Welcome to Compliance Hot Spots, our snapshot on white-collar, regulatory and compliance news and trends. In your inbox this week: Attorney General WIlliam Barr's former chief of staff prepares to take the reins of the DOJ's criminal division. Covington's Rob Kelner guides Amazon through a congressional investigation, and prosecutors face possible discipline for conduct in a sanctions case. Plus Lyft hails Akin Gump for lobbying work.

We'd love your feedback, and thanks for reading. Contact C. Ryan Barber in Washington at [email protected] and at 202-828-0315. Follow @cryanbarber on Twitter.

Brian Rabbitt Ascends Into Leader Role at DOJ

In his multi-stop tour through the Trump administration, Brian Rabbitt has served behind the scenes as a White House lawyer, an adviser at the Securities and Exchange Commission, as the chief of staff to U.S. Attorney General William Barr.

At the White House, he shepherded SEC Chairman Jay Clayton through his confirmation. While at the SEC, he was detailed to the Justice Department to lead the team helping Barr through his confirmation. If Judge Thomas Hardiman had been nominated to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy, in 2018, he was in line to play a leading role in the Trump White House's second Supreme Court confirmation fight.

Rabbit is now set to have his day in the sun. Next month, he will take charge of the Justice Department's criminal division, replacing Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski.

For Rabbitt, who departed Barr's front office in March to become Benczkowski's top deputy, the new role is sure to provide a lively next chapter in his Trump administration tenure. His rise coincides with the criminal division seeking to crack down on coronavirus-related fraud and with a probe into whether U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, dumped stock earlier this year based on inside information about the pandemic.

Rabbitt enters the role with ties to the SEC, which is conducting a parallel investigation of Burr's stock sales. Last month, Burr stepped down temporarily as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the FBI seized his cellphone as part of the investigation. (Burr has been represented in the probe by Latham & Watkins partners Jonathan Su and Alice Fisher, who led the Justice Department's criminal division under the George W. Bush administration.)

Before joining the Trump administration, Rabbitt was an associate for seven years at Williams & Connolly, where he represented a number of financial services companies, including Carlyle Group and TCF Bank.

In a memo to the Justice Department's criminal division, Benczkowski said he had informed Barr late last year of his plans to resign in the summer. Benczkowski said he asked Rabbitt to become his top deputy in March "as part of the overall transition."

"Brian and I worked together closely during the previous year on a number of important matters affecting the criminal division, and I came to appreciate that he shared my commitment to maintaining the division's institutional independence and integrity, and to pursuing our mission with objectivity and humility," Benczkowski wrote in the memo. "Brian is an outstanding lawyer, leader, and manager, and I am confident that he will serve with distinction as the head of the criminal division."

Who Got the Work

>> Covington & Burling partner Robert Kelner (above), chair of the firm's election and political law practice, is counsel to Amazon amid a congressional investigation focused on antitrust law, according to The New York Times. Kelner said in a letter that Amazon was "committed to cooperating with your inquiry and will make the appropriate executive available to testify." Kelner wrote: "This includes making Jeff Bezos available to testify at a hearing with the other C.E.O.'s this summer."

>> A team from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has been retained by Lyft Inc. to lobby on "policy matters impacting independent workers, consumers, and businesses," according to a new registration.

>> Meanwhile, Holland & Knight was retained by the city of Savannah, Georgia, to lobby on coronavirus relief. Savannah had not hired a federal lobbyist in more than a decade, records show.

>> Lawyers from Kelley Drye & Warren—including Alysa Hutnik, John Villafranco and Donnelly McDowell—represented Kohl's Department Stores Inc. in an FTC action that alleged the company failed to provide victims with information related to identity theft. The company agreed to pay a civil penalty of $220,000. "Kohl's takes compliance matters seriously, including the responsibility to assist victims of identity theft," Kohl's said in a statement.

>> Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd has sued the SEC in Washington for any public records concerning documents produced by OvaScience Inc., now known as Millendo Therapeutics Inc. The firm is counsel to lead plaintiff Freedman Family Investments LLC in a proposed class action.

>> Schertler & Onorato partner Stuart Sears represented a former spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration who pleaded guilty Thursday to a brazen fraud scheme in which he falsely claimed to be a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer. The former DEA official, Garrison Kenneth Courtney, is set to be sentenced Oct. 23 for duping at least a dozen companies out of a combined total of more than $4.4 million.

Compliance Reading Corner

Prosecutor in Roger Stone Case Will Testify About Barr's Intervention. "House Democrats issued subpoenas on Tuesday to the prosecutor, Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, along with a second Justice Department official, John W. Elias, who has also agreed to testify in public on June 24 about politicization under Attorney General William P. Barr—setting up a potential fight with the department about what they will be permitted to say." [NYT] The Washington Post has more here.

Judge Hints at Potential Disciplinary Action for Prosecutors in Sanctions Case. "A federal judge indicated prosecutors could face disciplinary action for allegedly failing to turn over evidence in a case that led to the conviction of an Iranian man on money-laundering and sanctions violations charges. The comments from Judge Alison Nathan came in response to a Friday request by the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan to drop the case against Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad. Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said it wasn't worth the office's resources to continue litigating "disclosure-related issues" that arose during, before and after the trial." [WSJ] New York Law Journal has more here and NPR here. Read the judge's order.

Inspectors General Warn That Trump Administration Is Blocking Scrutiny of Coronavirus Rescue Programs. "In a letter to four congressional committee chairs Thursday, two officials in charge of a new government watchdog entity revealed that the Trump administration had issued legal rulings curtailing independent oversight of Cares Act funding. The letter surfaced amid growing bipartisan outrage over the administration's decision not to disclose how it is spending hundreds of billions in aid for businesses." [The Washington Post]

Wray Hangs On With FBI Besieged by Trump and GOP's Russia Probe. Wray's no-nonsense approach may be the reason he's survived this long under a president who's effectively kept him on permanent probation. His handling of the days of unrest is emblematic of his leadership style since taking over the embattled Federal Bureau of Investigation in August 2017, according to current and former law enforcement officials." [Bloomberg]

Amazon Said to Be Under Scrutiny in 2 States for Abuse of Power. "California has asked about the company's private label products and whether it uses data from sellers to inform which products it sells, according to two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution by the company. The Washington attorney general's office has also been interested in whether Amazon makes it harder for sellers to list their products on other websites." [NYT]

DOJ and FTC Joust for Chance to Review Facebook-Giphy Deal. "The two agencies haven't resolved a dispute over which one should take on the task, the people said. The outcome of that decision could be important for Facebook, because the FTC has been more reluctant to challenge the company's deals in the past — as well as for the agencies themselves, each of which is pursuing high-profile antitrust probes into Silicon Valley's biggest players." [Politico]

Scientists Warn Against Consumer Protection Nominee. "Last week, a group of more than 90 leading scientists, including the former head of the federal National Toxicology Program, signed a letter arguing that [Nancy] Beck's work at the EPA 'consistently disregarded scientific best practices, favor[ed] chemical manufacturers, and put vulnerable people in harm's way.'" [NPR]

Wells Fargo Compliance Woes, House Inquiry Draw Investor Suit. "Wells Fargo & Co. allegedly misled investors about its compliance with 2018 consent orders stemming from its fake-accounts scandal, according to a would-be class suit in New York federal district court." [Bloomberg Law]

Squire Patton Boggs: Trent Lott Was Not Fired Because of Black Lives Matter. "A source inside the firm with knowledge of the decision tells Washingtonian that "long-simmering incompatibilities"—not the current national mood—were to blame. 'The writing was on the wall for a while,' says the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. 'The firm's culture is centered around collaboration. He just didn't fit into that mold.'" [Washingtonian] More here at Politico: Trent Lott and John Breaux sign on at Crossroads Strategies

Notable Moves & More

>> Alston & Bird said it has hired white-collar litigator Joanna Hendon, who has defended President Donald Trump in a pair of cases in Manhattan federal court, including an ongoing civil racketeering case. Hendon is joining the firm as a partner in New York after more than seven years at Spears & Imes. And she's bringing the president with her as a client.

>> Philip Morris International Inc. said Suzanne Rich Folsom (at left) will become the company's senior vice president and general counsel, taking over the company's legal, ethics and compliance department effective July 1. Folsom succeeds Marc Firestone, who plans to retire later this year. As general counsel, Firestone also held the role of president of external affairs. He will continue in the external affairs role until a successor is found. Folsom will be based in Lausanne, Switzerland. She was recognized by Corporate Counsel's sister publication The National Law Journal as one of the Top 50 General Counsels and as a Cyber Trailblazer.

>> Former FBI lawyer James Baker is now deputy general counsel to Twitter, the company said this week. "Jim is committed to our core principles of an open internet and freedom of expression, and brings experience navigating complex, global issues with a principled approach," Twitter general counsel Sean Edgett said.

>> The White House said Kyle Hauptman, economic advisor to Sen. Tom Cotton's (R-Ark.) and staff director of the Senate Banking Committee's Subcommittee on Economic Policy, would be nominated to the National Credit Union Administration, my colleague Michael Ogden at Credit Union Times reports.

>> And a White House departure: Andrew Olmem, deputy director of the National Economic Council, is leaving his post this week. "Mr. Olmem coordinated administration efforts to scale back financial regulation, culminating in bipartisan legislation in 2018 that cut regulations for small lenders and raised the asset threshold at which larger regional banks automatically face stricter rules," according to WSJ. The former Venable partner has not announced his next steps.