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Brendan Parets

Brendan Parets helps organizations resolve their most sensitive problems involving legal, political, and public relations challenges. He deploys his experiences in a Senate leadership office, as the chief legal officer for a presidential campaign, and representing organizations in Department of Justice and administrative investigations and in civil litigation to provide holistic advice that reflects business and political imperatives.

Brendan represents corporations and individuals facing congressional and administrative investigations. He also assists organizations with policy matters before Congress and counsels corporations, non-profit entities, and political committees on compliance with federal and state campaign finance laws.

Brendan rejoined Covington after serving as Chief Counsel to Senator Martha McSally (R-AZ), where he oversaw Senator McSally’s work on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Brendan also managed judiciary, commerce, telecommunications, tax, and trade issues for Senator McSally. He worked closely with Senate leadership, committees of jurisdiction, and executive branch agencies to achieve bipartisan compromise on judicial nominations, reform of Department of Homeland Security grant programs, and trade disputes.

He previously served as Chief Counsel to Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Policy Counsel to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, a Senate leadership office chaired at the time by Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), and as Chief Counsel to Senator Lindsey Graham’s presidential campaign.

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 looked at recent trends in

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 rules of the Senate, the

As both presidential and down-ticket candidates gear up for post-election recounts and related litigation in several states, they and their political parties will be raising new funds to finance these efforts. As with campaign contributions made before the election, there are a variety of rules that apply to contributions to support post-election disputes.

The Federal

While federal campaign finance enforcement priorities can and do shift, prosecutions of “conduit contributions” or “straw donors” have remained steady over the years.  Unlike most of federal campaign finance law, the law around straw donors is stable and well developed, and straw donor prosecutions tend to be straightforward.  The recent media coverage surrounding allegations that

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 which

An FEC enforcement action recently made public may be of interest to organizations that use members’ dues for political activities.  In a complaint to the FEC, a Massachusetts realtor claimed the National Association of Realtors and its state and local affiliates were forcing her into paying for their political activities.   The realtor’s local affiliate

The Supreme Court’s latest major campaign finance decision, McCutcheon v. FEC, “does not involve” a challenge to current limits on contributions to political party committees and PACs, which the Court “previously upheld as serving the permissible objective of combatting corruption.”  But it nonetheless provides fodder for those who would challenge party and PAC limits.