‘Foreign agent’ cut from Lujan Grisham staff
It’s well-known that some of President Donald Trump’s associates in the 2016 campaign got into legal trouble in part for failing to register as foreign agents with the federal government.
But a spokesman hired by New Mexico Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham said he complied with the same government rule that Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos famously flouted — and it appears to have cost him his job.
Ron Eckstein started work as the Democratic congresswoman’s communications director last Monday. On Wednesday, a government watchdog website called LegisStorm that tracks congressional pay and staffing issued a press release with this headline: “Caught Our Eye: Rep. Lujan Grisham adds foreign agent to comms team.”
The mysterious item piqued my curiosity, so I immediately asked Eckstein about it via email.
“Not technically accurate, but funny,” he replied.
Eckstein, who had previously worked for other Democratic members of Congress, said he left Capitol Hill to take a communications job with the private sector firm Rasky Partners Inc. in 20122013. The company has a diverse roster of clients and offices in Washington and Boston. One of the clients assigned to Eckstein was the government of Hungary. The LegisStorm press release said Eckstein reported doing mediarelations and strategiccommunications work on behalf of the Hungarian Ministry of Public Administration and Justice. Eckstein told me he simply “followed all the required disclosure rules, and that included registering with the DOJ (Department of Justice) under the FARA Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
“I haven’t worked for any foreign governments or renewed my FARA filing since, so it’s not accurate to say I am a foreign agent,” he said. “I guess you could say I’m a ‘former foreign agent,’ but that really sounds a lot more glamorous and inflammatory than anything I’ve actually done. But saying I’m currently a foreign agent is simply not accurate.”
A day after our email exchange, I asked Eckstein about another subject, and he informed me he’d been fired because of the LegisStorm headline. He said Lujan Grisham’s chief-of-staff, Natalie Armijo, was “spooked” by the “special agent” characterization, and told him the office would no longer be needing his services.
“I’m sad because I think (Lujan Grisham) is a good congresswoman, and I was excited to work for her this year,” a dejected-sounding Eckstein told me in a telephone call Thursday, adding that he viewed his firing as “completely unnecessary.”
“I understand they want to protect the congresswoman, but I really don’t think I was damaging,” he said, while noting he didn’t want to disparage the office.
Eckstein said he did not get a chance to discuss it with the congresswoman before he cleared out his desk. I asked Armijo and Nathan Schelble, Lujan’s legislative director, about the dismissal. Schelble said they couldn’t discuss Eckstein’s firing.
“We can’t disclose employee confidential information,” he said. “We enjoyed Ron’s stay here and we wish him the best, but it didn’t work out.”
It’s worth noting that Hungary’s government has veered right in recent years, and some human rights advocates are worried that Budapest is becoming more authoritarian under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s regime. Orbán is widely expected to win re-election this spring. Eckstein said the Hungarian government he worked for — at least at the time — was “center right.”
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “I worked for a PR firm that had Hungary as a client.”
Lujan Grisham is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of New Mexico. In light of the Russian scandal that surrounds the Trump administration, it’s safe to say she wanted to avoid any whiff of “foreign agents” playing on her team.
Good luck to Eckstein in his suddenly renewed job hunt. He was an amiable, responsive and competent professional in my brief dealings with him.