377. Casey Michel with Katy Pearce: A Danger to Democracy

Town Hall Seattle Civics Series

If there is one thing on our collective minds these days, it is the issue of politics. But for all the interest it piques, much of it remains a mystery to the American public. Bestselling author and journalist Casey Michel, who tackled the problem of financial corruption in his first book American Kleptocracy, sheds light on an issue that may be unknown to those outside the Capitol.

In Michel’s new book Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World, he details how one group has worked as foot soldiers for authoritarian, repressive regimes. In the process, they’ve not only established dictatorships and spread kleptocratic networks, but they’ve successfully guided U.S. policy without the rest of America being aware. And now, Michel asserts, some of them have begun turning their sights on American democracy itself.

These Americans are known as foreign lobbyists, and many of them spent years laundering reputations and getting cozy in Washington with dictatorships. Michel writes of foreign lobbyists throughout history–including those who built alliances with Mussolini and the Nazis, but also contemporary Americans: in law firms and consultancies, among PR specialists and former lawmakers, and even within think tanks and universities. Foreign Agents illuminates these figures past and present and determines that they pose a threat to the future of American democracy.

Casey Michel is an author, journalist, and director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program with the Human Rights Foundation. He is the author of American Kleptocracy, named by The Economist as one of the “best books to read to understand financial crime.” His writing on offshoring, foreign lobbying, authoritarianism, and illicit wealth has appeared in Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Post, among other outlets, and he has appeared on NPR, BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, among other stations. He has also testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the links between illicit financial networks and national security. He received his Master’s degree in Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies from Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in northern Kazakhstan. Foreign Agents is his second book.

Dr. Katy E. Pearce is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington and holds affiliations with the University of Washington’s Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies and the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. She is the chair of the Communication and Technology Division of the International Communication Association and is an associate editor at the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Her research focuses on social and political uses of technologies and digital content in the transitioning democracies and semi-authoritarian states of the South Caucasus and Central Asia, but primarily Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Buy the Book Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World

The Elliott Bay Book Company