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- Government Affairs Compliance Reviews
A thoughtful government affairs compliance review can help spot and correct vulnerabilities before they generate headlines, enforcement actions, or both. Covington regularly conducts these reviews for major corporate clients and associations and provide training to lobbyists, PAC managers, and other key staff. We advise on the full scope of political activity compliance issues, including campaign finance, lobbying disclosure, gifts and ethics, and pay-to-play rules, among other issues, helping clients to identify and remedy problems before they become baked into the organizational culture and before they result in major reputational harm.
Our Election & Political Law group has extensive experience conducting government affairs compliance reviews that are structured to fit our clients’ needs. The reviews involve gathering documents and conducting targeted interviews in a way that provides a thorough review of a company’s government affairs activities while not interfering with day-to-day activities.
Our past reviews have ranged from comprehensive analyses of entire government affairs departments to targeted reviews of PACs or lobbyists’ activities. We present our results in a format that is best suited to our clients’ goals, but often involve presentations to the Board or government affairs leadership, written compliance reviews, and summary charts outlining key areas of concern or improvement.
Covington Publishes Comprehensive Advisory Comparing Biden and Trump Executive Orders on Ethics
January 22, 2021, Inside Political Law
The ethics rules that apply to Presidential appointees shifted Wednesday, in some ways significantly, as President Biden, just hours after being sworn in, signed an “Executive Order on Ethics Commitments by Executive Branch Personnel” and President Trump, just hours before his term expired, revoked his Executive Order on Ethics. While the Biden and Trump ...
November 9, 2020, Inside Political Law
With the election over, attention now turns to the transition and the upcoming inauguration of the new Biden-Harris Administration. In this alert, which will be of interest to chief compliance officers and many others across the country, Covington’s Election and Political Law Practice Group provides insight into what promises to be a transition and ...
March 31, 2020, Inside Political Law
On March 30, 2020, the inspectors general of several major agencies selected the Department of Defense Inspector General, Glenn Fine, to lead a newly created federal oversight entity that will investigate waste, fraud, and abuse in connection with the massive new coronavirus economic relief legislation. The inspectors general were exercising new authority ...
March 24, 2020, Inside Political Law
The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are reverberating in every sector of the global economy, from life sciences to transportation, retail to manufacturing, financial services to sports and entertainment. As federal, state, and local governments attempt to blunt the pandemic’s public health and economic effects, many companies are frantically working with ...
December 6, 2019, Inside Political Law
Assistance from congressional offices can be invaluable to an organization with interests before executive branch agencies. But it also can pose legal and optics risks to both the organization requesting the assistance and the congressional office and Member of Congress doing the outreach. A number of high-profile scandals, including the Keating Five matter in ...
July 31, 2018, Roll Call
Robert Kelner is quoted in Roll Call regarding legislation to overhaul the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Mr. Kelner says, “They [lawmakers] are all are focused on ‘toughening’ the statute, which is a political approach, but not an approach that will make it more effective. FARA has been in need of a major overhaul for decades. It’s an extremely vague statute, ...
May 21, 2018, Inside Political Law
The scenario is all too common: After months of searching for the right candidate and weeks negotiating duties and compensation, a company finally hires a new employee to a position that will entail work on certain government policy issues. The employee seems to be a perfect fit, but after a few days on the job,...… Continue Reading The post Covington Publishes ...
January 12, 2018, Inside Political Law
Buried in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is an obscure, and quite significant, change to the post-employment restriction on U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) civilian and uniformed personnel. This new provision could have a substantial impact on defense contractors and others who recruit DoD personnel to work on policy and procurement matters ...
April 26, 2017, Inside Political Law
Organizations represented by lobbyists in Virginia should be aware of a new law enacted today. The law eliminates a controversial exception to the state’s $100 limit on lobbyist gifts to legislators and officials, adds a key new exception to that law, and also includes an additional gift notification requirement for lobbyists. The changes represent ...
Covington Publishes Comprehensive Advisory Comparing Trump and Obama Executive Orders on Ethics
January 31, 2017, Inside Political Law
President Donald Trump this weekend signed his promised “drain the swamp” Executive Order, which imposes ethics restrictions on incoming and outgoing Trump Administration appointees. Incoming appointees would, of course, do well to carefully review the provisions of the Executive Order. But companies that deal with the Administration—whether by lobbying the ...
January 30, 2017, Inside Political Law
President Trump signed an executive order on ethics this weekend that is similar in key respects to the Obama Administration’s executive order governing ethical conduct by presidential appointees. But in one key respect it is significantly broader in scope than the previous Obama executive order. The Trump executive order incorporates the concept of “lobbying ...
Back to Election and Political Law
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Corporate and Trade Association Political Activity
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Corporate Political Disclosure
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FEC Advice and Enforcement
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Foreign Agents Registration Act
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Government Affairs Compliance Reviews
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Lobbying and Campaign Finance Internal Investigations
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Lobbying Disclosure Act Compliance
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Pay-to-Play Law Advice
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Political Tax and Tax Exempt Organizations
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State and Local Enforcement
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Super PACs
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Vetting and Confirmation of Political Appointees