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Judge Allows Hearing on Government’s Use of Thompson Memo in KPMG Case
At the end of last week, US District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan issued an Order (Download Order.pdf) responding to defendant’s motion arguing that the government was improperly interfering with defendant’s right to counsel through use of the Thompson Memo. The government’s response proved to be insufficient for the court, as it should be. The court…
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Public Discovery – Abramoff Emails
How many times does defense counsel complain that the government is failing to release discovery material? And now we are seeing a different sought of response. A defendant arguing that the public release of discovery is a pressure to obtain a plea. According to the Washington Post here the government released emails between David Safavian…
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Seven Things a Prosecutor Probably Won’t Tell You
The current issue of Corporate Board Member Magazine has an interesting article by Robert Calo, a former federal prosecutor who is now a partner at Lane Powell in Portland, Oregon, entitled "Seven Things a Prosecutor Probably Won’t Tell You (I Know. I Used to Be One.)" (here). In any criminal investigation, knowledge of what the…
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Bonds Is the Target of a Grand Jury Investigation
It should not come as a great shock that a federal grand jury in San Francisco is investigating star slugger Barry Bonds for perjury related to his testimony in December 2003 in the Balco (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) steroid investigation. CNN.com reports (here) that the grand jury began hearing testimony about one month ago, around…
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Was Skilling On the Witness Stand Too Long?
The direct testimony of former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling ended after four days, with him bristling at the government’s efforts to "rewrite history" and his attorney asking him if he needed a break to calm down. Whether that outburst was spontaneous or pure theatrics, the testimony was the longest direct examination of a witness so…
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Adnan Khashoggi Charged by SEC with Securities Fraud
Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi and Ramy El-Batrawi, former CEO of telemarketing firm GenesisIntermedia, Inc. (GENI), were charged with securities fraud by the SEC in a civil complaint (here) filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. Khashoggi is best-known as the arms dealer in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, and he and El-Batrawi were…
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Latest Tax Avoidance Schemes
With April 15 — well, the 17th actually, but who’s counting — almost upon us, the IRS faces an array of tax avoidance schemes that seek to cloak the failure to pay taxes on income in the guise of ostensibly legitimate legal argument. The IRS identified its "Dirty Dozen" tax scams (press release here), and…
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Former Head of FBI El Paso Field Office Indicted
Former FBI Agent Hardrick Crawford, Jr., was indicted in the Western District of Texas on five counts of violating Sec. 1001 (press release here). Crawford was the Special-Agent-in-Charge (SAC) of the El Paso field office from July 2001 until November 2003, and is accused of making false statements and concealing information about his relationship with…
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Lawyer Sentenced to Two Years for Money Laundering of Client Funds
R. Scott Cunningham received a two-year prison term for his conviction on two counts of money laundering and one count of conspiracy arising from transactions he undertook on behalf of his client prior to filing for bankruptcy. The jury acquitted Cunningham on 39 other money laundering counts. The client, Abraham Kennard, was convicted in 2005…
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Will President Bush Be a Witness at Libby’s Trial?
Discovery fights are often interesting more for what they reveal about the theory of prosecution and possible defenses than the issues of what documents must be disclosed. The prosecution of I. Lewis Libby has triggered a series of tit-for-tat responses between the two sides that seem to grow more interesting with each round. The last…
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