Days after Kash Patel fielded questions about his nomination as the director of the FBI, an ethics disclosure showed that he had earned at least $5,000 consulting for the government of Qatar.

That document highlighted the host of potential conflicts of interest Patel brings to the job through his past clients, ranging from Qatar to a Russian filmmaker with ties to the Kremlin to the Chinese clothes retailer Shein.

It also revealed the limits of a U.S. law meant to expose foreign influence campaigns: Some Trump administration appointees, including Patel, didn’t bother registering their work for foreign clients under the law.

Another Trump nominee, former New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, disclosed his work for a venture capital firm founded by a Qatari royal, but only during the confirmation process to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics say the law, called the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, is shot through with loopholes that allow foreign powers to evade disclosing the full extent of their spending in Washington.

“It just looks like an administration that is sending a flashing neon sign saying that ‘foreign influence is welcome here.’”

The loopholes are growing even bigger under Donald Trump. New Attorney General Pam Bondi, who herself previously registered as a lobbyist for Qatar, issued a memo earlier last week disbanding the Justice Department’s foreign influence task force and limiting the scope of prosecutions under the act.

“You add all this up, and it just looks like an administration that is sending a flashing neon sign saying that ‘foreign influence is welcome here,’” said Ben Freeman, director of the democratizing foreign policy program at the Quincy Institute.

Freeman’s nonprofit has been critical of the role of foreign money in Washington, releasing a report last month documenting how much flows to ostensibly independent think tanks from countries such as the United Arab........

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