russiagate

Sam Patten is a member of our White Collar Support Group that meets on Zoom on Monday evenings.

---

We were honored to have Sam Patten as the July speaker in our White Collar Support Group Tuesday Speaker Series.

 

Information about our White Collar Support Group: http://prisonist.org

Sam Patten is a communications strategist, author of the forthcoming memoir Dangerous Company: The Misadventures of a ‘Foreign Agent,’ long-time political operative in the U.S. and globally, and a felon re-entering society after being convicted in a high-profile investigation of Russian meddling in U.S. elections.

The ninth American to be convicted of failing to register under the Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938, Patten cooperated with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s 2018-19 probe and pleaded guilty to the lobbying charge, for which he was sentenced to three years probation. Prior to this, Sam worked as an advisor to political leaders in other countries, including Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, the DR Congo and many others. It was his work for a Ukrainian political party that landed him in the crosshairs of U.S. investigators.

During the second administration of George W. Bush, Sam served as a senior advisor to the undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs. He’d also worked extensively in the field for the International Republican Institute (IRI) as the democracy group’s country director in Russia (2001-4) and political director in Iraq (2004-5). He also ran Freedom House’s Eurasian programs from 2009-11, with a focus on Central Asia. In 2000, Sam coordinated Bush’s campaign in Maine, where he had been working for U.S. Senator Susan Collins and U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe.
Growing up on the coast of Maine, Sam has — like sea captains who lived there a centuries ago — long been fascinated with the lands beyond America’s shores.

In college, he studied the Soviet Union just as it was falling apart, and in the early 1990s, he found a way to Kazakhstan, where he worked as a teacher and advisor to energy companies. Both Sam’s parents are the children of foreign service officers, and both are direct descendants of John Jay, America’s first minister of foreign affairs and chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Upon completing his sentence in the Washington, DC area, Sam returned to Maine, where he lives with his dog, Pepper. He volunteers to teach in state prisons, and is a justice ambassador for Prison Fellowship.

---

About Dangerous Company: The Misadventures of a “Foreign Agent”:

Pulsing with action from the first page to the last, Dangerous Company is a memoir that reads like a thriller. Sam Patten left U.S. politics behind when he went overseas to promote democracy in the first administration of George W. Bush. Then he became an advisor to political leaders in countries like Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, the Congo, Thailand and Mexico.
When Washington went on the hunt for anyone who could have helped the Russians elect Donald Trump as U.S. president, Patten was a “usual suspect.” Following charges referred by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, he was convicted in 2018 of failing to register as foreign agent under a seldom-enforced 1938 statute.

Patten gives us front row seats to Russia during Vladimir Putin’s early years, the newly independent states where “color revolutions” ushered in both democratic change and more corruption, and the inside of a legal hurricane that consumed the administration of Donald Trump.
But beyond the action, this is a story of an America that may no longer exist. Patten’s adventures seem to be chasing the twilight of the American Century – from World War I to the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The time when the United States sought to influence powers around the world has faded into the present moment, where there is more discussion about which countries are influencing us.
Dangerous Company: Misadventures of a ‘Foreign Agent’ is a fast-paced, colorful and at times insightful account of an American abroad and at home over the past quarter century.

To reach Sam Patten: w.s.patten@gmail.com
To order Sam’s book: http://dangerouscompanybook.com/
White Collar Week June ’23 Newsletter: https://conta.cc/3BZQIMR
Sponsored by Progressive Prison Ministries, Inc.: https://prisonist.org
Sponsored by GrantLaw, PLLC: https://grantlaw.com

---