Israeli spyware company, NSO, is mounting a rapacious public relations push to undo the harm to its reputation.

NSO’s recent hiring of two lobbyists, Jeffrey Weiss and Stewart Baker, from the Washington-based white-shoe law firm Steptoe & Johnson, was made public at the end of October in a filing with the House of Representatives. On behalf of NSO, the firm was to address “US national security and export control policy in an international context.”

James Baker, former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security and a former National Security Agency general counsel, previously told The Associated Press, before representing NSO, that the blacklisting of the company “certainly isn’t a death penalty and may over time just be really aggravating.”

Weiss, for his part, had relevant experience to help get NSO off the Department of Commerce blacklist: He was deputy director of policy and strategic planning at the agency from 2013 to 2017.

Weiss and another Steptoe & Johnson partner, Eric Emerson, had also been hired by the Israeli government a few months earlier, according to previously unreported FARA documents. Weiss registered to provide both services to the Economic and Trade Mission at the Embassy of Israel in July, and then NSO in October.

Emerson, who has worked at Steptoe for over 30 years specialising in international trade law and policy issues, registered to engage with Natalie Gutman-Chen, Israeli minister of trade and economic affairs. Documents show that Steptoe’s annual budget for this work is $180,000.

Steptoe’s description of its work for the Israeli mission is similar to its goals for the NSO contract: to “provide advice on various international trade related matters affecting the State of Israel” which will be used “to develop its position w/re various US policies.”

It is not illegal to register to lobby for two affiliated clients, and powerful law firms doing lobbying work often do so for purposes of efficiency and holding meetings together.

“It is not uncommon to kill two birds with one stone,” said Anna Massoglia, editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets, which tracks lobbying money in Washington. “It’s possible NSO got a discount because they already had Israel.”

“It’s possible NSO got a discount because they already had Israel.”

On October 30, amid the Israeli onslaught against Gaza, Steptoe filed their supplemental statement, in which lobbyists are supposed to detail their meetings and outreach to the Department of Justice. It was left curiously blank, perhaps portending a later amendment to the filing.

“The filing covers what we have been asked to advise on and we can’t comment any further at this time,” Steptoe said in a statement.

“It’s hard to prove it’s deliberate,” Massoglia said. “But the timing is interesting.”

Last year, a previously unreported email, obtained through a public records request, provided another example of the interweaving relationship between the Israeli government and NSO.

In May 2022, Love, the acting chair of the End-User Review Committee at the Department of Commerce, emailed lobbyists at Steptoe and Pillsbury. Love sent along a list of questions for their client, NSO, about the company’s appeal to be removed from the blacklist.

“We are also requesting permission to provide these questions to the government of Israel,” Love wrote.

The email, however, had been sent about a year and half before Steptoe filed FARA registrations for its staff to lobby on behalf of NSO – and raises questions about adherence to the foreign lobbying law. (Pillsbury was registered under FARA at the time.)

FARA requires lobbyists to register with the Department of Justice when taking on foreign principals – both governments and companies – as clients.

“What has never been a gray area under FARA is if you are communicating directly with the US government on behalf of a foreign principal, that’s a political activity,” said Ben Freeman, director of the democratising foreign policy programme at the Quincy Institute. Of the period when Steptoe was working for NSO but hadn’t registered yet, Freeman said, “By skirting FARA registration, they are really playing with fire.”

Although FARA cases have increased since 2016, charges brought by the Justice Department remain relatively rare. The statute itself is forgiving, the enforcement mechanisms like warning letters often render failures to register moot, and, with so little case law owing to so few indictments, prosecutors are loath to try their hand at bringing charges.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

“By skirting FARA registration, they are really playing with fire.”

In a letter sent to the Justice Department in July of last year, Democracy for the Arab World Now called on the government to investigate what, at the time, was described as the firms’ lack of registration as agents for Israel under FARA. “We believe that misrepresentation to be intentional,” the letter said.

None of the four companies hired by NSO said in their registrations that there is any Israeli government control over the spyware group, despite the evidence laid out by Democracy for the Arab World Now of Israeli influence on the company that meets the US definition of government control. This includes the fact that all of NSO’s contracts are determined by the government of Israel, allegedly to serve political interests.

The Department of Justice, however, does not give updates or responses to such referrals. Neither has it published an opinion or issued a penalty.

“Based on FARA filings, one would be under the impression that NSO was a run of the mill private corporate entity,” said Shapiro, of Democracy for the Arab World Now. “But given its role in spyware, understanding the government’s control is really important.”

• The Intercept report