An earlier version of this article incorrectly characterized the expected resolution of the charges against Barry Bennett and Douglas Watts. Rather than pleading guilty, they are expected to enter a diversion agreement in which they admit their conduct and pay fines, and the charges are later removed from their records. The article has been corrected.
Two Republican operatives are preparing to admit to trying to evade foreign lobbying laws in 2017 and 2018, according to court papers filed Tuesday — bringing an end to a long-running probe into whether they surreptitiously ran a D.C.-based advocacy group on behalf of Qatar.
One of those charged, Barry Bennett, served as an unpaid adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Douglas Watts, an associate of Bennett, was also charged in separate court papers. Bennett and Watts also once worked for the campaign of Ben Carson, then a GOP presidential candidate.
Court documents charge that Bennett’s firm, Avenue Strategies, submitted false information to authorities enforcing the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law that requires people lobbying on behalf of foreign entities to declare that work to the U.S. government.
Bennett and Watts have agreed to enter deferred prosecution agreements in which they agree to a statement of facts about their conduct and pay fines, and after a year the charges will be removed from their record, according to court papers.
Charging documents filed Tuesday say Watts violated the FARA law by not registering with the Justice Department, and made false statements to the FBI about the work, allegedly denying knowledge that Avenue Strategies created a separate company to act on behalf of Bennett’s foreign clients.
Both men were charged in federal court in Washington via a document called a criminal information, which is typically used in that jurisdiction when a person plans to admit to the charges filed against them.
The investigation focused on a group called Yemen Crisis Watch, which tried to put pressure on the governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for their roles in the bloody conflict in Yemen. It’s not clear that the group accomplished much in the way of lobbying beyond placing op-eds in a Washington newspaper and participating in a congressional briefing.
While Bennett’s firm did report that it worked on Qatar’s behalf, Bennett did not disclose his contributions to Yemen Crisis Watch, according to a person familiar with the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public. The U.S. government alleged that Qatar gave Bennett money to spend on the group.
In the past seven years, the Justice Department has stepped up its efforts to charge cases under the foreign lobbying law, with mixed results. In 2022, Thomas Barrack, a businessman and Trump’s presidential inaugural committee chairman, was acquitted of charges he secretly promoted the interests of the United Arab Emirates. In 2019, Gregory Craig, a former White House counsel to President Barack Obama, was acquitted of charges that he lied to the government about his work for the government of Ukraine.