Good morning. Trump-era attorneys denied election fraud claims during a Jan. 6 hearing in Congress, but one lawyer who pushed the narrative landed a job with a Trump-backed candidate. Plus, Binance got hit with an investor lawsuit over a “stablecoin” collapse; Dentons is contesting a $32 million malpractice verdict; and Deutsche Bank must face shareholders' claims over its business with clients such as Jeffrey Epstein and Russian oligarchs.
Preet Bharara just landed at WilmerHale, and New York City will auction off an apartment owned by a Venezuelan media mogul. It's a newsy Tuesday. Let’s jump in.
Our colleague Jacqueline Thomsen is co-writing The Daily Docket while Diana Novak Jones is on parental leave. Were you forwarded this email? Subscribe here.
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Attorneys in former President Donald Trump’s orbit in the run-up to and weeks after the 2020 election were on prominent display during a Jan. 6 congressional committee hearing Monday, saying that they told the then-president that election fraud claims had no merit.
"I thought, boy, if he really believes this stuff he has lost contact with, he's become detached from reality," testified former Attorney General William Barr. Former Atlanta U.S. attorney Byung J. "BJay" Pak, now a partner at Alston & Bird, said he found no evidence of fraud in Georgia. Barnes & Thornburg partner Matthew Morgan, the chief lawyer for Trump’s campaign, said any claims of fraud wouldn’t change the outcome of the election. “I never saw any evidence whatsoever to sustain those allegations,” said former Trump White House lawyer Eric Herschmann of allegations that Dominion Voting Systems’ machines rigged the election against Trump.
The hearing highlighted figures such as Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell who were involved in promoting claims of election fraud. Another member of the Trump campaign legal team, Jenna Ellis, announced the same day as the hearing that she’s joining the campaign of Trump ally Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee in the Pennsylvania governor’s race. Mastriano was a proponent of the election fraud claims.
Also featured in Monday’s hearing were the failed attempts in court to overturn the 2020 election results. While the main claims in those cases were widely rejected by judges, some of the litigation is still lingering in federal court. Lawyers for the city of Detroit recently urged the 6th Circuit to affirm sanctions issued against attorneys Powell, L. Lin Wood and others. And a pair of attorneys behind a separate election challenge on Monday asked the 10th Circuit to reconsider its ruling against reviving the case. Those lawyers are separately appealing sanctions issued against them over the lawsuit.
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Dentons US has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to scrap a $32 million verdict in a malpractice case brought by a former business client that the global law firm said will pose "serious threats" to the legal profession if it is allowed to stand. An appeals court upheld the award in April. (Reuters)
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Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York who was fired by then-President Donald Trump in 2017 after he refused to resign, is joining WilmerHale. Bharara, who has built a podcasting career since the firing, will have a “wide-ranging” practice at the firm, including work on congressional and internal investigations. (Reuters)
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Robert Mueller retired last year from WilmerHale, the firm confirmed. Mueller’s sprawling special counsel investigation sparked by Russian election interference claims led to convictions of figures like Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, but the probe’s findings on potential obstruction of justice by then-President Donald Trump did not culminate in an indictment or impeachment. A former FBI director, Mueller was at WilmerHale ahead of his special counsel appointment and returned there in 2019.
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Utah Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Thomas Lee will create an appeals-focused law firm named Lee|Nielsen and a separate linguistic consulting firm as he retires from the bench this month. The consulting firm will offer services including corpus linguistics, a tool used to analyze large databases of texts to determine how words were used at the time they appeared in statutes, to assist in legal interpretation. (Reuters)
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That’s the square footage of a midtown Manhattan apartment that New York City plans to auction next month. It was owned by a Venezuelan media mogul with ties to socialist President Nicolas Maduro's government. U.S. sanctions forced Raul Gorrin, who owns Venezuelan TV channel Globovision, to miss condominium payments, court records show. Gorrin paid $18.8 million for the 47th floor unit in the Baccarat Hotel & Residences in November 2017. The apartment boasts views of the Empire State Building and Central Park.
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The U.S. Supreme Court put an end on Monday to what had become an increasingly common tactic in foreign arbitration, ruling that parties in private proceedings taking place overseas cannot turn to U.S. courts to obtain discovery. Alison Frankel analyzes the court’s decision, which according to one of the winning lawyers, will have “immediate impact on a broad range of current and future international arbitrations.”
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Fast Take: Senate deal marks 'significant' step on guns |
Jacob Charles, executive director at Duke University's Center for Firearms Law, analyzes the framework agreement on gun safety hammered out over the weekend by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators. Watch here. |
"We have a drive and a passion to learn the law that most have never seen before because we know what it is to be in here."
—Maureen Onyelobi, who was recently admitted as an incarcerated student at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. The St. Paul law school said it will become the first ABA-accredited institution to have a J.D. student attend class from inside prison. Onyelobi is serving a sentence of life without parole for aiding and abetting a 2014 murder. Onyelobi plans to use her law degree to work on issues related to incarceration.
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Closing arguments are scheduled in Boston federal court in the criminal prosecution of a son of the co-founder of aircraft interior maker B/E Aerospace. Amin Khoury was indicted in 2020 on charges he participated in a vast U.S. college admissions bribery and fraud scheme to secure his daughter’s enrollment at Georgetown University. Federal prosecutors said Khoury agreed in 2014 to pay $200,000 in bribes to Georgetown’s former tennis coach through a middleman in exchange for designating his daughter as an athletic recruit. Khoury, represented by the firms Mintz Levin and Black Srebnick, has pleaded not guilty.
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U.S. Justice Department lawyer Kevin Chambers will testify in the U.S. House with Michael Horowitz, the DOJ inspector general, and others about federal efforts to prevent and prosecute fraud tied to pandemic relief funds. Chambers was named in March to lead the department's efforts to help investigate fraudsters who used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to bilk government assistance programs. Horowitz leads the pandemic response accountability committee.
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William Sadleir, founder and former owner of a Hollywood movie production and distribution company, is scheduled to be sentenced in Manhattan federal court for defrauding a BlackRock investment fund out of about $14 million to pay for luxuries including a Beverly Hills mansion. Sadleir pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud in January. “Mr. Sadleir is deeply sorry for, and embarrassed by, his crimes. Faced with challenges to his business, Mr. Sadleir did what too many others have done in the same situation: he lied,” his lawyer, Matthew Schwartz of Boies Schiller, told the court. Prosecutors have asked for a prison sentence of nine years.
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The FTC and Justice Department kick off a two-day workshop addressing enforcement of antitrust laws in the pharmaceutical industry. FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who leads the DOJ antitrust division, will deliver introductory remarks. Panel topics include remedies in pharmaceutical mergers and assessment of innovation aspects in industry tie-ups.
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
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Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is facing a lawsuit from an investor alleging the company falsely marketed so-called stablecoin Terra USD as a safe asset before it collapsed in value last month. The complaint alleges that Binance falsely claimed the coin was backed by fiat currency, when it was an unregistered security. Binance denied the claims and will “defend ourselves vigorously.” (Reuters)
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U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan said in a new ruling that shareholders can sue Deutsche Bank AG over claims it hid shortfalls in internal controls while doing business with risky, ultra-rich clients such as the financier Jeffrey Epstein, Russian oligarchs and people linked to terrorism. (Reuters)
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LATAM Airlines, the largest air transport group in Latin America, asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity in Manhattan to approve $2.75 billion in new loans to fund the company's exit from Chapter 11. Garrity will review the request from LATAM’s attorneys at Cleary Gottlieb during a court hearing on June 23. (Reuters)
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Charles Schwab will pay $187 million to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges. The commission alleged that three of the corporation’s subsidiaries failed to disclose less profitable fund allocations and misled robo-advisor clients, conduct it called egregious. Schwab neither admitted or denied the allegations. (Reuters)
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Qualcomm was hit with an amended class action in California federal court from consumers alleging the chipmaker's business conduct forced them to pay artificially inflated prices for mobile phones, tablets and other cellular devices. Qualcomm called the new lawsuit “repackaged” from earlier litigation that failed in the 9th Circuit. (Reuters)
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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected bids by Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor and another former executive of the drugmaker to overturn convictions for conspiring to bribe doctors to prescribe addictive opioids and defraud insurers into paying for them. (Reuters)
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Norton Rose added James Collis to the firm’s banking and finance group in London. He formerly practiced at Squire Patton Boggs and at Ashurst, where he was global managing partner. (Reuters)
- Foley Hoag said Samita Ali-Khan joined the firm in New York as a capital markets partner. She formerly was a partner in the London office of Kirkland. (Foley Hoag)
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Epstein Becker Green said Richard Hughes joined the firm as a member in the healthcare and life sciences practice. Hughes earlier served as vice president of public policy at Moderna. (Epstein Becker Green)
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Thompson Hine brought on James Frankel as a New York-based partner in the construction practice. He earlier practiced at Venable and Arent Fox, where he led the construction practice. (Thompson Hine)
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Dentons said Matthew Cutts joined the firm in Washington, D.C., as head of the policy and government relations group. He formerly practiced at Squire Patton Boggs. (Dentons)
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McGuireWoods said public finance partner Isaac Yilma joined the firm’s Atlanta office from Squire Patton Boggs. (McGuireWoods)
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Troutman Pepper attorneys Ashley Taylor, Stephen Piepgrass and Ryan Strasser dig into the preparation that underpins responses to attorney general multistate investigations. Companies more often than before face state attorneys general who are collaborating and raising questions about key elements of a company’s business practices. What to do if a general counsel receives a regulatory inquiry.
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