the Bush reelection campaign in 2004, and Romney for President in 2008. Weber is chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy, a private, nonprofit organization designed to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. He is a senior fellow at the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, where he is co-director of the Policy Forum. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Law and Politics at the University of Minnesota Law School and the nonprofit America Abroad Media. Weber is a board member of several private-sector and nonprofit organizations, including ITT Educational Services, Department 56, and the Aspen Institute. He also serves on the board of The Council on Foreign Relations and co-chaired the Independent Task Force on U.S. Policy toward Reform in the Arab World with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In addition, Weber is a member of the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board. Weber was one of the Republicans who turned against the surprise Donald Trump candidacy, telling CNBC on August 3, 2016, "I can't imagine I'd remain a Republican if he becomes president." On August 17, 2016, the Associated Press reported that Mercury Public Affairs LLC, which Weber heads, had received $1.02 million from Paul Manafort's European Centre for a Modern Ukraine to lobby Congress to support pro-Russia Viktor Yanukovich during the Autumn 2012 Ukrainian elections and to block the release from prison of Yanukovich's rival, Julia Tymoshenko. For his lobbying Congress on behalf of pro-Russia entities, Weber received at least $700,000. Established in 2012, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine had been supported by Yanukovich's pro-Russia Party of Regions and continued to pay Mercury for lobbying until February 2014, when Yanukovich fled Ukraine for Russia after the Maidan revolution. From 2012 until February 2014 and directed by Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, Weber, who was the principal for Mercury's Ukraine-related lobbying portfolio beginning in 2012, acted as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and foreign political party, a felony offense under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), with a penalty of up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. On April 28, 2017, Mercury retroactively filed with FARA within the Justice Department that it had been hired by the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. Mercury had filed its lobbying efforts with Congress under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. Files