Laura Grossfield Birger and Lauren Gerber from Cooley discuss 18 U.S.C. §1001, which historically has been applied to a wide variety of conduct including actions that do not, at first blush, suggest lying to the federal government, and how the Sixth Circuit recently confronted an unusual set of facts and concluded that there was not a sufficiently close connection to the federal government to sustain the §1001 convictions.
Jonathan S. Sack, a partner at Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, and Curtis B. Leitner, an associate at the firm, write that since the Supreme Court decided United States v. Aguilar, the nexus requirement has proved to be an important check on prosecutions brought under the federal obstruction statutes. A recent prosecution in the Third Circuit raises serious questions about the strictness of the nexus test under the witness tampering statute.
