By: Sara Kropf This is an embarrassing story. I promise it will make sense in the end. In 1991, I was finishing my senior year in high school in suburban Georgia. I’d joined the mock trial team, and we had our competition one Saturday at a nearby courthouse. I needed a suit for court. My mom was a nurse, and she didn’t have a business suit for me to borrow. We didn’t really have extra…

By Sara Kropf The Department of Justice has embrace electronic surveillance in white-collar criminal cases. Search warrants to ISPs or phone companies for emails and text messages, or forensic analyses of a client’s electronic devices are the norm. I tell clients that by the time we learn about a criminal investigation, DOJ has already issued a search warrant or subpoena to Google for their Gmail account. One aspect of the the September 2020 update to…

By Andrea L. Moseley Have you ever wondered why so many seasoned trial lawyers excel at Tennis? In my view, as a former Division III collegiate tennis player and a White Collar litigator, it is not a coincidence. Especially in the midst of this unusual pandemic Tennis season, I have been thinking more and more about how the singles tennis player must deal with many of the same struggles that most trial lawyers encounter. In…

By Sara Kropf There are a few fundamental constitutional rights for a criminal defendant. The right to a lawyer. The right to confront witnesses. The right not to incriminate yourself. And the right to a jury trial. One disappointing part of law school was learning how limited these rights are in real life. For example, you can be under criminal investigation for years and be interviewed by the government repeatedly—all without a lawyer. The right…

By Sara Kropf The First Amendment gets a lot of attention, and rightfully so. The last clause, however, is often ignored. It says that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably . . . to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Federal government employees’ rights to “petition the government” are somewhat restricted. In fact, Congress has made it a crime for federal…

By Andrea L. Moseley There are very few sui generis innovators when it comes to alleged criminal schemes. Steve Bannon may be a headliner but he is no pioneer as he becomes the new government flagship for alleged donor fraud. In recent times, Southern District of New York (SDNY) prosecutors have made no secret about the Department of Justice’s intent to intensify its efforts to combat the abuse of vulnerable political donors. This summer I…

By Sara Kropf Many—perhaps most—of my clients who are targets of Office of Inspector General (OIG) investigations think the process is not fair. They are right. In an OIG investigation, the same entity is the investigator, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury. There’s no separation of power. There’s no right to appeal. Once the findings are made, you are stuck with them forever. Let’s start with the basics: There is nothing illegal about this…