After turning down a top national security communications role at the White House amid plagiarism allegations, former Fox News analyst Monica Crowley has taken up a new pursuit: lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch who’s advocated for better relations with Russia.
In Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) registration documents filed Friday and flagged by Congress-focused research organization LegiStorm, Crowley applied to lobby on behalf of Victor Pinchuk. Pinchuk, who Forbes counts as one of the world’s richest men, gave $150,000 to the Trump Foundation in 2015.
The Daily Beast reported that the gift, made in exchange for a 2015 video conference address that Trump gave on behalf of Pinchuk’s own foundation, made him the “single largest outside donor” that year to the President’s now-defunct charity.
Crowley is expected to provide “outreach services” to the billionaire investor and philanthropist, according to the FARA filing. This involves “inviting government officials and other policy makers” to attend events with Pinchuk to “engage in learning” on “issues of concern” to him.
In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Pinchuk said that Ukraine should accept “painful compromises” in order to smooth relations with Russia.
Crowley’s work will be done on behalf of Schoen Consulting, a firm run by former Bill Clinton pollster and Fox News analyst Doug Schoen, who is listed as the primary registrant on the filing. As the Daily Beast noted, Schoen spoke with Trump for the video discussion shown to the Victor Pinchuk Foundation’s Yalta European Strategy conference.
Schoen did not immediately respond Tuesday to TPM’s request for comment. But in a statement to the Washington Examiner, Schoen said that he asked Crowley to join his firm “only after she left the position she had been appointed to by the Trump administration.”
Her work will relate to “Victor Pinchuk and Ukraine as well as other matters,” Schoen said.
Crowley had worked as a Fox News commentator for years and was slated to become the director of strategic communications for the National Security Council in the Trump White House. After CNN reported that Crowley plagiarized sections of her PhD dissertation, columns and 2012 book, she ultimately declined to accept the role.
Crowley insists the plagiarism scandal was a “straight-up political hit job” that has been “debunked,” although no debunkings of the side-by-side comparisons between Crowley’s work and the material she plagiarized have been published.
Her registration as a foreign agent came just three days after that of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was forced out as Trump’s national security adviser. Flynn retroactively filed last week for the consulting work his firm did on behalf of Inovo BV, a Dutch firm run by a Turkish businessman. The filings note that that work “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.”
Read Crowley’s FARA filing below:
