By: Sara Kropf The Department of Justice has been humiliated in its misguided prosecution of over two hundred Inauguration Day protestors. It has lost every single case to go to trial. It has engaged in intentional violations of the rules. And it has cost taxpayers...
By Dan Portnov The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy (“OIEA”) came in hot last week with its HoweyCoin initial coin offering pre-sale – a mock ICO designed to teach cryptocurrency-hungry investors the lesson that some ICOs may be scams. It’s quite...
By: Sara Kropf The search of attorney Michael Cohen’s office by federal agents led to a phalanx of “former federal prosecutors” quoted by the media. That’s not surprising. To be fair, I know a lot of great former federal prosecutors who provide informative quotes to...
By Dan Portnov We have written on several occasions[1] about OIG investigations on this blog, chiefly because a) their opacity creates a certain mystique, and b) we hope to minimize the chances that their targets underestimate the seriousness of what could later...
By Dan Portnov In certain legal (nerd) circles, coining a phrase or term of art is one of the surest ways to achieve immortality – think Tim Wu’s first use of “network neutrality” in a 2003 journal article or Justice Felix Frankfurter’s opinion in Rochin v....
By: Sara Kropf If you are new to white-collar work, you will quickly hear about the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or FCPA. For you seasoned attorneys out there, you may feel like you've heard too much about it. But here's the thing: you can always learn more. And I...
By: Sara Kropf The government filed its opposition to Michael Cohen’s motion for a temporary restraining order today. I wrote earlier this week about the search warrant and noted that there would be a court battle coming. Well, here it is. Oddly, the public docket has...
By: Sara Kropf On April 9, 2018, news broke that the FBI had raided the office of President Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen. Apparently the search was the result of referral from Special Counsel Mueller’s team to the SDNY U.S. Attorney's Office. When I saw the news,...
By: Sara Kropf Paul Manafort recently filed a motion to compel the production of the affidavits used to support the Special Counsel’s search warrants in his case. To someone unfamiliar with criminal law, that may seem odd. The defendant must know why the government...
By: Sara Kropf In Part I of this series, I listed my first six tips for preparing a nervous witness (or any witness, really) for a voluntary government interview. Those tips involved a lot of the mechanics of preparing your client for what the interview will look...