Frelinghuysen is now one of Mexico’s foreign agents

Former House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Proctor Frelinghuysen has filed as a foreign agent for Mexico, Legistorm reported on Thursday.

His representation of Mexico’s Secretaria de Economia comes through Greenberg Traurig, the national law firm he joined in 2020 as a senior director in their Government Law & Policy practice.

Frelinghuysen didn’t seek re-election in 2018 after his likely Democratic opponent, Mikie Sherrill, raised more than $1.2 million by the end of 2017 and spooked him out of the race.  Frelinghuysen unexpectedly announced his retirement two weeks after Sherrill released her fundraising numbers.

The alliance with Greenberg Traurig allowed the 75-year-old Frelinghuysen, an heir to a Proctor Gamble fortune and a member of one of one of New Jersey’s oldest political families – his great-great-great-great-grandfather was a political ally of George Washington and served in the U.S. Senate in the 1790s – to monetize the 24 years he spent in Congress and 44 years he spent in public office.

According to the filing, Frelinghuysen will monitor activities of his former congressional colleagues and other U.S. government officials regarding the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement and “educate them on issues of importance to Economia and the U.S.- Mexican bilateral relationship.”