By: Sara Kropf The Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election (a/k/a the Mueller Report), is a veritable treasure trove of obstruction-of-justice efforts by the President. We’ve written before about obstruction of justice,...
By Dan Portnov Occasionally we work on cases or investigations that involve highly wonky subject matter – stuff that only lawyers or legislators would know and care about. One of those recent matters touched on the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act,...
By: Sara Kropf I’m in trial this week in a white-collar criminal case. Since I couldn't manage to find the time to write a substantive post, I thought I’d write instead about something practical: what I bring with me to court when I’m in trial. Being in trial is a...
By Dan Portnov Last week I had the pleasure of attending a fascinating panel on congressional investigations hosted by MoloLamken. The panel featured defense attorneys Karen Christian, Reginald Brown, Amy Jeffress and Raphael Prober and was moderated by Molo’s Justin...
By: Sara Kropf A judge says a lot of things during a sentencing. Two of them are really, really important. First is the number of months in prison. “One hundred twenty” is a lot different from “a year and a day.” Second is whether the sentence imposed for multiple...
This post is the seventh in a series of posts for non-lawyers, or non-securities lawyers, who might suddenly find themselves on the wrong end of a Securities and Exchange Commission document request, subpoena or call from Enforcement division staff. By Dan Portnov In...
By: Sara Kropf “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” - Bryan Stevenson The fundamental truth of Mr. Stevenson's quote is tested every time a defendant is sentenced after conviction. Too often, prosecutors act at sentencing as though they cannot...
By Dan Portnov SEC investigations can last a long time. Even when the Enforcement staff comes charging out of the gate, the investigative pace invariably slows once there are terabytes of documents and hundreds of pages of testimony to review. The staff might even...
By: Sara Kropf In Part 1 of this series, we described the various steps of the research misconduct life cycle. Today, we’re digging deeper into the early stage of a research misconduct case, so you know what to expect. More important, we’ll give you some suggestions...
By Dan Portnov[1] The swearing in of the 116th Congress last month brought with it promises of vigorous new investigations into the Trump administration – as well as other related public and private industry conduct. Last week’s brief standoff between former Acting...