Amazon.com Inc. cut ties with two of Washington’s biggest lobbying law firms and brought on new advisers following passage of the tax overhaul bill last year and in the face of new challenges in the age of President Donald Trump, reports Bloomberg Politics.

The shakeup occurred shortly before Trump briefly sent Amazon’s stock tumbling when he tweeted that Amazon doesn’t pay enough in state and local sales taxes, hurts retailers and gets an unfair edge on the back of the U.S. Postal Service.

“Amazon ended its relationship with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, the law firm that attracts more lobbying revenue than any other K Street operation, and Squire Patton Boggs, last Friday, according to a person familiar with the decisions,” write Ben Brody, Spencer Soper and Jennifer Jacobs.

The reporters add that their source told them Amazon hired Paul Brathwaite of Federal Street Strategies LLC and Josh Holly of Holly Strategies Inc.

Read the Bloomberg Politics article.

Bloomberg is reporting that Barclays Plc agreed to pay $2 billion to settle a probe into how it sold the sort of mortgage bonds that fueled the financial crisis, securing a penalty less than half of what U.S. authorities originally demanded.

Reporters Stephen Morris and Gavin Finch explained: “The British lender was the only bank to push back against the size of the settlement demanded by the Justice Department, prompting the prosecutor to file a lawsuit in the waning days of the Obama administration in 2016. The DOJ wanted a fine of about $5 billion, but the bank refused to pay any more than $2 billion, Bloomberg news reported in 2016.”

Two former executives at the bank, Paul Menefee and John Carroll, also settled Thursday and agreed to pay $2 million to resolve claims without admitting wrongdoing.

Read the Bloomberg article.

PilieroMazza has posted an on-demand webinar discussing compliance with new laws requiring or providing a preference for the purchase of goods, products, or materials produced in the United States.

President Trump signed Executive Order 13788 on April 18, 2017, aimed at tougher enforcement of the “Buy American Laws” which are those laws requiring or providing a preference for the purchase of goods, products, or materials produced in the United States. Given the Trump administration’s intent for stricter enforcement of domestic preference requirements, government contractors need to stay abreast of the relevant laws and regulations, such as the Buy American Act  and the Trade Agreement Act, the firm says on its website.

Webinar topics include:

• The general requirements of the BAA and TAA
• The applicability of the requirements and exceptions to their applicability
• Tests for determining a product’s country of origin
• Relevant FAR clauses and certifications
• The potential penalties for non-compliance
• Practical tips and strategies for compliance

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The State Department will be improving transparency in its requirements for contractor cooperation with its Office of Inspector General, according to Federal News Radio.

“While the Foreign Affairs Manual authorizes the OIG to access a contractor’s documents and interview its employees during the scope of an investigation, that provision is not currently explicitly expressed in the contracts signed by vendors,” writes David Thornton. “The OIG and the department are moving to correct this issue, and hopefully head off any further confusion or misunderstandings.”

The change is intended to head off problems such as the one seen earlier this year when a contractor would not comply with requests for an IT audit of security controls.

Read the article.

National Labor Relations Board member William Emanuel violated a White House ethics pledge by participating in a closely watched case involving his former law firm, the NLRB’s inspector general concluded in a report obtained by Bloomberg Law.

Bloomberg reporters Chris Opfer and Hassan A. Kanu write that Emanuel told Inspector General David Berry that he didn’t realize former firm Littler Mendelson represented a business in the seminal Browning-Ferris Industries case, although he previously flagged the litigation for lawmakers as one that he might need to sit out, according to Berry’s report. Emanuel then joined the rest of the five-member board in directing its top attorney to ask an appeals court to drop the case.

They report that Berry said the inconsistency in Emanuel’s statements to Congress and the IG “is not sufficient to show that” Emanuel “intentionally lied.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

The Trump administration has nominated Sharon Fast Gustafson to fill the vacant position of general counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Above the Law reports that Gustafson spent four years at Jones Day before becoming a solo practitioner in 1995.

The GC’s position at the EEOC has been vacant since December of 2016.

“The top litigator position has broad discretion in deciding what Title VII cases to pursue, and, as such, will take the lead in determining the Trump administration’s stance on such hot button issues as sexual harassment and the gender pay gap,” writes Above the Law editor Kathryn Rubino.

Read the Above the Law article.

Lawyers who met in a federal courtroom in Cleveland to discuss a settlement of opioid litigation faced the difficult task of crafting a deal that will not only pay their clients — mostly towns and cities — but include states and even the federal government while spreading the cash evenly across the country, according to Forbes.

Contributor Daniel Fisher writes that most of the attendees were private lawyers who have signed contingency-fee contracts with municipal clients.

He adds that “the sheer complexity of the litigation raises questions about how the parties will craft an agreement that ends the threat of further lawsuits against the industry while distributing cash to all the varied entities who have sued.”

But the situation for the self-funded private lawyers is complicated by the involvement of state and federal claims on some of the expected settlement funds.

Read the Forbes article.

Individuals who are hoping for a preemptive pardon from President Trump for any role they may have had in criminal activity should be aware that they run a significant risk that acceptance of a pardon would be used by state prosecutors as an admission of guilt.

Writing for Slate.com, New York University School of Law professor Ryan Goodman explains that a president’s pardon power applies only to federal crimes, leaving that individual liable for state crimes that cover the same underlying conduct.

“Officials like New York’s [Attorney General Eric] Schneiderman may feel they have an ace in hand if they can walk into a state courthouse with a defendant’s admission of guilt implied by having accepted a presidential pardon,” writes Goodman. “This get-out-of-federal-jail card comes at a price.”

He cites a 1915 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that acceptance of a pardon carries with it a “confession of guilt.”

Read the Slate.com article.

Next week the Supreme Court will hear oral argument on whether to reverse a 41-year-old ruling that allows states to require government employees to pay union dues even though they don’t want to be union members.

“It’s a familiar question for eight of the nine justices, who have already heard oral argument on the issue twice,” writes Amy Howe in SCOTUSblog. “The court did not resolve the issue the first time; the second time, in the wake of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, they deadlocked. This means that the outcome in [petitioner Mark] Janus’ case could hinge on the vote of the court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch.”

The case, appealed by Janus, an employee of the state of Illinois, comes after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit rejected his argument that the agency fee violated his rights under the First Amendment.

Read the SCOTUSblog article.

Bloomberg Law is reporting that U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has extracted a guilty plea from a former associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom who admitted in court in Washington that he misled investigators in the Russian election meddling case.

Alex van der Zwaan admitted he misled investigators about the last time he talked with Rick Gates, who was indicted in October with Paul Manafort over their consulting work in Ukraine. But van der Zwaan was the first of those who didn’t enter into a cooperation agreement with the special counsel’s office, according to Bloomberg.

He faces as long as six months in jail under advisory guidelines.

Skadden said it terminated van der Zwaan’s employment in 2017 and has been cooperating with authorities.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Image by US Dept. of Justice

Rachel Brand, the U.S. Justice Department’s No 3 official, is leaving for the top legal job at Walmart, reports the Associated Press.

“Brand attracted interest because of her potential to assume a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation,” according to the AP. “The official overseeing the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, has been repeatedly criticized by Trump. If Rosenstein had been fired or quit, oversight would have fallen to Brand. That job would now fall to the solicitor general, Noel Francisco.”

Walmart sought Brand to be head of global corporate governance at the retail giant.

Read the AP article.

When the Federal Reserve announced its punishment of Wells Fargo in the company’s sales scandal, the agency also announced that the company would replace four members of its 16-person board.

In a commentary for The Washington Post, former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers discussed the question: Why aren’t the directors who are leaving being named and asked to resign effective immediately with an element of humiliation?

“There are compelling reasons for due process before anyone goes to jail, even if it undermines deterrence,” Summers writes. “There is no similar justification for due process before being fired, publicly, for being a failed fiduciary. The Fed and other regulatory agencies should change their procedures.”

Read the Post article.

Dallas-based AriseBank — intended to be the world’s first “decentralized bank” —  saw its initial offering of a cryptocurrency it called AriseCoin shut down before it could get off the ground, reports The Dallas Morning News.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has halted the sale of AriseCoin, saying it was all part of a more straightforward, old-fashioned investment scam, according to economy writer Jill Cowan.

“Attempting to conceal what we allege to be fraudulent securities offerings under the veneer of technological terms like ‘ICO’ or ‘cryptocurrency’ will not escape the commission’s oversight or its efforts to protect investors,” Shamoil T. Shipchandler, director of the SEC’s Fort Worth Regional Office, said in a statement.

The company company had said it raised $600 million ahead of its initial offering of the new currency.

Read the Dallas News article.

In its determination to reverse a two-decade slump in U.S. stock listings, the SEC might offer companies an extreme incentive to go public: the ability to bar aggrieved shareholders from suing, reports Bloomberg.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has privately signaled that it’s open to at least considering whether companies should be able to force investors to settle disputes through arbitration, an often closed-door process that can limit the bad publicity and high legal costs triggered by litigation, writes Benjamin Bain.

“But allowing companies to shield themselves from shareholder lawsuits would almost certainly enrage investor advocates and Democratic lawmakers, a combination that helped defeat a 2012 attempt by private-equity giant Carlyle Group LP to prohibit investor suits as part of its IPO,” Bain explains.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Senior officials with the National Labor Relations Board have expressed concern over a plan outlined by the board’s new general counsel to demote the senior civil servants who resolve most labor cases, reports The New York Times.

Peter B. Robb, the agency’s general counsel and a Trump appointee, outlined the proposal this month in a conference call with the civil servants

“Under the proposal, those civil servants — considered by many conservatives and employers to be biased toward labor — would answer to a small cadre of officials installed above them in the National Labor Relations Board’s hierarchy,” explains Noam Scheiber.

The result could be result in a system friendlier to employers named in complaints of unfair labor practices or facing unionization drives.

Read the Times article.

A data analysis by the Los Angeles Times has found that President Trump is ranked sixth of 19 presidents for appointing the highest number of federal judges in their first year.

Reporter Kyle Kim explains that Trump’s Republican Party’s slim majority in the Senate is one reason he has been able to fast-track judges.

“Another reason is a little bit of political warfare. Republican senators blocked 36 judicial nominations in President Obama’s first five years, according to Politifact. The best-known nominee was Judge Merrick Garland, chosen to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,” writes Kim.

Read the LA Times article.

A group of 22 Democratic state attorneys general, including those from California and New York, filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of tough net neutrality rules for online traffic, according to The Los Angeles Times.

The AGs’ complaint argues that the vote last month by the Republican-controlled FCC was an “arbitrary and capricious” change to regulations, writes reporter Jim Puzzanghera.

“The repeal of net neutrality would turn internet service providers into gatekeepers, allowing them to put profits over consumers while controlling what we see, what we do and what we say online,” said New York Atty. Gen. Eric T. Schneiderman, who is leading the suit.

Read the LA Times article.

Reuters is reporting that a loophole in the new U.S. tax law could allow multinational corporations like Apple Inc to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes on profits stashed overseas, according to experts.

Reporter David Morgan explains that the loophole involves the tax rates — 15.5 percent or 8 percent — that companies must pay on $2.6 trillion in profits they are holding abroad.

Stephen Shay, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, said the loophole clearly is the result of rushed legislation. He explained that a U.S. multinational could manipulate its foreign cash positions and potentially save  money by shifting profits to the lower rate from the higher one.

Read the Reuters article.

Washington Technology will present a complimentary webinar on Jan. 25, 2018, to discuss new compliance requirements for securing government data contractor networks. The webinar will begin at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

Speakers for the one-hour event will be Ron Ross of NIST; Maria Proestou, CEO of Delta Resources; and Susan Cassidy, partner, Covington & Burling.

Government and industry experts will:

• Offer advice and guidance on what contractors should be doing to ensure compliance.
• Provide insights on best practices in areas such as training, risk management and planning for in the future.
• Help to prepare attendees for meeting this requirement and maintaining compliance for their government customers.

Register for the webinar.

Former Indiana Senate Majority Leader Brandt Hershman has joined Barnes & Thornburg LLP’s Washington, D.C., office as an of counsel attorney in the firm’s Government Services and Finance Department. Hershman will be an integral member of the Federal Relations Group.

Hershman, who served 17 years in the Indiana senate before recently announcing his resignation, is widely recognized for his experience in the areas of tax, energy, telecommunications and agriculture.

“It is an honor to join a firm of Barnes & Thornburg’s caliber and I look forward to working with the exceptional attorneys who are counseling clients on issues critical to their businesses, such as taxes, economic development and infrastructure” Hershman said.

Hershman, who represented constituents in Senate District 7, focused his efforts on tax reform and economic development during his tenure. He led the effort to usher in telecommunications deregulation legislation that has brought more than $5 billion of investment in infrastructure throughout Indiana.

“We are excited to welcome Brandt to Barnes & Thornburg,” said Karen McGee, managing partner of the Washington, D.C. office. “His experience in public service and background in tax policy, telecommunications, and other areas will be a tremendous asset to our clients as a member of our growing Washington, D.C.-based Federal Relations group. It will be a privilege to work with someone who has had a huge impact on public policy throughout his 17-year political career. We congratulate him on his service to Indiana and look forward to working with him.”

In addition to serving in the Indiana Senate, Hershman previously served as managing partner and general counsel for The DeNovo Group. He also served as executive director of the Program on Continuing Education for Public Officials at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law.

He also has served in several staff positions in the U.S. Congress and its members, including district operations director for the U.S. House of Representatives; press secretary for Buyer for Congress; and presidential writer in the Executive Office of the President in The White House.

A graduate of Purdue University, Hershman earned his law degree from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis. He also earned two executive certificates, one in comparative tax policy and administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and one in finance and financial management services from Cornell University.

He is admitted to practice in the state of Indiana and before the U.S. Tax Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Southern Districts of Indiana and the Indiana Supreme Court.