Good evening, and welcome back to Compliance Hot Spots, our weekly snapshot of white-collar enforcement, regulatory and compliance, and trends. In your inbox this week: tech titans head (virtually) to Capitol Hill—meet the Big Law attorneys who have done some of the prep. Plus: a couple federal appeals court rulings caught our eye, and scroll down for Who Got the Work, notable moves and more.

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

 

   

Meet the Big Law Partners Who've Prepared Tech CEOs for Major Antitrust Hearing

In preparation for Wednesday's momentous and rare joint appearance before Congress, four titans of the tech industry turned to prominent lawyers in Washington for counsel to prepare for a hearing that will unfold against the backdrop of investigations by federal law enforcement agencies.

The chief executives of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are set to appear Wednesday before a U.S. House panel for a hearing that will mark the culmination of a 13-month congressional investigation of antitrust issues into the tech sector.

Lawmakers have collected more than 1 million documents and conducted interviews for hundreds of hours, investigating the tech giants on accusations that they have unfairly flexed their market might to suppress smaller competitors.

A team at the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, including partners Reginald Brown (above) and Jon Yarowsky, have prepared Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Brown, who served as a White House lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, helped prepare Zuckerberg ahead of past appearances before Congress. Brown is the head of WilmerHale's financial institutions team and leads the congressional investigations practice.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has been advised by Jenner & Block partners Tom Perrelli, who served as the third-ranking Justice Department official in the Obama administration, and Emily Loeb, co-chair of the firm's government controversies and public policy litigation practice. Alicia O'Brien (at left), a King & Spalding partner and former Justice Department official, has advised Google CEO Sundar Pichai. O'Brien, a former deputy assistant attorney general in DOJ's Office of Legislative Affairs, joined King & Spalding last year.

For Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, the virtual hearing before the House subcommittee will mark his first appearance before Congress. Bezos has been counseled ahead of the hearing by Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner Karen Dunn—newly arrived from Boies Schiller Flexner—and Covington & Burling partner Robert Kelner, the head of the firm's political law practice.

>> Read more at NLJ about some of the considerations that went into the preparation.

 

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Who Got the Work

>> Greenberg Traurig said it's executed a four-month foreign-lobbying contract with the Republic of Turkey—for $100,000—regarding U.S. executive and legislative review under the Arms Export Control Act.

>> A team from Goodwin Procter advocated for Doe Company in a grand jury subpoena fight in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The panel affirmed the district court's orders enforcing Doe Company's compliance with a subpoena and holding the Doe Company in contempt for failure to produce the subpoenaed documents. A grand jury is investigating one company's acquisition of another.

>> A five-member team from Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld has signed up to lobby for gig company DoorDash, according to a new filing. The Akin team said it would "provide counsel on policy matters impacting independent workers, consumers, and businesses."

>> "A U.S. appeals court on Monday dealt a setback to the student loan company Navient, which is the target of state and federal lawsuits that accuse it of predatory lending before and after the last financial crisis," American Banker reports. "The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the Pennsylvania attorney general could bring a lawsuit that parallels one filed by the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau." Navient's legal team included lawyers from the firms Hyman Phelps & McNamara and Kirkland & Ellis. Read the ruling.

 

 

Compliance Reading Corner

The Justice Department Is Turning 150. Some Agency Veterans Say It Needs A Facelift. "The problem is that [William Barr] seems to be acting as the bag-man for the president who has been attacking these prosecutions for years. And whether there's the reality of carrying the president's water, there's clearly the appearance of it, and it has a terrible effect, I think, on the Justice Department's legitimacy and everything it does," Harvard law prof and DOJ alum Jack Goldsmith said. [NPR] Earlier today, AG William Barr tried to rebut claims that he has taken steps to help Trump allies in court.

Congress Has Battled Airlines, Banks, Tobacco and Baseball. Now It's Preparing to Clash With Big Tech. On Wednesday, the industry's four most powerful chief executives are set to appear, swear an oath and submit to a grilling from House lawmakers who have been probing the Web's most recognizable names to determine whether they have become too big and powerful. The focus is antitrust, and the extent to which a quartet of digital behemoths—representing a nearly $5 trillion slice of the U.S. economy—has harmed competition, consumers and the country writ large. [The Washington Post] More here at NYT: Jeff Bezos Cast in a Role He Never Wanted: Amazon's D.C. Defender. The WSJ preview's the Bezos appearance here.

A Decade with Dodd-Frank: How Crisis Drives Meaningful Change. "By nearly every metric, the program has achieved its mission. Law enforcement has been empowered to prosecute major schemes with greater efficiency; organizations have been called to task for significant misconduct; employers who silence or retaliate against those who report misconduct have been exposed and punished; individuals outside of an organization have been deputized to come forward to report fraud; and, most importantly, courageous whistleblowers have been handsomely rewarded for speaking up despite the many risks of doing so." [NYU School of Law Program on Compliance]

David Massey on Former Manhattan Federal Prosecutors Taking a Stand. "More than 160 former Manhattan federal prosecutors signed a letter condemning President Trump and Attorney General Barr for the firing of Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman." [Corporate Crime Reporter]

CFTC Chairman Pushes to Finalize Dodd-Frank Rules. "We needed to get rid of the unfinished business," Chairman Heath Tarbert said. "But we also needed to figure out, 'What's this agency going to do in the next 10 years, in the next 20 years?'" [WSJ]

Brooklyn Federal Judge Denies Request to Share Documents With Huawei CFO in Canada. U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York has rejected a request from attorneys defending the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to expand the scope of documents that can be reviewed by Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, who is legally classified as a fugitive from justice, my colleague Jane Wester reports. [New York Law Journal]

HSBC Defends Cooperation With U.S. Prosecutors, Denies Setting Trap for Huawei. "HSBC said the U.S. Justice Department made formal requests for information about Huawei, a former HSBC client, and that it didn't 'set a trap' for Huawei to break U.S. sanctions, as Chinese newspaper People's Daily wrote in an article Friday. The statement comes amid intensifying U.S.-China tensions over trade, Hong Kong and Huawei that have put HSBC in the crosshairs as an Asia-focused trade bank with a large U.S. operation." [WSJ]

 

 

Notable Moves & More

>> Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer said it has hired Julie Elmer from the DOJ antitrust division's technology and financial services section. Elmer had been at the DOJ since 2015. She was previously a counsel at Maynard Cooper & Gale and a partner at Bradley Arant Boult Cummings.

>> Wiley Rein is adding two lawyers to its Food and Drug Administration regulatory practice, amid growing demand for expertise in the practice area, my colleague Samantha Stokes reports. Ann Begley (at left) is joining Wiley as a partner who will chair its food and drug practice, while Gary Yingling is joining as senior counsel. The pair, who previously practiced together at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, will help Wiley build out its policy, regulatory and enforcement offerings of environmental and consumer products.

>> "HSBC Holdings has promoted a longtime compliance executive to the position of chief compliance officer of its U.S. operations. Christine Lowthian, who joined HSBC in 1994, started her new job at HSBC Bank USA this week, according to an internal memo from Colin Bell, the group chief compliance officer, and Michael Roberts, the president and CEO of HSBC North America Holdings," American Banker reports.

>> Miles & Stockbridge said former federal prosecutor Thomas Zeno, has joined the Washington office as counsel and co-chair of the white-collar practice. Zeno, who earlier spent more than 25 as an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, arrives from Squire Patton Boggs, where he had worked since 2011.