Skadden

see bonus ceo baNkrupt opioids

see corp crime

MANAFORT RUSSIA?

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an 8 25

Even though President Donald Trump's administration secured promises from some of the nation's biggest law firms to contribute more than $1 billion worth of pro bono work to further the administration's goals, the White House is now reportedly having a hard time getting some of those firms to follow through on their promises.

According to a Thursday report in the Wall Street Journal, many of those promises law firms made to perform free legal services have already been broken. This could be partially due to the success that firms who have sued in response to Trump's executive orders targeting them have had in court, with the Journal reporting that all four firms that fought back have so far prevailed. And firms that haven't fulfilled their commitments are reportedly hoping the administration will be too distracted with the work of governing to follow through on threats to suspend security clearances, federal contracts and access to federal buildings.

The Journal reported that the firms that agreed to help Trump only typically perform between $4 million and $5 million worth of pro bono work per year, meaning that in order to fulfill some of those commitments — like the firm Skadden's $100 million promise — it would take decades. And because Trump will leave office in January of 2029, many firms likely aren't taking their commitment to his administration seriously.

The paper further reported that far-right groups who have inundated the firms with requests for legal assistance have so far been stiff-armed. This includes the far-right Heritage Foundation (which is responsible for the notorious Project 2025 playbook), which has asked for help but has yet to receive any outside of initial meetings with some attorneys.

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And while Attorney General Pam Bondi has asked the Department of Justice to create ways to help law enforcement officers facing misconduct allegations receive free legal representation from the firms in question, none of them have responded to inquiries. California-based attorney Harry Stern, who represents police officers facing legal proceedings, told the Journal: "It's not happening."

Gary DiBianco, who leads a pro bono litigation group, told the Journal that the administration has likely lost its credibility with any lawyers it hopes to strong-arm into performing free work.

"I think the administration has completely lost the leverage it has over future firms," DiBianco said.

Click here to read the Journal's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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MOJO

...Pinchuk appears to have long-standing ties to Yanukovych. According to emails released by the State Department, Pinchuk, a major donor to the Clinton Foundation, met in 2011 with an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to convey a message that Yanukovych, whose growing Kremlin ties worried US officials, remained committed to Ukraine’s integration with Europe.

In 2012, Pinchuk allegedly secretly bankrolled a report by Skadden, Arps, a prominent law firm, that defended the legal basis of Yanukoych’s imprisonment of his predecessor, Yulia Tymoshenko. Skadden revealed Pinchuk’s role in January when the firm agreed to pay $4.6 million to settle a Justice Department case that grew out of Mueller’s investigation into Manafort, who helped arrange for the firm’s report. Pinchuk has denied funding the report.

an 12 24 pro publ

...As it failed to pull out of a financial tailspin, Endo accelerated bonuses to about two dozen executives. Records show a total of $95 million was paid in less than a year.

Four days after the last bonus round of $22 million was paid to chief executive Blaise Coleman and his three top lieutenants, Endo filed its bankruptcy petition in federal court in New York. The total Endo paid its top bosses dwarfed the controversial $7 million in pre-bankruptcy bonuses granted to a handful of Purdue executives.

The bonuses immediately came under fire from a federal bankruptcy watchdog, opioid victims and many creditors. The critics told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge James Garrity Jr. that the payouts violated a law, championed by then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D.-Mass., nearly 20 years ago after scandals involving windfalls paid to executives of bankrupt firms, most notably Enron.

In interviews, professors who specialize in bankruptcy said that the bonuses appeared to be an end run around Kennedy’s reforms. “It looks like pre-petition theft,” said Gregory Germain, a widely published bankruptcy expert at the University of Syracuse.

Skadden lawyer Lisa Laukitis defended the bonuses in a bankruptcy hearing. “These are not windfall payments that were made to line the pockets of executives on the eve of the filing,” she said.

The bankruptcy went on for months. Hedge funds and other investors — led by GoldenTree Asset Management, a New York firm that specializes in buying distressed debt — agreed to use their secured debt to buy Endo out of bankruptcy. In negotiations to take ownership, the group sweetened the deal by increasing the payments going to individual opioid victims and other unsecured creditors. As part of the deal, the critics dropped their complaints about Project Zed and the bonuses.

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Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates (often shortened to Skadden Arps; Skadden; or SASM&F), founded in 1948, is a law firm based in New York City. With nearly 2,000 attorneys, it is one of the largest,^[4] most prestigious ^[5] and highest-grossing law firms in the world.^[6] Forbes magazine called Skadden "Wall Street's most powerful law firm," and the firm has been named as America's best Corporate Law firm every year since 2001.^[7][8]

https://www.opensecrets.org/news**/2019/12**/lobbying-firms-benefit-from-trump-ties/

For many well-connected Washington lobbying firms, business is booming after President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

At least 22 lobbying firms saw revenue more than double in the Trump era compared to the previous three years, with many signing high-dollar contracts with big-name clients, an OpenSecrets analysis found.

The reasons for the revenue spikes vary. Some lobbying firms simply received a bigger check from existing clients or took on new ones as businesses were eager to influence the new administration. Others grew their team, recruiting well-connected lobbyists who brought their existing clients to their new firms. Some firms touted connections to the Trump orbit, luring clients who wished to have the president’s ear.

Tapping into the Trump network

**Cove Strategies**, a Virginia-based lobbying firm founded in 2009 by conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, has been thriving since Trump took office. Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union since 2014, is a vocal Trump defender on cable networks and regularly lobbies the president’s office. Trump frequently appears at the organization’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference. Schlapp’s wife, Mercedes Schlapp, served as Trump’s strategic communications director for two years and has now joined Trump’s reelection campaign.

The couple enjoy close access to the president, which in turn helped boost Matt Schlapp’s lobbying business. Cove Strategies’ revenue surged to $1 million in 2017 and has reached $1.3 million so far this year. The company is representing Verizon Communications on telecom and tax issues, and is lobbying on behalf of Walmart and several pharmaceutical companies. Ligado Networks, which filed a petition to urge the Federal Communications Commission to modify the company’s license so it could support 5G services for certain users, hired Cove Strategies to lobby the president’s office on mid-band spectrum and 5G issues.

D.C.-based firm **Fidelis Government Relations**’ revenue had never topped $500,000. But in 2017, the company brought in $1.2 million, more than tripling the revenue from the previous year.

The revenue hike came after Terry Allen, the company’s only lobbyist, partnered with Bill Smith, congressional chief-of-staff to now-Vice President Mike Pence for 12 years. Smith, who told Politico in 2016 that he offered Pence informal advice on his transition to VP, has been actively lobbying the vice president’s office on behalf of a handful of clients.

This analysis of fastest growing lobbying firms does not include some Trump-tied firms that didn’t exist before 2017 but are thriving under Trump, such as Ballard Partners....[hockey stick graf]

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**Baker and Hostetler**, which already employed several “revolving door” lobbyists who previously held government positions, saw record-high revenue in 2017 after Jim Murphy, former political director of Trump’s presidential campaign, joined as a senior advisor. The same year, the company also represented social media giant Facebook and the powerful trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America with six-figure contracts.

**Kasowitz Benson Torres LLP**, the decades-old law firm of Trump’s longtime personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, also witnessed substantial business growth in recent years. The company hired former Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who served as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, to represent Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp on national security-related issues last year.

The hire came after U.S. intelligence suspected that the Chinese-government-tied company posed a cybersecurity threat. The company told OpenSecrets earlier this year that Lieberman was not advocating for ZTE but was merely making recommendations for the tech company.

Hopping on the wagon of firms selling Trump connections, **Federal Advocates**, which only had a bare bone team of lobbyists in 2016, gained huge profits in the Trump era. Michael Esposito, president of the firm, has more than two dozen clients. The formerly self-proclaimed “Democratic lobbyist,” who pitched himself to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, is now touting his connections with the Trump administration and the Republican National Committee leadership despite lack of evidence, The Washington Post reported.

The company saw its business quadruple since 2016, bringing in $3.2 million worth of contracts in 2017 from 33 clients including retail giant PetSmart Inc and the National Cannabis Industry Association. That is more than three times the $907,000 it earned in 2016. It picked up multiple revolving door lobbyists, including former Rep. Christopher Carney (D-Pa.) as the firm’s vice president. Carney left the company in October to join national law firm Nossaman.

Revolving door hires benefit some firms

It’s not only the Trump-tied lobbying firms that saw a boost in their revenue. Some firms also brought on board lobbyists with rich experience working for the government.

**Clark Hill PLC**, an international law firm, was hired by nine clients for a total amount of $618,000 in 2016. The following year, the firm saw a sevenfold increase in revenue, taking on 41 clients for $4.4 million. The company is now representing KBR Inc., a construction company that expressed interest in helping Trump build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In 2017, the firm hired Kevin Kelly, former staffer for then Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Ma.) and staff director of the Senate Appropriations Committee for almost a decade. Kelly immediately started to represent 34 clients, some of whom were clients when he worked for Washington lobbying firm Van Scoyoc Associates. Since joining Clark Hill, Kelly has lobbied on behalf of a variety of interest groups, ranging from higher education institutions to the public sector of Koch Industries.

Lauren Lipin, Kelly’s former colleague at Van Scoyoc Associates, joined Clark Hill PLC the same year, bringing several clients from her old job. Also a “revolver,” Lipin served as legislative assistant to Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Ma.) between 2009 and 2013.

The company recently recruited Anthony Campau, a former member of Trump’s transition team and chief-of-staff at the White House’s regulatory review office, to oversee its government regulation unit. Campau’s knowledge in policy making, Kelly said in a statement, would “enable us to help the firm’s clients in a way that few firms at the Federal level can offer.”

Also taking on big-name clients in recent years is **Hance Scarborough LLP**, a Texas-based lobbying firm with only $70,000 worth of contracts from four clients in 2016. The firm saw an exponential revenue increase over the past three years, bringing in $710,000 in 2017 and $1.6 million Kent Hance (D-Texas), who switched to be a Republican after stepping down, formed the firm in 1994. The former Texas congressman served as the chancellor of the Texas Tech University System and returned to lobbying after his retirement from the position in 2014.

Former Rep. Jim Turner (D-Texas) joined the firm in 2017, immediately bringing in his former Texas-based clients as well as national and international organizations. Turner’s former legislative director, David Pore, rejoined the company with Turner in 2017 after five years as the firm’s attorney, lobbying on behalf of several groups including Pore’s previous employer, the Association of Texas Professional Educators.

Jay Stewart, the firm’s managing partner, said clients that Turner and Pore brought with them helped with the firm’s business. “More clients is better for any firm, because … that’s where you find future businesses with existing businesses,” Stewart said. “But we did not merge with (them) … for the purpose of gaining access to their clients.”

Hance Scarborough expanded its businesses in recent years. In 2018, the firm deployed multiple lobbyists to influence Congress on behalf of General Motors on automobile-related issues, including manufacturing, tax credits and trade deals.

**Skadden Arps**, an influential law firm that settled with the Department of Justice earlier this year over its work with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Ukraine, is back on the rise, reviving its influence and building a team of revolving door lobbyists.After dropping to $100,000 in 2016, the company’s lobbying revenue bounced back to $1.4 million in 2017 and $1.5 million in 2018.

**Hall Render**, a national law firm with an expertise in health law, expanded its lobbying operation in 2017. John F. Williams, former press secretary of the House Government Reform Committee and the company’s only registered lobbyist at the time, was joined by Andrew Coats, who had served as the legislative assistant to former Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) and the company’s counsel. The increased business that year also allowed the firm to bring on board another lobbyist, Williams said.

Williams said the business growth in 2017 reflected the acknowledgment of the firm’s expertise among its clients. “That just seemed to be the year everything clicked,” he said.

Falsification proofs. Manafort case

According to the Guardian's investigation,^[228] Tymoshenko's case was fully fabricated by Viktor Yanukovych who hired Paul Manafort to do that. In 2011 Manafort approved a strategy to discredit Tymoshenko abroad. Alan Friedman, a former Wall Street Journal and Financial Times reporter, based in Italy, masterminded this project. Also involved were Rick Gates, Manafort's then deputy, and Konstantin Kilimnik, another senior Manafort associate who the FBI believes has links to Russian military intelligence.

In 2012, the law firm :{Skadden, Arps,:(style="background-color:#ffcc66;"):}::{ Slate, Meagher & Flom:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}: was hired to produce a report for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice defending the prosecution of Tymoshenko as part of Manafort's efforts to improve Ukraine's international image.^[229] The report was worked on by Alex van der Zwaan^[230] and Gregory Craig.^[229]van der Zwaan, a Dutch attorney at Skadden's London office and son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, pleaded guilty in February 2018 to lying to the FBIabout the nature of his work on the report and his contacts with Kilimnik, and to destroying evidence sought by the Mueller investigation.^[230] He was sentenced to 30 days in federal prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.^[231] In January 2019, Skadden agreed to forfeit to the U.S. government the $4.6 million it had received from the Ministry and to retroactively register as a foreign agent.^[232] Craig, a partner at Skadden and former White House Counsel in the Obama administration, was indicted in April 2019 for his role in lying to the U.S. government about the extent of the firm's work for the Ministry and altering documents as part of the attempted coverup.^[229]

nyt 3/19?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/us/trump-investigations-new-york.html?module=inline

The investigation into the Trump inaugural committee partly grew out of a recording that F.B.I. agents seized when they raided Mr. Cohen’s home and office. On the recording, Mr. Cohen is heard discussing potential irregularities with one of the main contractors for the inauguration. The Southern District is investigating, among other things, whether the committee made false filings with the Federal Election Commission and received illegal donations from foreign nationals, a subpoena from the investigation shows.

In addition, the Southern District took on two investigations stemming from the cases against Mr. Manafort, who was prosecuted by Mr. Mueller’s office and was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison for a litany of crimes.

In one of the investigations, the prosecutors are weighing charges against the officer of a bank that Mr. Manafort has acknowledged defrauding, according to people briefed on the matter.

In the other, Mr. Mueller’s team referred investigations involving three firms that worked with Mr. Manafort — the lobbying firms Mercury Public Affairs and Podesta Group, and thelaw firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom— to the Southern District for potential prosecution under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Since then, Skadden reached a settlement with the Justice Department. But prosecutors in Washington are weighing charges against Skadden’s lead lawyer on the firm’s work in consultation with Mr. Manafort in 2012 on behalf of the Ukrainian government, while the Southern District has retained control of the investigations of Mercury and the Podesta Group, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Southern District’s reputation for nonpartisanship — and history of autonomy from the Justice Department in Washington, giving it the nickname “Sovereign District” — may make it less vulnerable to attacks from the president and his allies. The president’s lead lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, led the office from 1983 to 1989 and later became New York’s mayor.

The Southern District’s role in Trump-related cases comes at a time of transition for the office, which is led by Geoffrey S. Berman, who was appointed in January 2018 by the Trump administration.

Mr. Berman notified Justice Department officials early last year of a possible appearance of a conflict of interest in the Cohen investigation, and officials concluded that he should be recused, for reasons that have not been disclosed.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/11/gregory-craig-lobbying-foreign-interest-1271840

Prosecution of former White House counsel sets K Street on edge — again

Charges against Gregory Craig over working with foreign interests follow the high-profile case of Paul Manafort.

By THEODORIC MEYER

04/11/2019 09:21 PM EDT

Robert Mueller’s investigation is over. But the government crackdown on unregistered foreign agents may be just getting started.

The Justice Department’s indictment of Gregory Craig, who served as White House counsel under President Barack Obama, on Thursday sent a clear signal to K Street that lobbyists who work for foreign interests without registering have reason to be afraid.

Some Washington lobbyists have been on edge since Mueller indicted Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, in 2017 on charges of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, previously a rarely enforced law requiring lobbyists and others who work on behalf of foreign governments and political parties to disclose their activity to the Justice Department.

Though Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election has concluded, the Justice Department last month signaled its willingness to continue prosecuting potential violations of foreign lobbying law by tapping Brandon Van Grack, a former prosecutor on Mueller’s team, to head its FARA unit. Craig’s indictment is likely to reverberate on K Street as the crackdown continues, according to half a dozen Washington lawyers who have advised clients on complying with the law.

A letter from the FARA enforcement unit now “has to be taken as seriously as a heart attack,” said Matthew Sanderson, a lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale who advises clients on the law.

Craig was charged withmisleading the Justice Department about his role in writing a report in 2012 on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister, while he was a partner at the law firm Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom. Manafort arranged to hire Skadden on behalf of the Ukrainian government, although a Ukrainian oligarch paid most of the firm’s fees, according to the indictment.

When the report was finished, Craig helped to promote it to reporters in Washington and gave interviews to them. When the Justice Department sent a letter to Skadden to determine whether Craig’s actions meant he needed to register as a foreign agent, Craig made “false and misleading statements” to avoid registering, according to the indictment.

Craig has maintained he did nothing wrong.

“I did not participate in a scheme to mislead the government or conceal material facts,” he said ina video statement posted to YouTube on Thursday. “I was always honest about the reasons for my contacts with the media. This prosecution is unprecedented and unjustified. I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me.”

But Skaddenadmitted in a settlement in January that the firm had misled the government and agreed to pay nearly $4.7 million it had earned for the work as a penalty. “We have learned much from this incident and are taking steps to prevent anything similar from happening again,” the firm said in a statement at the time.

David Laufman, a former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section who oversaw FARA enforcement, said the prosecution of Craig was likely to lead other law firms and public relations shops to be more careful.

“The cost of not doing so now is potentially devastating,” said Laufman, who now advises clients on complying with the law.

Skadden isn’t the only firm that’s suffered as the government has cracked down. The Podesta Group, one of the top lobbying firms in Washington, collapsed in 2017 shortly after Manafort’s was charged with breaking foreign lobbying law.

While the Podesta Group didn’t face any charges, the firm retroactively registered for lobbying work it did with Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, on behalf of the Ukrainian government.

LEGAL

Grand jury indicts former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN

The Justice Department is also prosecuting Bijan Kian, a former business partner of President Donald Trump’s onetime national security adviser, Michael Flynn, on charges of violating FARA. And a Maryland man, Nisar Ahmed Chaudhry, pleaded guilty last year to failing to register as an agent of the Pakistani government.

Unlike those men, however, Craig is a longstanding member of the Washington establishment — a Yale Law School graduate who worked in two White Houses and as an aide to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) between stints in private practice. His indictment as part of the FARA crackdown signals “there’s really no scalp that is too high-profile for them to go after,” said Sanderson, the Caplin & Drysdale lawyer.

Lobbyists are often reluctant to register as foreign agents, in part because doing so requires them to disclose their meetings and phone calls with government officials in more detail than if they register under domestic lobbying rules. And lawyers such as Craig who don’t lobby may not want to register at all if they can help it.

“I don’t want to register as a foreign agent under FARA,” Craig wrote in a 2012 email to another Skadden partner cited in the indictment. “I think we don’t have to with this assignment, yes?”

The Justice Department’s willingness to go after Craig underscores that lobbyists need to be careful not only to make sure they register as foreign agents if necessary, but also to answer follow-up inquiries from the government carefully, lawyers said.

“Sometimes it really is the fact that the cover-up is worse than the crime,” said Joshua Rosenstein, a lawyer at Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock who advises clients on complying with FARA. “It’s unclear that any of this would have happened if Mr. Craig was forthright with the government to begin with.”

Many firms “are no longer quite as willing to take risks or operate in gray areas,” Rosenstein added.

The fear of a crackdown has led to a surge in demand for lawyers with FARA expertise. Thomas Spulak, a lobbyist at King & Spalding who also advises clients on FARA matters, said on Thursday that he’d been on the phone with a client trying to figure out whether to register as a foreign agent right before taking a call from a reporter.

WHITE HOUSE

Republicans confront Trump amid cascading controversies

By BURGESS EVERETT and ELIANA JOHNSON

Two lawyers said they expected the Justice Department to look into companies with ties to Chinese, Russian and Middle Eastern countries as part of the crackdown, as well as nonprofits with potential foreign ties.

Some lobbying and public relations firms have started to register as foreign agents as a precautionary measure even if they might not be strictly required to do so.

The public relations firm Burson Cohn & Wolfe registered as a foreign agent to represent Huawei, the embattled Chinese telecommunications company, last month even though some firms working for Huawei in Washington have elected to register under less-stringent domestic lobbying rules.

“It is our understanding that Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is a private, employee-owned company,” Burson noted in its disclosure filing. “That understanding and our responses to Question 8(b) above are based on publicly available information. We have requested, but have not obtained, confirmation of this information from Huawei.”

Registering and complying with FARA may be less painful than not doing so now, Rosenstein said.

“It seems to be increasingly palatable for many firms to incur the compliance burden when the alternative may be a very public prosecution,” he said.

Skadden

Falsification proofs. Manafort case

Prosecution of former White House counsel sets K Street on edge — again

Grand jury indicts former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig

Republicans confront Trump amid cascading controversies

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