Court, but not after both sides engaged in a series of false representations. Pushaw pretended that the case had nothing to do with her when asked, which was a lie. She had obtained effective legal counsel to beat the charges. Jones claimed the forthcoming trial was to ratify a plea deal; it was not.
The end results are documented completely and in full here in a set of court documents from the Rockville courthouse that speak for themselves.
Just over a month after Christina’s interactions with Jones in Maryland sparked the four-month feud, she submitted this application for employment to the State of Florida with her resume containing proof that she was an unregistered foreign agent and certified its truthfulness.
Less than one month after Gov. DeSantis hired Pushaw as his Press Secretary, he made her the communications director for an event in Miami to sign a bill and executive order to combat corporate espionage, and foreign influence.
Click here to view the complete application and resume with personal information redacted:
WHAT THE HELL!!
Floridians, this monster DeSanctimonious and his Russian assets must go!!
Well, of course. Who is surprised!?? ANOTHER shitty CORRUPT right-winger! It's in their DNA!