The U.S. Department of Justice is looking into whether Uber violated laws involving the bribery of foreign officials, the company confirmed to Business Insider on Tuesday.

The privately-held ride-hailing giant is being investigated for possibly violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which makes it illegal for individuals and organizations to pay foreign government officials in order to obtain or retain business.

Alexei Otreskovic writes that the investigation follows months of controversies and internal turmoil for the company.

Read the Business Insider article.

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A federal judge in Detroit sentenced former engineer James Liang to 40 months in prison for his role in Volkswagen AG’s multiyear scheme to sell diesel cars that generated more pollution than U.S. clean air rules allowed, Reuters is reporting.

The sentence calls for Liang to pay a $200,000 fine, 10 times the amount sought by federal prosecutors. The sentencing judge said he hoped the prison sentence and fine would deter other auto industry engineers and executives from similar schemes to deceive regulators and consumers, write David Shepardson and Joseph White.

LProsecutors said Liang was a “pivotal figure” in designing the systems used to make Volkswagen diesels appear to comply with U.S. pollution standards, when instead they could emit up to 40 times the allowed levels of smog-forming compounds in normal driving, according to the report.

Read the Reuters article.

Bloomberg Law describes how special counsel Robert Mueller is following a time-tried strategy for looking into the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia:

“Follow the money. Start small and work up. See who will ‘flip’ and testify against higher-ups by pursuing charges such as tax evasion, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.”

Reporter Chris Strohm quotes Jeffrey Cramer, a former prosecutor who’s now managing director of consulting firm Berkeley Research Group LLC: ““You go for the weakest link, and you start building up.”

Mueller’s approach has been used for decades in criminal investigations, from white-collar fraud to mob racketeering.

Read the Bloomberg article.

An article in the Government Contracts Insights blog on the website of Morrison Foerster discusses stays of award and performance during the pendency of a bid protest.

Partner Daniel Chudd and associate James Tucker cover stay of contract awards, stay of contract performance, Court of Federal Claims protests, and stay overrides.

In a later post, they will cover the substantive grounds of protest.

Read the article.

Robert S. Mueller III left a $3.4 million partner job in the white-shoe law firm WilmerHale, where he worked for clients such as Facebook, Apple, Sony and the NFL, to serve as the special counsel overseeing the law enforcement investigation into whether the Kremlin and the Trump campaign coordinated to impact the 2016 election, The Washington Post reports.

The Post filed a request for the Mueller team’s public financial disclosures, which offer a glimpse into whom the special counsel and the lawyers he has hired have worked for and where they have made and invested their money.

Three other WilmerHale lawyers who joined Mueller on the team left behind incomes ranging from $1.4 million to more than $5.8 million, reports Matt Zapotosky.

Read the Washington Post article.

While the public watches President Trump churn through White House staff members, his Administration is humming along nicely in filling federal judgeships, with the enthusiastic assistance of the Republican majority in the Senate, points out Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker.

Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court was Trump’s most important victory. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell kept that seat vacant for nearly the full final year of Barack Obama’s presidency.

“But McConnell didn’t just protect a Supreme Court seat for the next President; he basically shut down the entire confirmation process for all of Obama’s federal-judgeship nominees for more than a year,” Toobin writes. “It’s the vacancies that accumulated during this time—more than a hundred of them—that Trump’s team is now working efficiently to fill.”

Read the New Yorker article.

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In a Maryland case, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the state’s effort to offer incentives for new gas fired power plants, ruling that the subsidies impermissibly encroached on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority under the Federal Power Act, writes Hugh E. Hilliard, a senior counsel with O’Melveny & Myers. But the Court left open the broader issue of whether states have the power to offer other forms of energy incentives.

“Now several cases before the courts are raising just that question, with potentially far-reaching implications for nuclear and renewable energy, although recent decisions in those cases have upheld state subsidies that are not directly tethered to sales of electric energy at wholesale, which are subject to FERC’s exclusive jurisdiction,” according to Hilliard.

He writes that the latest developments in federal courts indicate that state subsidies for renewable energy, including renewable-energy portfolio standards and mandated procurement programs, are safe from challenges, at least for now.

Read the article.

Reuters is reporting that accounting company PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP will pay $1 million to settle a civil complaint alleging it conducted a flawed audit into Merrill Lynch’s compliance with federal brokerage customer protection rules, U.S. audit watchdogs said on Wednesday.

“The PCAOB’s penalty against PwC comes a little over a year after the Securities and Exchange Commission ordered Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch to pay $415 million to settle charges it had put its brokerage clients’ cash at risk in violation of customer protection rules,” writes Sarah N. Lynch.

Read the Reuters article.

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A new U.S. rule aimed at restoring consumers’ ability to band together to sue financial companies has survived its first challenge, as a top banking regulator said he would not petition for it to be suspended, Reuters reports

Lisa Lambert and Pete Schroeder write that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule abolishing “mandatory arbitration clauses” was released on July 10, and was immediately threatened by Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration.

Acting U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika publicly argued with CFPB Director Richard Cordray, appointed by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, over whether the rule could endanger the banking system.

Read the Reuters report.

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The case of Donald Zarda, a skydiver who claimed his employer, Altitude, violated Title VII when it fired him after finding out he was gay, illustrates how the U.S. Department of Justice and the Equal Opportunity Commission can sometimes operate at cross purposes in litigation.

According to a Reuters report, the EEOC, an independent federal agency, is representing Zarda’s estate against the former employer. At the same time, the DOJ has filed its own amicus brief, explicitly disavowing the EEOC’s stance.

Alison Frankel writes that the brief “argued primarily that the EEOC and the 7th Circuit, which adopted the agency’s reasoning in its en banc opinion last April in Hively v. Ivy Tech Community College, disregarded the actual language of the statute and misread Supreme Court precedent on interpreting that language. According to the Justice Department, it’s up to Congress, not the courts, to legislate protection for gay and lesbian employees, and Congress has steadfastly refused to do so.”

Read the Reuters article.

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The Bureau of Land Management has announced its recommendation that the hydraulic fracturing rule from 2015 entitled, “Oil and Gas; Hydraulic Fracturing on Federal and Indian Lands,” be rescinded, reports Fox Rothschild in its Energy Law Today blog.

Melissa J. Lyon explains that in 2015 the BLM had issued regulations that attempted to regulate oil and gas development on federal and tribal lands by focusing on wellbore construction, chemical disclosures and water management.

But litigation kept the final rule from going into effect. Then U.S. District Court Judge Skavdahl ruled that the BLM does not have the authority to enforce the 2015 hydraulic fracturing rule.

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The Associated Press is reporting that Celgene Corp. has agreed to pay $280 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging the pharmaceutical company committed fraud promoting a drug with a notorious history that was re-purposed to treat leprosy and another therapy for unapproved cancer treatments.

The agreement, announced by federal prosecutors, came out of a lawsuit filed by a former Celgene saleswoman who said Celgene submitted false claims to Medicare and health care programs in 28 states and Washington, D.C.

“The lawsuit filed by Beverly Brown was brought on behalf of the U.S. government under a federal whistleblower law. She could receive as much as $84 million as her share of the settlement,” writes Brian Melley.

Read the AP article.

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A newfound memo from Kenneth W. Starr’s independent counsel investigation into President Bill Clinton sheds fresh light on a constitutional puzzle that is taking on mounting significance amid the Trump-Russia inquiry: Can a sitting president be indicted?

The New York Times reports that the 56-page memo, locked in the National Archives for nearly two decades and obtained by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, amounts to the most thorough government-commissioned analysis rejecting a generally held view that presidents are immune from prosecution while in office.

Reporter Charlie Savage writes: “It is proper, constitutional, and legal for a federal grand jury to indict a sitting president for serious criminal acts that are not part of, and are contrary to, the president’s official duties,” the Starr office memo concludes. “In this country, no one, even President Clinton, is above the law.”

Read the NYT article.

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A federal judge sentenced disgraced former disability lawyer Eric C. Conn to 12 years in prison Friday even though Conn is a fugitive, according to a report in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves imposed the sentence in absentia against Conn in federal court in Lexington, KY. The 12-year sentence was the maximum for the two charges covered in a plea deal that was in place.

Reporter Bill Estep writes that Conn, 56, was once one of the top disability lawyers in the country, representing thousands of people in successful claims for benefits from the Social Security Administration and making millions in fees. But then in March Conn pleaded guilty to stealing from the government and paying illegal gratuities to a Social Security judge.

The conspiracy outlined by Conn included using false evidence of clients’ physical or mental disabilities in their claims. Some doctors were paid to sign forms with little scrutiny, and Conn bribed the Social Security judge to approve claims.

Read the Herald-Leader article.

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The Washington Post is reporting that Marc E. Kasowitz, President Trump’s longtime attorney representing him in the Russia investigations, reportedly sent angry, threatening and profane emails to a stranger who criticized him this week. In one email, he told the man, “I already know where you live, I’m on you.”

A Kasowitz spokesman did not dispute the account, which was reported Thursday by the independent nonprofit journalism site ProPublica. The spokesman said Kasowitz regretted his words and that the email “came at the end of a very long day that at 10 p.m. was not yet over,” writes Derek Hawkins.

The exchange began after a “Rachel Maddow Show” broadcast that discussed how Kasowitz had made the unusual decision not to seek a security clearance to handle the Russia case. The man sent an email to Kasowitz witht eh subject line, “Resign Now.”

Read the Post‘s article.

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President Donald Trump’s effort to reshape influential U.S. courts by stocking them with conservative judges faces at least one significant impediment, reports Reuters: some of the courts best placed to thwart his agenda have liberal majorities that are likely to stay in place in the short-term.

“Those courts, including an influential Washington appeals court and two appellate courts that ruled against Trump in cases involving his travel ban, all had an influx of fresh liberal blood under President Barack Obama,” writes Lawrence Hurley.

Hurley explains that in Obama’s eight years in office, he was able to make enough appointments to leave a strong liberal imprint on the federal courts. At the end of his second term, nine of the 13 federal appeals courts had a majority of Democratic-appointed judges.

Read the Reuters article.

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President Trump’s pick to replace fired FBI Director James Comey goes before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. While committee members are preparing a full day of tough questioning to reveal Christopher Wray’s character and positions on law enforcement, former high level Justice Department lawyer Bill Mateja says his former colleague is ideally suited to weather the turbulent and politically charged approval process, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

“Chris Wray’s appointment should sail through with flying colors,” said Mateja, now a shareholder in Dallas-based Polsinelli P.C. and former Senior Counsel to U.S. Deputy Attorneys General Larry Thompson and James Comey in Washington, D.C., where he also served as point person for the President’s Corporate Fraud Task Force. “He’s a superb and qualified candidate to run the FBI. He has a great moral compass and he’s no one’s minion. He has the experience, the smarts and the gravitas.

“He’s an odd choice in a way for President Trump because he has worked with and is cut from the same cloth as Jim Comey, who Trump fired as FBI director, and special counsel Robert Mueller, who Trump has attacked. All three strive to do the right thing. The public can rest easy that Chris will not be a lackey for Trump.

“Chris is a Republican but he doesn’t wear his politics on his sleeve. He keeps things close to his vest. He isn’t as colorful as Jim Comey. He takes a conservative approach. It’s not his nature to comment publicly if it can be avoided.”

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Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is expected to be deposed as New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman expands his sweeping probe into whether Tillerson’s former employer, ExxonMobil, misled investors about the impact of climate change, reports JWN.

“Schneiderman’s office considers the nation’s chief diplomat a central figure in a case that pits the ambitious Democrat against a Texas energy giant and has divided attorneys general nationwide,” according to the report.

Some state prosecutors and Exxon’s legal team accuse the New York attorney general of abusing the power of his office to score political points. Schneiderman, however, says he he has the legal authority to depose the secretary of state, who served as Exxon’s CEO until joining the Trump administration.

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The health care bill the U.S. Senate is fine-tuning could have profound effects on elderly people who rely on nursing home care, says Houston-area elder law attorney Kelley Bentley of Roberts Markel Weinberg Butler Hailey PC. Bentley is board certified in estate planning and probate law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

“The bill proposes large cuts to federal Medicaid support over several years with reliance on states to decide funding in the future. In Texas, nearly 70 percent of nursing home residents are enrolled in Medicaid.

“While many people may assume the program pays solely for health care for the poor, it also fills a gap for long-term care, including at-home and nursing home care for the elderly population. The cost of long-term care in the U.S. can be substantial and a serious drain on an individual’s assets. That includes middle-class retirees who sometimes have managed to save substantial assets. Some people simply outlive their savings for long-term care.

“Older people should take a hard look at their savings long before any health problems. Consider a long-term care savings plan or long-term care insurance and also talk to a lawyer about how to organize and protect assets. In Texas, long-term care Medicaid programs can provide a wide range of care, including nursing home, assisted living and at-home programs. The secret is to start to plan early, before the need arises as there are more options available for the preservation of assets. The goal is not necessarily to preserve assets for future generations, but to ensure that an individual (or married couple) has sufficient assets to cover any future long-term care needs.”

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Reuters is reporting that an ex-general counsel of insurer WellCare Health Plans Inc. pleaded guilty on Wednesday in federal court in Tampa to having made a false statement to Florida’s Medicaid program, prosecutors said, the latest former executive to be convicted in the case.

Thaddeus Bereday, indicted along with four other former WellCare executives in 2011, faces a maximum of five years in prison.

“Bereday’s plea came after the U.S. Supreme Court in April declined to hear an appeal by former WellCare Chief Executive Todd Farha of his fraud conviction for his role in a scheme to cheat the Medicaid health insurance program for the poor,” writes reporter Nate Raymond.

Read the Reuters article.

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