Transparency can expose foreign interference in our courts

In 2016, Chinese billionaire and real estate tycoon, Sun Guangxin, bought 130,000 acres of land in Val Verde County, Texas. This small ranching community of just 50,000 people is home to Laughlin Air Force Base, a training hub for military pilots.

The purchase raised questions around Sun’s motives — namely, why would someone with ties to the Chinese Communist Party want to buy such a large swath of land so close to a U.S. military installation.

The truth is part of a larger trend. Over the last decade, the total amount of U.S. land owned by Chinese investors has quintupled, now totaling 383,000 acres — an area roughly the size of Rhode Island.

Lawmakers have started taking note. In 2023, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, introduced the Farmland Security Act. The bill, which later became law, requires the United States Department of Agriculture to report and publish any and all foreign investments in U.S. farmland, informing Congress’ efforts to protect our land and our national security interests.

While this legislation is an important first step to safeguard American interests, land purchases are only one of many areas where greater transparency is needed to monitor foreign meddling in U.S. affairs.

As Congress keeps tabs on the threats posed by these acquisitions, it would be wise to also address the ways foreign adversaries are operating similarly with regard to our justice system. Litigation investing, a rapidly growing industry that is expected to reach more than$30 billion by 2028, allows investors — based anywhere in the world — to fund lawsuits in U.S. courts with the promise that they will reap a portion of any financial reward. While some investors may have good intentions, many are simply treating the legal system as a means to enrich themselves.

Investors are typically not required to disclose their involvement in court, making our legal system ripe for foreign interference. In the District of Delaware, one of the few jurisdictions that does require disclosure of investors, we learned that a Chinese firm was financing four intellectual property lawsuits against tech companies. Investigations by Bloomberg Law also uncovered that Putin’s billionaire allies have taken advantage of litigation investment to skirt American and British sanctions.

It’s clear greater transparency is needed so we can understand the full extent to which adversaries are present in our courtrooms. The litigation funders partner with lawyers who facilitate their litigation-rooted investments. Those lawyers have clients whose interests they are supposed to be protecting first and foremost. The presence of litigation funders necessarily calls into question why the litigation is being pursued, for whose benefit, and who is really making the decisions.

The U.S. Judicial Conference's Advisory Committee on Civil Rules recently agreed to study the impacts of a rule requiring litigation investment disclosure and legislation has previously been introduced in Congress, including by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, that would ban sovereign wealth funds and foreign governments from participating in litigation investing.

Now, Rep. Darrell Issa, has introduced the Litigation Transparency Act to require investment transparency for all civil cases in federal court, explaining that the “legislation targets serious and continuing abuses in our litigation system that distort our system of justice by obscuring public detection and exploiting loopholes in the law for financial gain.”

We should heed his warning. The Litigation Transparency Act offers a prudent layer of protection for our courts, predicated on the idea that equal justice under the law means just that. I hope that congressional leaders will bring this bill up for a vote without delay and send it to the president’s desk so that anyone engaged in funding litigation — foreign actors, included — are subject to scrutiny and deterred from tampering with our legal system. After all, a lack of transparency threatens to allow litigation to be pursued and controlled in ways entirely inconsistent with the fair and equitable ideals that our justice system seeks to ensure.

When it comes to protecting American interests from foreign adversaries, we must remain vigilant. It’s critical lawmakers do more to protect our courts from foreign meddling.

Mike Johanns served as U.S. secretary of agriculture from 2005 to 2007, as governor of Nebraska from 1999 to 2005 and as U.S. senator from 2009 to 2015.