Yesterday, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol filed a highly consequential brief in ongoing litigation relating to a subpoena seeking documents involving attorney John Eastman’s alleged participation in efforts to thwart Congress’s certification of the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
Continue Reading January 6 Committee Filing Provides Further Support for Parties Asserting Attorney-Client Privilege in Congressional Investigations

Brian D. Smith
Brian Smith assists clients with challenging public policy matters that combine legal and political risks and opportunities.
Brian represents companies and individuals facing high-profile and high-risk congressional investigations and hearings, and other criminal, civil, and internal investigations that present legal, political, and public relations risks. He assists companies and executives responding to formal and informal inquiries from Congress and executive branch agencies for documents, information, and testimony. He has extensive experience preparing CEOs and other senior executives to testify before challenging congressional oversight hearings.
Brian develops and executes government relations initiatives for clients seeking actions by Congress and the executive branch. He has led strategic efforts resulting in legislation enacted by Congress and official actions and public engagement at the most senior levels of the U.S. government. He has significant experience in legislative drafting and has prepared multiple bills enacted by Congress and legislation passed in nearly every state legislature.
Prior to joining Covington, Brian served in the White House as Assistant to the Special Counsel to President Clinton. He handled matters related to the White House’s response to investigations, including four independent counsel investigations, a Justice Department task force investigation, two major oversight investigations by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and several other congressional oversight investigations.
Brian is a Professorial Lecturer in Law at the George Washington University Law School.
Financial Institutions and Congressional Investigations – 2020 into 2021
Financial institutions are consistently targets of congressional oversight interest. In the last Congress, House and Senate committees held hearings with, demanded documents from, requested interviews with, and hosted briefings from a number of bank and non-bank financial institutions regarding a variety of issues. In a recent client alert, we…
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Governing Under an Equally Divided Senate
After the election of two Democratic Senate candidates in the Georgia runoff elections on January 5, 2021, the Senate this year will be equally divided between 50 Democratic Senators (and those caucusing with them) and 50 Republican Senators. Governing in an equally divided Senate presents several challenges regarding the internal…
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A Curious Advisory Opinion Reinterprets the FARA Exemption for Lawyers (and Resolves a FARA Mystery)
Last week, the Department of Justice’s FARA Unit released a curious advisory opinion. The new opinion stated that it replaced an advisory opinion released by the Department in December 2019, and it revised the Department’s guidance on the scope of the lawyers’ exemption to FARA. As far as we can…
Continue Reading A Curious Advisory Opinion Reinterprets the FARA Exemption for Lawyers (and Resolves a FARA Mystery)
Congressional Investigations: Recent Events Bring Greater Clarity to Expectations for 2021
As the calendar turns from 2020 to 2021, we are taking stock of congressional investigations over the past two years, and assessing events in the recent weeks that help to shed light on the likely trajectory for congressional investigations in 2021.
- In late October, we considered congressional investigations in the
Sen. Grassley’s Unsuccessful Effort to Pass FARA Reform Legislation Leads to Bipartisan Commitment for Comprehensive Review of the Law
On Wednesday, December 16, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sought, and failed to achieve, unanimous consent to pass legislation that would have granted significant new powers to the Department of Justice to enforce compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In objecting to passage, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said that the…
Continue Reading Sen. Grassley’s Unsuccessful Effort to Pass FARA Reform Legislation Leads to Bipartisan Commitment for Comprehensive Review of the Law
DOJ Releases FARA Determination Letters
The Department of Justice’s FARA Unit has publicly posted, for the first time, a set of FARA determination letters. A determination letter is the Unit’s formal opinion on whether an entity under scrutiny by the Department is required to register under FARA. As far as we can tell, the…
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DOJ Begins to Move Existing FARA Registrants to a New E-File System
Following the Department of Justice’s announcement in March 2019 of an initiative to increase enforcement of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”), the Department began rolling out a new electronic filing system for FARA registrations in September 2019. At that time, as Covington reported, the new system applied only…
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Congressional Pandemic Oversight Bodies Begin to Take Shape
As we reported in our prior client advisory on the wave of investigations to follow the pandemic, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (“CARES”) Act established three new bodies to conduct oversight and investigations on pandemic-related issues. Separately, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a special committee to conduct additional…
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Past as Prologue: The Wave of Investigations to Follow the Pandemic Recovery and Actions that Companies Can Take Now to Prepare
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…
Continue Reading Past as Prologue: The Wave of Investigations to Follow the Pandemic Recovery and Actions that Companies Can Take Now to Prepare