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Guest Essay

By Casey Michel

Mr. Michel is director of the Combating Kleptocracy Program at the Human Rights Foundation and the author of “Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World.”

With this month’s revelations that Hunter Biden directly contacted American officials for the benefit of foreign clients in Ukraine and allegedly Romania, and with Mr. Biden facing a new trial next month stemming from charges of tax evasion for the millions he received from foreign sources, the time has come to finally charge him as an unregistered foreign agent.

Originally enacted in 1938, the primary regulations targeting foreign lobbyists, known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), are straightforward, requiring Americans who are paid to push foreign interests to register their work with the federal government. It doesn’t make the practice illegal — lobbying is, thanks to the First Amendment, still a constitutionally protected right — but it does bring transparency to an otherwise opaque world, forcing foreign lobbyists to disclose what they’re doing, who they’re doing it for, and how much they’re being paid in the process. While FARA was unfortunately largely unenforced for decades after it took effect, the law has seen new life in recent years as prosecutors have finally begun going after unregistered foreign agents.

We’ve known that myriad foreign companies and foreign oligarchs have targeted Mr. Biden, tossing significant sums at him while his father served as vice president. With each revelation, and with each new foreign client revealed, the president’s detractors have wailed that the younger Mr. Biden violated foreign lobbying laws, which required him to disclose what he was doing abroad — as well as reveal the Americans he’d been targeting on behalf of his foreign benefactors.

Mr. Biden’s highly questionable foreign dealings have for years appeared more smoke than fire; there was previously no evidence that he illicitly lobbied any American officials. Compared to figures such as the........

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