President Trump on Monday ordered a pause in the enforcement of a federal law aimed at curbing corruption in multinational companies, saying it creates an uneven playing field for American firms.
The law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for companies that operate in the United States to pay foreign government officials to secure business deals. Though the law was enacted in 1977, federal authorities have more heavily enforced it since around 2005, cracking down on bribery, especially in countries where it is a common business practice.
Mr. Trump has objected to the law, which has led to charges and huge fines against some of the world’s largest companies. In November, U.S. prosecutors accused Gautam Adani, the Indian tycoon, of bribing Indian officials and charged him with fraud. His company has called those claims “baseless.”
Companies that have paid fines under the act include the engineering conglomerate Siemens and the Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson. In 2020, Goldman Sachs agreed to pay more than $2.9 billion to resolve charges that employees at its Malaysian subsidiary had paid $1 billion in bribes to foreign officials.
The law has been “abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” Mr. Trump’s executive order on Monday said, adding that its enforcement was impeding foreign policy objectives.
The order bars federal authorities from starting any new investigations under the act or enforcing new actions for 180 days. The administration will also review existing investigations launched under the act, it said, to “restore proper bounds” on the law.
It also directs the attorney general to issue new guidance on how to enforce the act “that promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources.”…
Category Archives: bribery
“Paramount in Settlement Talks With Trump Over ’60 Minutes’ Lawsuit” (Political Wire: Trump’s Lawsuit Settlements Look a Lot Like Bribery)
When Donald J. Trump sued CBS for $10 billion days before the 2024 election, accusing the company of deceptively editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, many legal experts dismissed the litigation as a far-fetched attempt to punish an out-of-favor news outlet.
Now Mr. Trump is back in the White House, and many executives at CBS’s parent company, Paramount, believe that settling the lawsuit would increase the odds that the Trump administration does not block or delay their planned multibillion-dollar merger with another company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
Settlement discussions between representatives of Paramount and Mr. Trump are now underway, according to three people with knowledge of the talks. There is no assurance, though, that they will result in a deal, and it is unclear what the terms of any such deal might include.
Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, strongly supports the effort to settle, according to two people with knowledge of her thinking. Ms. Redstone stands to clear billions of dollars on the sale of Paramount, the media empire founded by her father Sumner Redstone, in a deal with Skydance, an entertainment company backed by the billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David.
A settlement would be an extraordinary concession by a major U.S. media company to a sitting president, especially in a case in which there is no evidence that the network got facts wrong or damaged the plaintiff’s reputation.
It could also cause an uproar within CBS News and among the “60 Minutes” staff. Journalists at the network have expressed deep concern about the notion of their parent company settling litigation that they consider tantamount to a politician’s standard-issue gripes about a news organization’s editorial judgment, according to several people familiar with internal discussions….
Donald Trump may have found a new way to funnel cash into his pockets while serving as president—by turning litigation into a lucrative business model.
It started with ABC News, which agreed to settle a defamation lawsuit by paying $15 million to Trump’s future foundation and another $1 million to cover his legal fees.
Then Meta followed suit, forking over $25 million to Trump’s presidential library to resolve a 2021 lawsuit he filed against the company.
Now, Paramount—the parent company of CBS—is reportedly negotiating a settlement in a lawsuit Trump brought over what he claims was a “deceptively edited” 60 Minutes interview.
There are also reports that X wants to settle a lawsuit Trump brought when the social network was still called Twitter.
The pattern raises an obvious question: Has Trump effectively created a legal mechanism to extract money from corporations under the guise of litigation?
If these settlements serve as a backdoor way for companies to curry favor with the president, they look an awful lot like bribery—except with the thin veneer of legality….
“Justice Dept. Is Said to Discuss Dropping Case Against Eric Adams”
Senior Justice Department officials under President Trump have held discussions with federal prosecutors in Manhattan about the possibility of dropping their corruption case against Mayor Eric Adams of New York, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
The officials have also spoken to Mr. Adams’s defense team since Mr. Trump took office, the people said. The defense team is led by Alex Spiro, who is also the personal lawyer for Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of the president’s closest advisers.
Mr. Trump has the power to pardon Mr. Adams, who as New York City’s mayor could aid his plans for mass deportations. In December, Mr. Trump said that the mayor had been treated “pretty unfairly” by prosecutors and suggested he was considering issuing a pardon.
But if prosecutors were to dismiss the case entirely, it could allow Mr. Adams to insist on his innocence to voters as he seeks another term as mayor, while allowing Mr. Trump to avoid the appearance of a pardon that many might view as unwarranted.
“Former US Sen. Bob Menendez gets 11 years in prison for taking bribes and acting as agent of Egypt” (and Appears to Be Angling for a Trump Pardon)
Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years in prison for accepting bribes of gold and cash and acting as an agent of Egypt — crimes his lawyer said he’s been mocked for as “Gold Bar Bob.”
The judge delivered the sentence after Menendez tearfully addressed the court, saying he’d lost everything he cared about, except his family. The Democrat resigned last year after becoming one of only a handful of U.S. senators ever convicted while in office.
“You were successful, powerful, you stood at the apex of our political system,” U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein told Menendez in a packed Manhattan courtroom. ”Somewhere along the way, and I don’t know when it was, you lost your way and working for the public good became working for your good.”
The ex-senator was convicted of selling his once-considerable clout for bribes worth a fortune. FBI agents who searched his house found $480,000, some of it stuffed inside boots and pockets of clothing, and gold bars worth an estimated $150,000.
If you can’t skip to the end, here’s how he begged for a pardon: “President Trump was right. This process is political, and it’s corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores the integrity to the system.”
“How prosecutors’ evidence mistakes could let Menendez walk away from corruption charges”
Five months after a jury convicted Sen. Bob Menendez of corruption-related charges that ended his political career, federal prosecutors have admitted to a series of errors that could upend the verdicts.
The missteps have handed Menendez’s attorneys just the kind of opening they’d been looking for, and they have already requested a new trial. If they get their way, Menendez could beat federal charges once again — a remarkable prospect given the stash of gold bars and piles of cash used as evidence against him….
In several surprise legal filings since mid-November, prosecutors from the Southern District of New York revealed they had inadvertently given the jury access to evidence a judge ruled jurors should not see.
The evidence at issue was loaded onto a laptop the jury was given during its deliberations. Prosecutors have said it’s “vanishingly unlikely” and unreasonable to think any juror actually poured through all the documents on the laptop and came across the tainted material, which amounts to scraps of unredacted text messages amid 3,000 often lengthy documents.
The biggest problem for prosecutors is that some of the material was evidence that U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein ruled could not be shown to jurors without treading on a form of immunity given to members of Congress by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause.
Speech or debate privileges are mostly impenetrable in investigations relating to the official duties of lawmakers, their aides or other congressional officials.
“If you breach it, the only remedy is to dismiss the indictment or give this guy a new trial,” said Stan Brand, a former counsel to the House of Representatives who argued speech or debate issues before the Supreme Court….
“Prosecutors say they mistakenly gave jurors access to evidence in Menendez case”
Jurors in former Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial had access to evidence they should not have seen, federal prosecutors disclosed Wednesday in a surprise legal filing.
During Menendez’s two-month corruption trial, a federal judge ruled that certain evidence could not be shown to jurors without treading on a form of immunity given to members of Congress.
But some of that evidence was inadvertently loaded without redactions onto a laptop that jurors were given for their few days of deliberations. Menendez resigned this summer after jurors found him guilty of bribery, acting as a foreign agent, obstruction of justice, extortion and conspiring to commit those crimes.
Federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York said Wednesday that portions of the exhibits at issue would have been “meaningless and impenetrable” if a juror had seen them. One of the things that should have been redacted was a text message with a web address to a CNN article and the CNN logo, for instance, both of which would only have been found amid a lengthy spreadsheet-like exhibit summarizing the government’s evidence in the case.
Plus, prosecutors said, it’s “vanishingly unlikely” that any of the 12 jurors actually saw the evidence anyway. The jury’s laptop contained some 3,000 exhibits, many of them similarly lengthy and dense…
The 11-page letter to District Court Judge Sidney Stein argues even if a juror had seen the evidence, “no action need be taken in light of the error.” Prosecutors cited other court cases to support that argument and also noted that defense attorneys could have caught the error before jury deliberations began but did not.
“Torrent of senators call for Menendez to resign — and one floats expulsion”
Politico, on the fallout from Senator Menendez’s conviction yesterday on charges of bribery and acting as a foreign agent:
After decades in public service, the longtime New Jersey Democrat is left with a pending sentence and a doomed reelection bid. Shortly after a jury read off the verdict that he was guilty on all counts, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ended months of resistance and called on Menendez to resign, joining more than half of Senate Democrats who have already done so. And at least one of Democratic senator [Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.)] is openly considering expulsion.
Breaking: Sen. Menendez Convicted of Bribery and Acting as Foreign Agent
AP:
U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted on Tuesday on all counts at his corruption trial, including accepting bribes of gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen and acting as a foreign agent for the Egyptian government.
Prosecutors said the Democrat abused the power of his office to protect allies from criminal investigations and enrich associates, including his wife, through acts that included meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials and helping that country access millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.
“Former Utah attorney general candidate charged with bribery after allegedly offering job to opponent”
Frank Mylar was charged with one count of bribery in elections in connection with soliciting fellow Republican Trent Christensen’s endorsement in exchange for a job in his office if he were elected.
A detective in Murray, Utah, said in a court filing Tuesday that Christensen told the local police department in May that Mylar had sent him a text message asking for his endorsement ahead of the state’s Republican nominating convention on April 27….
“If you could endorse me before the convention I would definitely include you in my office. Think about it for a few days,” Mylar wrote, according to prosecutors.
Public Corruption and Presidential Immunity
WaPo:
The Supreme Court decision on former president Donald Trump’s claims of presidential immunity has put new limits on future prosecutors — constraints that legal experts see as the latest and most consequential result of a long-running disagreement between conservative justices and the Justice Department over how to investigate public corruption. . . .
Many legal experts see the historic ruling [in Trump v. United States] as the latest salvo from conservative Supreme Court justices who have long believed that federal prosecutors often go too far in the pursuit of alleged wrongdoing by elected officials. The decision will significantly limit what evidence prosecutors may present in Trump’s D.C. case, and is already prompting new challenges to his felony conviction in New York and his classified documents indictment in Florida. It will probably lead to fresh motions to dismiss or limit the state counts he faces in Georgia for alleged election interference, as well.
“How a Last-Ditch Effort to Save Menendez From Prosecution Backfired”
NYT reports on the backstory behind the trial, in which closing arguments continue today:
Last September, a prominent white-collar defense lawyer met with federal prosecutors in Manhattan in a last-ditch effort to stave off an indictment against his client. . . .
Less than two weeks later, prosecutors announced an indictment charging the senator and his wife, Nadine Menendez, with conspiring to accept thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for political favors. . . .
Tatiana R. Martins, a former chief of the Southern District’s public corruption unit and now in private practice, said the decision to charge Mr. Menendez, 70 [was] . . . “kind of a warning shot to the white-collar bar to weigh carefully the decision to make any factual representation to the government when they are close to indicting.”
Supreme Court on 6-3 Vote Splitting Conservative and Liberal Justices Makes It Easy to Give Gifts to State and Local Officials to Thank Them for Their Official Acts; Conservative Majority Relies on Legislative History in Part
I’ve been following Snyder v. United States closely, not only because I am interested in bribery and illegal gratuities law but also because I based my Legislation course final exam on the case.
To me, it presents a fascinating and close question, and I’m not sure how I would have voted had I been asked what to do. Both the text and legislative history arguments can point in either direction. It is notable, however, that the conservative majority that usually rejects legislative history as unreliable relies on legislative history here to describe the purpose of an amendment to the statute. Majority opn. at 4-5 (“In 1986, Congress amended §666 and thereby avoided the law’s “possible application to acceptable commercial and business practices.” H. R. Rep. No 99–797, p. 30 (1986); see 100 Stat. 3612–3613.”). See also dissent at The House Report the majority quotes as explicating §666 confirms that §666 was meant to track §215—not §201(b), as the majority claims. See H. R. Rep. No. 99–797, at 30, n. 9.”).
How did THIS get by the textualists on the Court (including J. Kavanaugh, who wrote the decision)?
On the merits, this case is likely to increase state and local graft on the margins. Those who engage in outright bribery and take federal funds can still be prosecuted for bribery under section 666. But those who take illegal gratuities and avoid the magic words of a quid pro quo are more likely to be off the hook. Putting this case together with other recent ones, like McDonnell, it’s becoming harder and harder for federal prosecutors to pursue graft at the state and local level.
“Judge rules Menendez’s prosecutors can’t show ‘critical’ evidence”
Jurors in Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption case cannot see evidence prosecutors have called “critical” to part of their case, a federal judge ruled Friday.
The decision puts a hole in prosecutors’ ability to prove their central claim: that the New Jersey Democrat took bribes to help send billions of dollars of American military aid to Egypt.
U.S. District Court Judge Sidney Stein said prosecutors could not use evidence they hoped would show Egyptian officials were “frantic about not getting their money’s worth,” despite bribes Menendez allegedly took to help the country access billions of dollars of American military aid and arms.
Stein found the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause does not allow prosecutors to show jurors the evidence. The clause grants members of Congress a form of immunity that is mostly impenetrable in investigations relating to the official duties of lawmakers, their aides or other congressional officials.
Coincidentally, Stein based his order on a 1979 Supreme Court case about another New Jersey Democrat accused of corruption. In that case, the high court ruled the speech or debate clause barred prosecutors from introducing certain evidence against Rep. Henry Helstoski, who had been accused of accepting bribes.
“Henry Cuellar Indicted Over Bribery Scheme”
Missed this story (and the Illinois one Derek flags) while traveling:
Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat in a crucial swing district, and his wife were charged with participating in a yearslong $600,000 bribery scheme involving Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Houston on Friday.
The accusations against Mr. Cuellar, 68, and his wife Imelda, 67, center on allegations of bribery and money laundering in connection with their efforts on behalf of an oil and gas company owned by Azerbaijan’s leaders as well as an unnamed bank based in Mexico City, according to the 54-page complaint.
Mr. Cuellar, a Laredo native first elected in 2004, is also accused of acting as an agent of a foreign entity while a U.S. government official — by delivering a speech favoring Azerbaijan in Congress and inserting provisions into aid bills to benefit those who were paying bribes to his family.
I wonder how a Speech or Debate Clause defense might figure into claims based on delivering a speech in Congress.