Trump Halts Clayton Director Hearing Over Blue-Slip Dispute

By Courtney Bublé

President Donald Trump directed Jay Clayton, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, not to appear for his confirmation hearing Wednesday on his nomination to be director of national intelligence, in part over a blue-slip issue.

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Bipartisan Sens. Condemn Bankman-Fried's Pardon Bid

By Aislinn Keely

The top members of a cryptocurrency-focused Senate subcommittee on Wednesday introduced a bipartisan resolution condemning Sam Bankman-Fried's bid for a presidential pardon, saying that "under no circumstances" should the convicted FTX founder receive executive clemency.

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Judge OKs Deal Ending Halkbank Iran Sanctions Prosecution

By Stewart Bishop

A New York federal judge Wednesday officially approved a no-fine deal ending the long-running criminal prosecution of Turkey's Halkbank, in which the feds accused the state-backed Turkish lender of scheming to launder billions of dollars in sanctioned Iranian oil proceeds.

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Bosch Receives First DOJ Declination Under New Policy

By Sarah Jarvis

German technology company Bosch on Wednesday became the first company to avoid criminal prosecution under a new U.S. Department of Justice enforcement policy after it cooperated with the federal government and agreed to pay $36 million to settle allegations it improperly exported technology products to sanctioned Chinese company Huawei.

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Broadview Immigration Activists Seek DOJ Misconduct Probe

By Lauraann Wood

Immigration activists whose claims of prosecutorial misconduct led Chicago's top federal prosecutor to drop a criminal conspiracy case against them are now asking their judge to appoint special counsel and conduct an evidentiary sanctions hearing to determine the full extent of the misconduct and "ensuing cover-up."

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6th Circ. OKs 30-Month Medical Fraudster Kickback Sentence

By Parker Quinlan

The Sixth Circuit has ruled in a published opinion that a 30-month prison sentence was correctly calculated for a Tennessee man who was convicted of violating federal anti-kickback laws with his fraudulent door-to-door medical marketing firm.

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Citigroup Says Foreign Bondholders Can't Bring RICO Suit

By Carolina Bolado

Citigroup urged a Florida federal magistrate judge Wednesday to dismiss racketeering claims in a suit accusing the bank of running a massive cash advance fraud scheme, arguing the bondholder plaintiffs suffered no domestic injury that would allow them to sue under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute.

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Lab Owner Avoids 'Very Long' Prison Term For $89M Fraud

By Carla Baranauckas

A Utah businessman who cooperated with prosecutors after admitting his role in a false Medicare claims scheme was sentenced Wednesday in New Jersey federal court to three years of probation and ordered to forfeit $28 million.

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Doctors Defeat Most Claims In Life Insurance Fraud Dispute

By Hope Patti

A life insurer failed to adequately allege that a pair of doctors were knowingly involved in a purported scheme to defraud the carrier into issuing $160 million worth of policies, a New Jersey federal court ruled, tossing all but one claim brought under the state's Insurance Fraud Protection Act.

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FINRA Expels NY Firm, Bars Founders Over Churning Scheme

By Katryna Perera

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority on Wednesday expelled a New York broker-dealer and its co-founders and fined the firm's chief compliance officer over claims that the founders churned and excessively traded customer accounts, harming customers while generating millions in revenue for the firm.

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Trump Admin Says GSA Was Free To Ditch Greenbelt Site

By Jared Foretek

Attorneys for the Trump administration argued Congress never meant for the General Services Administration's choice of a new FBI headquarters site to be final when it instructed the agency to choose between three proposed sites, defending the agency's sudden shift in choosing to convert the Ronald Reagan Building instead Wednesday.

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Ex-Mass. City Worker Gets 6 Months For Stealing Public Funds

By Carolyn Muyskens

A Massachusetts federal judge sentenced a former city official of a Boston suburb Wednesday to six months in prison for using public money to pay for a studio recording session, a portrait of himself and thousands of dollars' worth of bourbon steak tips.

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FTX Exec's Wife Must Face Campaign Finance Charges

By Hailey Konnath

A New York federal judge Wednesday refused to throw out an indictment accusing crypto lobbyist Michelle Bond of campaign finance crimes, rejecting her argument that prosecutors previously promised her husband, a former FTX executive, that his guilty plea would mean she's in the clear.

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DC Judge Halts Prison Bureau's 'Near Total' Trans Care Ban

By Gina Kim

A Washington, D.C., federal judge blocked the Bureau of Prisons from enforcing a "near total ban" on gender-affirming care for trans incarcerated people, ruling Wednesday the policy was "reverse engineered" to fit the Trump administration's directive barring funding of such care in prisons, violating the Administrative Procedure Act. 

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Agentic AI And Securities Law: The Vanishing Defendant

The entire framework of traditional securities regulation rests on the ability to attribute conduct to human actors and assess their intent and control, but agentic artificial intelligence systems threaten to upend that basic first-step analysis, says Joseph A. Hall at Davis Polk.

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Using NY Lawsuit Loan Law, Ruling Against Shady Injury Suits

The combination of a New York state appellate ruling that exposes litigation lenders in potentially fraudulent personal injury cases to discovery and a new law limiting predatory loans to plaintiffs provides defense counsel a powerful new toolkit for confronting suspicious claims, say attorneys at Stradley Ronon.

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A New Wave Of Prediction Market Risk Is About To Break

The convergence of three potential new risks — shareholder derivative suits, evolving disclosure requirements and congressional investigations — means that prediction market exposure has graduated from an interesting hypothetical to a company's audit committee agenda item, say attorneys at King & Spalding.

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How Justices' Habeas Ruling Limits Compassionate Release

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent holding in Fernandez v. U.S. that a federal prisoner who challenges their conviction's validity must do so through habeas, not compassionate release, considerably narrows the universe of arguments that can support a sentence reduction, says attorney Elizabeth Franklin-Best.

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Opinion

Rule Of Law Requires Gov't Engagement With Bar, Not Retreat

A federal agency's absence from national and local bar conferences, most recently illustrated by the U.S. Department of Justice's withdrawal from a New York City Bar Association white collar conference, disserves the bar, the government lawyers themselves and, ultimately, the administration of justice, says Muhammad Faridi at Linklaters.

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Judiciary Cites AI Deepfakes In Opposing Courtroom Cameras

By Courtney Bublé

Two bipartisan bills to bring cameras into federal courtrooms advanced Thursday, but the policymaking body for the federal judiciary continues to oppose them and raised the issue of deepfakes in the age of artificial intelligence.

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NJ Tax Court Protects Taxpayer Methodology Ahead Of Trial

By Jaqueline McCool

A New Jersey tenant appealing the property tax assessment of a legacy data center is not required to provide the township with a detailed methodology of its assessment challenge prior to the case's trial, the state Tax Court ruled.

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Trump Lawyer Advances In Senate Judiciary Noms Vote

By Courtney Bublé

The nomination of Matthew Schwartz to be a judge on the Second Circuit advanced out of committee Thursday.

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GC Cheat Sheet: The Hottest Corporate News Of The Week

By Sue Reisinger

General counsel may cringe at the news, but their chief financial officers will rejoice over a new study that shows the average spending by legal departments dropped to a six-year low in 2026. And two in-house Cigna lawyers are at the center of a finding of "improperly asserted privilege" over key company documents related to a payment lawsuit brought by three labs.

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Gibson Dunn Hires Ropes & Gray Health Regulatory Atty In DC

By Jack Rodgers

Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP has hired a former Ropes & Gray LLP partner who works on a myriad of health regulatory and drug pricing matters, advising pharmaceutical manufacturers, investors and other entities on those issues, the firm announced Thursday.

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Calif. Moves On Proposal To Allow Legal Aid By Nonlawyers

By Lynn LaRowe

The California Supreme Court has directed the state bar to solicit public comments on a proposed community justice worker program that would allow nonlawyers to provide limited legal assistance under the supervision of qualified legal aid organizations, according to a Thursday announcement.

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Analysis

Law Students Undeterred Under Trump's Immigration Climate

By Britain Eakin

In a climate where immigration lawyers are coming under the Trump administration’s scrutiny to tamp down on asylum fraud, law students are being ignited to enter the workforce early and rectify the injustices they see.

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'Mortified' Atty Takes Blame For Fake Quotes In Taco TM Fight

By Ivan Moreno

A Connecticut attorney facing possible sanctions over fake case quotations in a taco restaurant trademark fight told a federal judge Thursday that he takes "full and unqualified responsibility" for the flawed filings, saying he is "mortified" and acknowledging that his verification process for AI-assisted legal work fell far short.

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Ford Says 'Lemon Law' Firm Faked Bills Using Overseas Staff

By Linda Chiem

Ford Motor Co. on Thursday accused California personal injury firm Quill & Arrow LLP of defrauding it out of more than $25 million in high-priced legal bills for work actually handled by virtual assistants overseas and non-lawyers in scores of product liability cases against the automaker.

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Israeli Atty Gets 15 Months For Role In Ponzi Scheme

By George Woolston

An Israeli attorney whose participation in a fraud scheme led by convicted Ponzi schemer Eliyahu "Eli" Weinstein gave the plan an "air of legitimacy" was sentenced on Thursday to one year and three months in federal prison.

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