11th Circ. Scrutinizes Qui Tam History In FCA Challenge

By Dan McKay

The Eleventh Circuit Friday weighed both the history of whistleblower laws going back to the nation's founding and recent U.S. Supreme Court commentary on qui tam litigation in a closely watched challenge to the False Claims Act.

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Dems Demand Release Of 2nd Jack Smith Report

By Courtney Bublé

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Friday demanding she release the second volume of former special counsel Jack Smith's report on President Donald Trump's retention of classified documents after he left office the first time.

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Del. US Atty Resigns Citing 'Politics,' Successor Appointed

By Rose Krebs

The acting U.S. Attorney for Delaware said Friday that she is resigning, citing "a highly politicized, flawed blue-slip tradition" for nominees and saying she "fully" supports her first assistant, who has been appointed by a federal judge to succeed her.

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DOJ Shake-Up Keeps Criminal Tax Meetings, Ex-Official Says

By Kat Lucero

The U.S. Department of Justice — despite recently eliminating its Tax Division as part of a broad restructuring — continues to meet with practitioners representing clients who may face federal criminal tax charges, the former division chief said Friday.

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Hollywood Director Convicted Of $11M Fraud Against Netflix

By Bonnie Eslinger

Film and television director Carl Erik Rinsch was convicted on charges he defrauded Netflix out of $11 million secured to make a sci-fi television show he never delivered, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

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1st Circ. Affirms Ex-ADI Engineer's Trade Secrets Conviction

By Julie Manganis

The First Circuit has affirmed a former Analog Devices Inc. engineer's trade secrets conviction, ruling that the indictment's reference to a specific microchip model did not preclude a guilty verdict based on his possession of schematics for its prototype.

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NY Developer Charged In $8.5M Pandemic Loan Fraud

By Julie Manganis

A New York real estate developer fraudulently obtained $8.5 million worth of COVID-19 pandemic relief loans and spent the money on two seven-bedroom homes in the Hamptons, diamond jewelry and paying off personal and business debts, Massachusetts federal prosecutors said Friday.

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MVP: Sullivan & Cromwell's Nicolas Bourtin

By Phillip Bantz

Sullivan & Cromwell LLP's Nicolas Bourtin played a key role in the dismissal of all criminal charges in a foreign bribery case against the ex-general counsel for Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., and helped TD Bank reach a historic resolution in a criminal probe of its anti-money laundering program, securing him a spot as one of the 2025 Law360 White Collar MVPs.

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Bogus AI Hedge Fund Chief Finalizes $4.1M SEC Deal

By Emilie Ruscoe

A self-styled hedge fund CEO who pled guilty to scamming investors with claims that his firm used artificial intelligence for its high-frequency trading strategy has finalized a parallel $4.1 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, though the debts would be considered satisfied by his criminal restitution, a Brooklyn federal judge said Friday.

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Ex-Rabobank Exec Will Press For Fees From OCC At 9th Circ.

By Katryna Perera

A former Rabobank compliance official will make another attempt to force the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to pick up the tab for her legal fees for the office's now-abandoned enforcement proceeding, which she says cost her millions of dollars to defend.

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DC Circ. Unsure Lower Court Could Toss Bergdahl Conviction

By Nadia Dreid

The D.C. Circuit seemed to have doubts Friday morning about a lower court's decision to throw out the court-martial conviction and sentence of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured by the Taliban after deserting his post in Afghanistan.

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Cayuga Nation RICO Win Overshadowed By Pot Shop Verdict

By Jonathan Capriel

The Cayuga Nation suffered a partial loss Thursday when a New York federal jury essentially sided with a tribal citizen and his partner, who were operating an illicit smoke shop, finding that although the business owners did violate RICO, the damages they incurred due to a tribal police seizure were far worse.

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IRS To Revamp Voluntary Disclosure Program

By Kat Lucero

The Internal Revenue Service will be updating a program early next year that would allow taxpayers to voluntarily report previously undisclosed income as a way to resolve their tax issues to facilitate a simpler reporting process, the agency's criminal enforcement chief said Friday.

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Higgs Fletcher Forms White Collar, Regs Enforcement Team

By Andrea Keckley

San Diego-based law firm Higgs Fletcher & Mack LLP has launched a white collar crime and regulatory enforcement defense practice group, citing heightened regulatory scrutiny in the financial and healthcare sectors and rising enforcement risks for licensed professionals and institutions.

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The SEC Whistleblower Program A Year Into 2nd Trump Admin

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's whistleblower program continues to operate as designed, but its internal cadence, scrutiny of claims and operational structure reflect a period of recalibration, with precision mattering more than ever, say attorneys Scott Silver and David Chase.

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Insuring Equality: 3 Tips To Preserve Coverage For DEI Claims

Directors and officers and employment practices liability are key coverages for policyholders to review as potentially responsive to the emerging liability threat of Trump's executive orders targeting corporate diversity, equity and inclusion policies and practices, says Micah Skidmore at Haynes Boone.

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Opinion

Supreme Court Term Limits Would Carry Hidden Risk

While proposals for limiting the terms of U.S. Supreme Court justices are popular, a steady stream of relatively young, highly marketable ex-justices with unique knowledge and influence entering the marketplace of law and politics could create new problems, say Michael Broyde at Emory University and Hayden Hall at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware.

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Bonus Spotlight

Axinn Veltrop's Bonuses Reach Up To $240K

By Andrea Keckley

Axinn Veltrop & Harkrider LLP is giving out bonuses of up to $240,000 for its associates, according to an in-house memo seen by Law360 Pulse.

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Watchdog Sues White House For Records On Law Firm Deals

By Emily Sawicki

A Washington-based nonprofit watchdog has sued the Trump administration, seeking records related to deals BigLaw firms struck to provide an estimated nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono legal services to further the administration's priorities, following the president's executive orders to withhold security clearances and investigate the firms.

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Analysis

2025 Sees State Courts Diverge From Federal Criminal Norms

By Brandon Lowrey

Some of this year's most notable criminal appellate rulings homed in on differences between state and federal constitutional protections against the most serious punishments, with movement in Michigan, bucking the trend in Wyoming, and an ambiguous but potentially earthshaking decision out of Texas.

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US Atty Nominee For Wyo. Was Outside Capitol On Jan. 6

By Courtney Bublé

One of President Donald Trump's U.S. attorney nominees, who was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, and recently told senators he still thinks "there were imperfections" in the 2020 election process, has been advanced toward Senate confirmation.

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Alex Jones Atty's Pared-Down Suspension Upheld On Appeal

By Aaron Keller

A Connecticut appeals court on Friday upheld the two-week suspension of former Alex Jones lawyer Norm Pattis, agreeing that a trial court judge was within her discretion to bench the attorney over his law firm's handling of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims' medical records.

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Wash. Justices Retroactively Lower Bar Exam's Passing Score

By Ben Adlin

As Washington state is preparing to transition to a new bar exam, its Supreme Court has ordered a retroactive adjustment to the current exam's minimum passing score, making an estimated hundred-plus law school graduates who narrowly failed in recent years newly eligible for admission to practice law.

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Roundup

UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London

By Laura Stewart Liberty

This past week in London has seen Shell hit with a climate change claim from 100 survivors of a typhoon in the Philippines, London Stock Exchange-listed Oxford Nanopore bring legal action against its co-founder, and the editors of Pink News sue the BBC for defamation following its investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the news site.

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Roundup

GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Michele Gorman

President Donald Trump issued an executive order to review the influence that proxy adviser firms have, and law firms saw a 9.8% increase in compensation expenses along with a similar increase in billable rates. ​These are among the stories in corporate legal news you may have missed in the past week.

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Law360's Legal Lions Of The Week

By Kevin Penton

Cravath Swaine & Moore LLP and Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP lead this week's edition of Law360 Legal Lions, after the Ninth Circuit handed Epic Games Inc. a partial win by mostly affirming an injunction blocking Apple Inc. from charging developers "prohibitive" commissions on iPhone app purchases made outside its systems.

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In Case You Missed It: Hottest Firms And Stories On Law360

For those who missed out, here's a look back at the law firms, stories and expert analyses that generated the most buzz on Law360 last week.

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