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☆ Justice Department Policy Seeks to Spread the Pain of Corporate Fines
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Dylan Tokar | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

The Justice Department is looking to hit lawbreaking corporate executives where it hurts: their paychecks. “Our goal is simple: to shift the burden of corporate wrongdoing away from shareholders, who frequently play no role in misconduct, onto those directly responsible,” Ms. Monaco said. PREVIEWThe use of executive compensation in the fight against corporate crime was first floated by Ms. Monaco in a speech last year. Companies that seek to recoup pay from such employees will be able to deduct it from their own criminal penalties, Ms. Monaco said. Further details about the new policy will be released on Friday, Ms. Monaco said.

☆ Justice Department Hiring Dozens of New Prosecutors to Enforce Russian Sanctions
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Dylan Tokar | Ian Talley | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +5 min

The new prosecutors will work with corporations to investigate sanctions and export control evasion, and also bring criminal charges against companies when they commit violations, he said. Some of the additional prosecutors are new hires, while some are being reallocated from different sections, according to officials. The U.A.E.’s enforcement of sanctions differs between the emirates, officials say, as the separate governments treat the sanctions with varying degrees of compliance. For their part, Justice Department officials have pointed to a growing nexus between their work on corporate crime and national security. In addition to hiring more prosecutors, Mr. Olsen said the counterintelligence section would also hire a lawyer to advise on investigations involving corporations.

☆ DOJ launches new effort to target corporate sanctions evasion
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Hannah Rabinowitz | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +2 min

CNN —Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco announced a new effort by the Justice Department on Thursday to target corporate sanctions evasion and other financial crimes that implicate national security. “To address the increasing intersection of corporate crime and national security, the Department is today announcing significant restructuring and resource commitments within the National Security Division,” Monaco at the American Bar Association National Institute on White Collar Crime Thursday. “Companies are on the front lines of today’s geopolitical and national security challenges,” she said. “Increasingly, corporate criminal investigations carry profound national security implications.”As part of that effort, Monaco said, the Justice Department’s National Security Division will hire more than 25 new prosecutors to investigate “sanctions evasion, export control violations, and similar economic crimes.” Monaco said. The Justice Department has brought several sanctions violations cases in the past year.

☆ Justice Department Says Google Destroyed Evidence Related to Antitrust Lawsuit
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Dave Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A Google spokeswoman said the company disputes the Justice Department’s allegations. WASHINGTON—The Justice Department said Google destroyed written records needed for an antitrust lawsuit that focuses on how the company preserved its dominance in internet search. The government asked a federal judge Thursday to sanction Google for its past practice of setting employee chats to auto-delete, despite the company having told the court it would preserve records required for litigation. Google employees routinely discussed “substantive and sensitive business” using an instant-messaging product that was set to delete chats after 24 hours, the Justice Department said.

☆ U.S. Launches ‘Strike Force’ to Keep Disruptive Tech Away From Adversaries
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-17 | by ( Dylan Tokar | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

Export controls are a set of regulations that restrict the sale of technologies with both commercial and military uses. They are administered by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which can bring civil penalties against companies that allow such “dual use” items to fall into the wrong hands. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security last year said it was making several changes to give its rules sharper teeth. “Our goal is simple but essential: to strike back against adversaries trying to siphon our best technology,” Ms. Monaco said. The committee is also turning its gaze from inbound investment in physical assets to sensitive data and digital innovations that could be used to pose data and cybersecurity risks, she said.

☆ Justice Department to Increase Scrutiny of Technology Exports, Investments
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-16 | by ( Dylan Tokar | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

A senior Justice Department official on Thursday said the agency would intensify its efforts to block foreign adversaries such as China and Russia from obtaining sensitive data and technologies, including by launching a new partnership with the U.S. Commerce Department. Export controls are a set of regulations that restrict the sale of technologies with both commercial and military uses. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security last year said it was making several changes to give its rules sharper teeth. “Our goal is simple but essential: to strike back against adversaries trying to siphon our best technology,” Ms. Monaco said. Although many of the Justice Department’s export controls cases in recent years have focused on individuals, prosecutors in 2021 fined German software company SAP SE for violating export regulations by providing millions of dollars in software to Iran.

☆ The Paradox of Prosecuting Domestic Terrorism
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( James Verini | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +52 min

The preventive approach to domestic terrorism goes back even further than the 1990s and it begins with the basic police work and surveillance of the joint terrorism task forces. In fact, there is no section of the U.S. Criminal Code that criminalizes domestic terrorism as such. The absence of clear law around domestic terrorism, and the imperatives of prevention, mean that investigators and prosecutors who work domestic terrorism cases must focus on more common charges: weapons violations, illegal drug possession, burglary, aiding and abetting and so forth. But this was not enough to overrule the fear of domestic terrorism that was gripping the nation and that hung in the courtroom. It reflected the legal paradoxes of the case and domestic terrorism law in general or, maybe more accurately, the absence of it.

☆ DOJ Suit to Break Up Google Was Years in the Making for Antitrust Chief
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-29 | by ( Dave Michaels | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

WASHINGTON— Jonathan Kanter has been one of Google’s main legal foes for nearly 15 years. Last week, as the nation’s top antitrust cop, he delivered a threat to break up the internet company. Mr. Kanter, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for antitrust, filed a lawsuit alleging that Google is an illegal monopolist in the market for brokering ads on the internet. Some of the complaints trace back to early 2000s, when Mr. Kanter started questioning Google’s role in the digital economy on behalf of his then-legal clients, including Microsoft Corp.

On other pages, they said he memorialized in writing some of his experiences or thoughts as vice president at the time. The number of notebooks Biden kept is large, according to the person familiar with the investigation, but they did not know the precise number. Trump and Biden’s possession of classified documents is the subject of separate special counsel investigations. Attorney General Merrick Garland has so far not named a special counsel to investigate Pence’s handling of classified documents. On Friday, Pence apologized for having classified documents in his possession and said he takes full responsibility for it.

☆ How Google’s long period of online dominance could end
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( Brian Fung | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

This week, the Justice Department accused Google of running an illegal monopoly in its online advertising business and called for parts of it to be broken up. In the meantime, two other thorny issues are poised to determine Google’s future on a potentially shorter timeframe: The rise of generative artificial intelligence and what appears to be an accelerating decline in Google’s online ad marketshare. An ad sales machine under pressureAll this has taken place against the backdrop of what seems to be an extended, multi-year decline in Google’s online advertising marketshare. One-off factors like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as fears of a looming recession, have broadly affected the online advertising industry. Whatever the cause, Google’s advertising business, which is still massive, seems to face growing headwinds.

The Justice Department is seeking the breakup of Google’s business brokering digital advertising across much of the internet, a major expansion of the legal challenges the company faces to its business in the U.S. and abroad. A lawsuit filed Tuesday, the Justice Department’s second against the Alphabet Inc. unit following one filed in 2020, alleges that Google abuses its role as one of the largest brokers, suppliers and online auctioneers of ads placed on websites and mobile applications. The filing promises a protracted court battle with wide-ranging implications for the digital-advertising industry.

☆ More Classified Documents Found at President Biden’s Delaware Home
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Annie Linskey | Sadie Gurman | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The Justice Department’s search of President Biden’s home in Delaware lasted about 12 hours, according to Mr. Biden’s personal attorney. WASHINGTON—A Justice Department search of President Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., Friday prompted authorities to take possession of six additional documents with classified markings and some related materials, according a new statement by Mr. Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer. The search of Mr. Biden’s home lasted about 12 hours and “covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home,” Mr. Bauer said in the statement. The six items taken included some papers from Mr. Biden’s tenure in the U.S. Senate, where he served for 36 years. Others came from his time as vice president.

The Justice Department is investigating conduct at the Abbott Laboratories infant-formula plant in Sturgis, Mich., that led to its shutdown last year and worsened a nationwide formula shortage, people familiar with the matter said. Attorneys with the Justice Department’s consumer-protection branch are conducting the criminal investigation, the people said.

☆ The Justice Department’s Double Standards on Classified Documents
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Kimberley A. Strassel | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +1 min

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the editorial board for The Wall Street Journal. She writes editorials, as well as the weekly Potomac Watch political column, from her base in Alaska. Ms. Strassel joined Dow Jones & Co. in 1994, working in the news department of The Wall Street Journal Europe in Brussels, and then in London. She moved to New York in 1999 and soon thereafter joined the Journal's editorial page, working as a features editor, and then as an editorial writer. An Oregon native, Ms. Strassel earned a bachelor's degree in Public Policy and International Affairs from Princeton University.

Aides previously found another batch of classified documents at his residence, and at a Washington think tank where he had an office after his time as vice president in the Obama administration. The White House has largely been on the defensive since the initial revelations that the documents had been found. The department is separately probing Trump's handling of highly sensitive classified documents that he retained at his Florida resort after leaving the White House in January 2021. Sams said the White House had received a "few letters" from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee on the issue, is reviewing them and will make a determination about its response in due course. The White House reiterated on Tuesday Biden's commitment to cooperating with the Justice Department’s investigation.

☆ Two Presidents, Two Special Counsels
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-13 | by ( The Editorial Board | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Hear that quacking sound from Washington? It’s Attorney General Merrick Garland ’s latest duck. Faced with news that classified documents were recently found not only in a private office of President Biden’s but also his Delaware home, including in the garage, Mr. Garland on Thursday named another special counsel. “I strongly believe that the normal processes of this department can handle all investigations with integrity,” Mr. Garland said. “But under the regulations, the extraordinary circumstances here require the appointment of a special counsel.” He claimed this would make clear the Justice Department’s “commitment to both independence and accountability.” The new special counsel is Robert Hur , who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist before starting a career as a federal prosecutor.

☆ City National Bank to pay $31M redlining settlement, DOJ’s largest ever
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-12 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

The Justice Department accused Los Angeles-based City National Bank on Thursday of discrimination by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Black and Latino communities, requiring the bank to pay more than $31 million in the largest redlining settlement in department history. City National is the latest bank in the past several years to be found systematically avoiding lending to racial and ethnic minorities, a practice that the Biden administration has set up its own task force to combat. The Justice Department says that between 2017 and 2020, City National avoided marketing and underwriting mortgages in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Other banks operating in those neighborhoods received six times the number of mortgage applications that City National did, according to federal officials. The settlement with City National is the largest settlement with the Justice Department.

☆ Justice Department Probes to Come Under Congressional Investigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-10 | by ( C. Ryan Barber | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Rep. Jim Jordan is expected to lead the subcommittee while also serving as chair of the Judiciary Committee itself. WASHINGTON—House Republicans are preparing for an expansive investigation into federal law enforcement, setting the stage for standoffs with the Biden administration over access to information about some of the Justice Department’s continuing criminal inquiries, including its scrutiny of former President Donald Trump. Days after ending a drawn-out speaker election, House lawmakers are expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on a resolution creating a panel within the Judiciary Committee focused on what Republicans have termed the “weaponization of the federal government.” Rep. Jim Jordan , an Ohio Republican and close ally of Mr. Trump, is expected to lead the subcommittee while also serving as chair of the Judiciary Committee itself.

☆ GOP Rep. Scott Perry, subject of Jan. 6 probes, declines to recuse himself from looking into those investigations
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-08 | by ( Https | Media-Cldnry.S-Nbcnews.Com Image Upload Newscms Summer-Concepcion-Byline-Jm.Jpg | Summer Concepcion | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +3 min

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., pushed back Sunday when asked whether he would recuse himself from any House GOP investigation of federal probes into the events surrounding the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, despite being a subject of those investigations. Everybody in America is innocent until proven guilty,” Perry said in an interview on ABC's "This Week" with host George Stephanopoulos. Perry was pressed on whether any potential involvement in a new committee would pose a conflict of interest given that he was among those being investigated. “So, should everybody in Congress that disagrees with somebody be barred from doing the oversight and investigative powers that Congress has? Perry also came under scrutiny by the Jan. 6 committee, which referred him and three other House Republicans, including McCarthy, to the House Ethics Committee for defying the panel's subpoenas.

☆ Judge Orders Cruise Companies to Pay More Than $436 Million for Docking at Seized Terminal in Cuba
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-07 | by ( Mengqi Sun | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +3 min

Four major cruise lines say they will appeal a recent ruling that would force them to pay roughly $436 million in total damages to a company that owned a port terminal in Havana prior to the Cuban Revolution. The ruling in favor of Havana Docks Corp., owner of the Havana Cruise Port Terminal before the Cuban revolution, marked an important milestone for Cuban-Americans seeking compensation for property confiscated by the Castro regime. Mickael Behn, a descendant of the original owners of Havana Docks. The verdict in favor of Havana Docks is the first from a district court, the data shows. The ruling comes after the judge in the case, Beth Bloom, signaled last March that she agreed that the use of the Cuban port constituted trafficking in confiscated property owned by Havana Docks.

☆ The feds say they're in for the long haul on Jan. 6 investigation
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Ryan J. Reilly | Ryan J. Reilly Is A Justice Reporter For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +16 min

But the federal investigation has been strained, spread thin and strapped for resources as a sometimes less-than-agile federal bureaucracy adapts to the overwhelming scope of the caseload. While the FBI arrested more than 700 defendants in the first year of the investigation, it arrested about 200 in the second. Online sleuths have done their best to bust those myths, too. “That was it.”The Sedition Hunters website features images of people online sleuths say took part in the Jan. 6 attack, including many (in blue) who have been identified. Some charging documents in Jan. 6 cases make the role that online sleuths played clear.

The disharmony between the Justice Department’s case and the Biden administration’s gun safety efforts as well as the fears and pressure that a lost appeal could damage gun safety laws are at the crux of the survivors' acrimony. Why are you doing all this (gun reform) and yet you’re fighting it over here?’” said Juan “Gunny” Macias, a survivor who was shot numerous times in the attack and viewed the president’s gun safety priorities as dissonant with the potential Justice Department appeal. The Justice Department has received two extensions to file its appeal brief, now due next week, and is unlikely to receive another one. “I assume the Justice Department is taking this position because the lawyers are looking for the best legal avenues that will give them the outcome they want,” he said. That’s what creates problems like the ones we’re facing.”For fear of what an appeal could mean for U.S. gun laws, a coalition of 37 gun safety organizations sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland in October about the Justice Department’s intention to appeal.

☆ AmerisourceBergen Hit With Federal Lawsuit Over Opioid Crisis
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-29 | by ( Jan Wolfe | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

AmerisourceBergen said the Justice Department’s complaint focused on five pharmacies ‘cherry picked’ out of the tens of thousands it supplies. WASHINGTON—The Justice Department has sued AmerisourceBergen Corp., alleging the large drug distributor contributed to the prescription opioid epidemic by failing to report suspicious orders to law enforcement. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said during a news conference Thursday that AmerisourceBergen could face billions of dollars in civil penalties if found liable in the lawsuit, filed in federal court in Philadelphia.

☆ Justice Department Faces Accusations It Outsourced a Corporate Investigation in Bribery Case
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-22 | by ( Dylan Tokar | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +7 min

PREVIEWThe case against Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz was presented as a model for the Justice Department’s approach to corporate crime when it was announced in 2019. The department’s investigation into Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz was prompted by one such tipoff. The Deutsche Bank ruling was heavily cited in the motions filed by Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz. Since Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz launched their legal challenge, the Justice Department has doubled down on its bid to recruit companies as corporate crime watchdogs. The judge earlier in December heard oral arguments by both sides related to the executives’ motions.

☆ Informant warned FBI weeks before Jan. 6 that the far-right saw Trump tweet as 'a call to arms'
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-21 | by ( Ryan J. Reilly | Ryan J. Reilly Is A Justice Reporter For Nbc News. | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

The email, which has not been previously reported, warned that the Trump tweet was “gaining hold” on social media. The confidential human source has provided information that the FBI has used in Jan. 6 cases before. The FBI confidential source said that they had “put together hundreds of pages of reports over the two weeks proceeding Jan. 6” for the bureau leading up to the attack. Months after the attack, FBI Director Chris Wray created the position of intelligence analyst in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, giving an intelligence analyst a leadership title typically reserved for FBI special agents. They said they were in regular communication with the bureau in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.

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