Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, serves a primarily rural district anchored in Waco, a city of 150,000. It’s unclear why he is so interested in NSO Group, the infamous Israeli spyware firm that was blacklisted by the U.S. for its role in human rights abuses.

Between February and July, though, Sessions and his team met eight times with lobbyists on behalf of NSO.

One meeting was held for a “briefing on Bureau of Industry and Security Status” — the Department of Commerce office that blacklisted NSO in November 2021. Others were for “discussions of news articles reporting on NSO technology and the war in Gaza” and “NSO VISA issue,” according to documents filed with the Foreign Agents Registrations Act, or FARA, at the end of August.

In July, on the same day that the lobbyists from the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a D.C. powerhouse, met with Sessions to “discuss NSO technology and human rights policies,” one of its lawyers and former House member from Texas, Greg Laughlin, paid $1,000 by check to “Pete Sessions for Congress.” At other times, Laughlin — who is actively registered as a lobbyist for NSO, according to current filings — donated to the campaigns of other Texas Republicans who NSO met with, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

Against the backdrop of Israel’s war efforts and the looming possibility of a Trump administration, NSO is doubling down on its efforts to connect with members of Congress — almost exclusively with Republicans — as it makes a bid to reverse its blacklisting. NSO’s Pegasus spyware can infect and infiltrate cellphones and has been used by authoritarian governments to hack the devices of dissidents, journalists, and human rights activists, enabling grave abuses.

The latest blitz in its yearslong campaign for delisting kicked off at the onset of the Israeli war in Gaza last year, when NSO tried to persuade Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that its technology was of use to the American government.

“It is, unfortunately, not uncommon for FARA registrants to make campaign contributions to the members of Congress they’re contacting on behalf of foreign........

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