Lobbying firms have disguised their influence so well that it’s often barely visible even to savvy Washington insiders. By Franklin Foer
On march 18, news broke that Donald Trump intended to restore the disgraced lobbyist Paul Manafort to the ranks of his campaign advisers. In any other moral universe, this would have been an unimaginable rehabilitation. Back in 2016, as revelations about Manafort’s work on behalf of pro-Kremlin politicians in Ukraine began appearing in the press, even Trump considered him a figure so toxic that he forced him to resign as chair of his campaign. Two years later, Manafort was locked up in federal prison on charges of tax evasion and money laundering, among other transgressions. His was one of the most precipitous falls in the history of Washington.