Recently several events from our nation’s capital regarding the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act caught my attention. The first was a series of questions posed to attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch by the junior senator from Texas, Ted Cruz. The second was the announcement that Andrew Weissmann rejoined the Department of Justice as chief of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section.
Weissmann most recently worked at New York University School of Law. From 2002-2005, Weissmann was the deputy and then the director of the Enron Task Force, where he supervised the prosecution of more than 30 individuals. From 2011 to 2013, he served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After the announcement of his move back to “Main Justice,” I found it fascinating that he was excoriated in both the right-wing and left-wing press. From the right, his involvement in the prosecution of former Enron executives was used as an example of the criminalization of everyday normal business conduct. From the left, he was chastised as a water-boy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
