Brian Smith delivered the following remarks during Covington’s post-election conference call with clients on November 8, 2018. “Restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances to the Trump administration.”  That’s what Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi promised in her speech after the elections. Congressional oversight and investigations thrive in divided government, and Democratic leaders are already promising a new wave of oversight. While the press and pundits are mostly focused on the likely political investigations – access to the…

Summary Next week, Members of the European Parliament (“MEPs”) will gather in Strasbourg for the plenary session. Interesting votes, debates and committee debates will take place. On Monday, November 12, the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (“ECON”) will debate on a draft report supporting the Commission’s proposal on Sovereign Bond-Backed Securities (“SBBS”).  The proposal seeks to introduce a new financial instrument at the EU level, with the aim of enhancing financial stability and reducing risks…

Drug pricing presents intriguing political dynamics. Whether and what policy prescriptions actually come to fruition in the next two years remain to be seen, but the rhetoric around the imperative to lower drug pricing — and the political pressure to act — will be more intense than we have seen to date. President Trump and House Democrats might vie for ownership of this populist issue that continues to resonate.  Ironically, there is substantively less distance…

Canada’s new data breach law, The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), took effect on November 1. Official guidance released by the country’s Privacy Commissioner explains a few of the law’s key provisions that will affect organizations, specifically, breach reporting and notification obligations, their triggers, and record retention. Reporting & Notification Obligations Under the new law, an organization must report and notify individuals of a data breach involving personal information under its control if…

In three related bid protest decisions made public last week, the Government Accountability Office (“GAO”) reaffirmed the principle that agencies must meaningfully consider price when making best value tradeoff decisions.  GAO sustained the protests, stressing that merely paying lip service to price while selecting a more expensive, higher-rated offeror is not sufficient — agencies must provide a rational explanation for why they have decided to pay a premium for the awardee’s technical superiority. In Solers, …

In March 2017, Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., introduced a draft bill titled the Active Cyber Defense Certainty Act. The bill would amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to enable victims of cyberattacks to employ “limited defensive measures that exceed the boundaries of one’s network in order to monitor, identify and stop attackers.”[1] More specifically, the ACDC would empower individuals and companies to leave their own network to ascertain the perpetrator (i.e., establish attribution), disrupt…