Demers said the Department was moving “from treating FARA as an administrative obligation and regulatory obligation to one that is increasingly an enforcement priority.” John C. Demers, as quoted in contemporaneous FARA coverage, March 2019
Documented In March 2019, Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers told an American Bar Association white-collar conference that FARA was becoming an enforcement priority. Contemporaneous write-ups — Covington’s March 10, 2019, client alert; the New York Times, March 6, 2019; Talking Points Memo — said Demers named Van Grack to lead the revamped FARA effort. The March 10 Covington post identifies him as a deputy chief in the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section who had spent most of the prior 18 months on the Special Counsel detail.
Exact start and end dates were not pinned to a standalone DOJ press release in this file. His May 7, 2020, Flynn withdrawal is signed “Chief, FARA Unit, National Security Division.” Morrison Foerster’s public bio, checked August 22, 2026, still lists “National Security Division, Chief, Foreign Agents Registration Act Unit.”
Putting the Flynn prosecutor over FARA after FARA featured in the Flynn case is a documented sequence. It is not a finding that every later FARA matter was a continuation of Crossfire Razor.