Trump Issues Pardons in Two High-Profile Fraud Cases

Assorted Fraud Stuff

Elsewhere in “fraud is legal now” news, President Donald Trump commuted Carlos Watson’s prison sentence and pardoned Trevor Milton. Watson ran Ozy Media, which impersonated a customer on a due diligence call; Milton ran Nikola Corp., which rolled a truck down a hill to pretend it had an engine. One possibility is that if you do hilarious high-profile fraud, Donald Trump will find that amusing and will pardon you. There are alternate readings.

Meanwhile “Charlie Javice was found guilty of defrauding JPMorgan Chase & Co. in its $175 million acquisition of her student-finance startup, Frank, following a six-week trial.” I thought Javice’s fraud was also pretty funny — she sold JPMorgan a fake email list for $175 million! — so there is hope for her; perhaps Trump just hasn’t gotten around to pardoning her yet.

It is probably bad that politically connected people can do fraud with impunity but. You know.

Top US law firms balk at backing Perkins’ challenge to Trump sanctions

None of the top 20 law firms in the US have so far offered their “unconditional support” to an effort by Perkins Coie to fight sanctions imposed by the Trump administration.

Organisers of an amicus brief in support of Perkins Coie’s lawsuit are struggling to convince America’s most powerful law firms to sign up amid concerns they will face retaliation by the Trump administration, according to emails seen by the Financial Times.

Eric Green, a well-known mediator, has been circulating a draft of the brief and tallying daily numbers of those law firms willing to add their names to the document. The brief is being prepared by the Los Angeles firm Munger, Tolles & Olson.

According to an email sent on Saturday afternoon by Green’s firm, Resolutions LLC, which was seen by the FT, 173 of 248 law firms that have responded to the survey are offering “unconditional support”.

However, among the top 100 law firms by revenue, as ranked by The American Lawyer magazine, only three have offered “unconditional support” with none coming from the top 20.

Trump’s Crypto Fandom Isn’t the End of State or Investors’ Suits

Investor litigation around cryptocurrency won’t disappear just because the US Securities and Exchange Commission has been dropping Biden administration enforcement actions. […]

But even as Trump’s SEC ends suits against Coinbase Global Inc., Binance Holdings Ltd, Ripple Labs Inc.—in which a court had ruled its token was a security when sold to institutional investors, but not to the general public—and others, privately-filed lawsuits against them have continued.

And suits against promoters of other digital assets, such as the “Hawk Tuah” and “Peanut the Squirrel” memecoins, are ongoing despite a signal that the SEC won’t consider most securities.

Private plaintiffs and state attorneys general can and likely will still pursue claims—perhaps even more so if the SEC backs off enforcement entirely and bad actors emerge, lawyers said.

Deloitte is hit hardest by Trump’s spending clampdown on consultants

Deloitte is emerging as the biggest early loser from a Trump administration push to axe spending on consultants, ahead of a Monday deadline for the companies to offer price cuts and other concessions.

The Big Four accounting and consulting firm has had at least 129 contracts terminated or slimmed down, according to a Financial Times analysis of data published by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). The figure is more than double that of any other consultancy.

Deloitte is one of 10 consulting firms that have been ordered to submit a detailed plan to save the government money, either by cutting prices or suggesting contracts that are not “mission critical” for an agency.