Category: MIL-OSI

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

An Independent Justice Department

Remarks as Delivered

Hello everyone.

And thank you, Dawn, for that overly generous introduction.

U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison served for nearly 20 years as a career Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan. Today, she leads that office. I am grateful to her for all she does. And I am grateful to all the U.S. Attorneys who are with us today for your leadership, and for generously agreeing to invite the entire DOJ workforce to this closing session of the 85th annual U.S. Attorneys’ conference.

Since 1939, U.S. Attorneys have traveled to Washington from across the country to meet with one another to discuss the most pressing issues facing their communities.

Each year, the Attorney General addresses the conference. In recent years, Attorneys General have delivered their remarks only to the U.S. Attorneys, in a small windowless room upstairs in this building.

This year, I wanted to talk to everyone, here in this Great Hall.

First, and foremost, to thank you — all of you — the over 115,000 public servants who make up this Department.

Every day, in communities across the country and around the world, you do difficult and often dangerous work on behalf of the American people.

When a heinous crime has been committed, you are the ones to whom victims and survivors turn to seek justice on their behalf.

You are the ones to whom the American people turn for help:

… when a community is targeted by hate crimes;

… when a neighborhood is poisoned by toxic chemicals;

… when workers and consumers are harmed by corporate monopolies;

… when voters are unlawfully blocked from participating in our democratic process;

… when our country faces threats ranging from violent crime and drug trafficking to terrorist organizations and authoritarian regimes.

You are the agents, prosecutors, correctional officers, victims service specialists, grantmaking experts, administrative professionals, and so many others who step up when you are needed the most.

And in the wake of horrific tragedies, you are the ones to whom communities look for protection — and for solace.

Yesterday, we marked the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our country. As we took time to remember all those who were taken from us on that day and in the years since, we honored the DOJ employees who risked their lives in responding to the attacks.

They are heroes.

Their service and sacrifice remind us that, when the American people look to see what the Justice Department stands for, they are looking to the example of the people who work here — all of you.

I know that is an enormous responsibility. So, I want you to know that you have not only my gratitude, but the gratitude of every person whose life you have saved or changed through your work.

You do not hear it often enough: thank you.

Thank you for being selfless public servants and patriots.

Thank you for the countless hours, the nights and weekends, holidays and time away from family that you have spent because you believe in the mission of this Department and because you want to serve the American people.

And thank you not only for the work you do, but for the way you do your work — with skill and integrity.

That is what I want to talk about today — this workforce’s ironclad commitment to the principles of fairness and impartiality that have long guided it, and why that commitment is as important as it ever has been.

Eighty-four years ago, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson delivered a now-famous address to the U.S. Attorneys right here in this Great Hall.

In that speech, he sought to remind U.S. Attorneys of the enormous power they hold as federal prosecutors, and the responsibilities that come with that power.

He defined what he deemed “a good prosecutor” as a person “who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”

That speech, which he titled, “The Federal Prosecutor,” outlined values that have echoed in the halls of this Department, and outside of it, for generations.

He gave voice to the principles that have guided not only prosecutors but all of our employees, who understand deeply what is at stake when it comes to the fair and impartial application of our laws.

His words have inspired generations of public servants, including me.

I first came to the Justice Department more than forty years ago, at a time when both the leadership and the career employees of this Department were working to restore public confidence in the fair and impartial application of our laws in the wake of Watergate.

To do so, Department leaders like Attorneys General Ed Levi, Griffin Bell, and Benjamin Civiletti developed and formalized a set of norms to guide the Justice Department’s adherence to the rule of law.

Relying on values foundational to our democracy — in particular, the promise of equal justice under law — they put forward a set of policies to guide the Justice Department’s work. Those included:

… policies designed to protect the independence of the Justice Department from partisan influence.

… guidelines for FBI investigations

… regulations to protect the freedom of the press, and

… policies to ensure respect for the Department’s career lawyers, agents, and staff.

And they included a project to set out, for the first time in a single authoritative source, a set of principles to guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

In my first job at the Justice Department, working for Attorney General Civiletti, I assisted on that project. 

The result was a slim paperbound volume entitled, Principles of Federal Prosecution, published in 1980. As you well know, the current version of the Principles is now a 23,000-word electronic document enshrined in the Justice Manual.

The purpose of those principles, as we wrote in the Preface, was “to promote the reasoned exercise of prosecutorial authority and contribute to the fair, evenhanded administration of the federal criminal laws.”

Much of that document is devoted to giving guidance to prosecutors about which factors they should consider in a multitude of situations — from initiating prosecution, to selecting charges, disclosing exculpatory information, entering into plea agreements, and making sentencing recommendations.

But the core of the Principles is its directive about which factors an attorney for the government may not consider.  In the words of that document:

“[T]he attorney for the government may not be influenced by:

[a] person’s race, religion, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, or political association, activities, or beliefs;

by [t]he attorney’s own personal feelings concerning the person, the person’s associates, or the victim; or

by [t]he possible effect of the decision on the attorney’s own professional or personal circumstances. …”

This provision of the Principles ends with an admonition: “Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

In short, we must treat like cases alike.

There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.

To the contrary, we have only one rule: we follow the facts and apply the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.

Over the past three and a half years, I have spoken to you often about the importance of these norms.

I know that, to many outside of this Department, they may seem abstract or even inconsequential. They are anything but. And they must not be taken for granted.

For us, adhering to these policies, principles, and norms in everything we do is how we fulfill the promise that is foundational to our democracy — that all people will be protected equally under the law, and that all people will be held accountable equally under the law.

Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations.

Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon.

And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.

Over the course of four decades, during which I served in different jobs — both career and non-career — in this Department, and in a completely different job in the Judicial Branch, I watched as those norms became woven into the fabric of the Justice Department and were sustained by its dedicated career employees.

When I came back to DOJ in 2021, after a particularly difficult period for the Department, I said that my mission as Attorney General would be to reaffirm and strengthen those norms as the principles upon which the Justice Department operates.

So, we took steps to better protect the Department’s criminal and civil law enforcement decisions and its legal judgments from partisan or other inappropriate influences.

To name only a few of those steps:

We reinstituted policies regulating contacts between Department personnel and both the White House and Congress.

We strengthened and clarified the guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations.

We implemented remedial measures to ensure robust compliance with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We updated protections for the press in law enforcement investigations, in order to safeguard the essential role that a free press plays in our democracy.

We published new policies to guide prosecutorial discretion with respect to charging, pleas, and sentencing.

We supplemented our state secrets privilege policy to ensure that the United States invokes that privilege only when there is a genuine risk to national security.

And Department leadership restated and demonstrated through our actions, again and again, our respect for the work and integrity of the career employees who constitute the institutional backbone and historical memory of this Department.

Over the past three and a half years, I have seen how the public servants of this Department have continued to uphold and strengthen those norms.

I have seen how you have risen to meet a range of extraordinary challenges.

And I have seen the incalculable toll this work has taken on so many of you, especially those of you who risk your lives every day.

I am thinking of heroes like Tommy Weeks, the Deputy U.S. Marshal who was killed while apprehending a fugitive earlier this Spring. And I am thinking of heroes like Tommy’s family, who have made the kind of sacrifice no one should ever have to make.

In addition to seeing how you have operated in the face of dangers like violent crime and terrorism, I have also seen how you have bravely carried on in the face of an unprecedented spike in threats targeting a range of public officials across the country.

Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work.

These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.

Through your continued work, you have made clear that the Justice Department will not be intimidated by these attacks.

But it is dangerous — and outrageous — that you have to endure them.

It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this Department solely for doing their jobs.

And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law.

You deserve better.

You deserve gratitude for the noble and difficult work you do.

You deserve recognition for the integrity and skill with which you do that work.

You deserve to be honored.

The work you do every day makes a difference.

And the way you do that work makes clear that the public servants of the Department of Justice do not bend to politics. And that they will not break under pressure.

The choices you make in every investigation, in every filing, in every trial, in everything you do to ensure the fair and impartial application of the law make this Department and our democracy worthy of the public we serve.

And for that, you deserve respect.

As I hope you already know, you have mine — wholeheartedly.

You also have my promise, that nothing will ever stop me from defending this Department, and the extraordinary people who work here.

I came back to DOJ as Attorney General believing that our norms are some of the most powerful tools we have to ensure our adherence to the rule of law. Having now served as Attorney General for the past three and a half years, I continue to believe deeply that our norms matter, now more than ever, to our Department and to our democracy.

I also believe, now more than ever, that the most important resources the Justice Department has are the dedication and integrity of the people who work here.

As we wrote in the Preface to the first edition of the Principles of Federal Prosecution:

“Important though these principles are to the proper operation of our federal prosecutorial system, the success of that system must rely ultimately on the character, integrity, sensitivity, and competence of those men and women who are selected to represent the public interest in the federal criminal justice process. . . [I]t is with their efforts that the purposes of these principles will be achieved.”

I know that many of you have heard me talk about why the work of the Justice Department is so important to me personally.

I have often shared that I wanted to give back to the country — and to the system of laws — that took my grandparents in and protected them when they had nowhere else to go.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law, the rule of law, is the foundation of our system of government.

Our democracy relies on an independent law enforcement agency — the Department of Justice — to ensure those protections.

And critically, our democracy depends on people who dedicate themselves and their careers to ensuring those protections.

People like all of you.

Protecting the rule of law is the obligation of every generation of public servants at the United States Department of Justice.

In this time and place, that responsibility is yours, and it is mine.

I know we are up to it.

I am grateful to each of you for your commitment to this Department, to the norms that sustain it, and to the people we all serve.

Thank you.

Source: United States Department of Justice 2

An Independent Justice Department

Remarks as Delivered

Hello everyone.

And thank you, Dawn, for that overly generous introduction.

U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison served for nearly 20 years as a career Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Michigan. Today, she leads that office. I am grateful to her for all she does. And I am grateful to all the U.S. Attorneys who are with us today for your leadership, and for generously agreeing to invite the entire DOJ workforce to this closing session of the 85th annual U.S. Attorneys’ conference.

Since 1939, U.S. Attorneys have traveled to Washington from across the country to meet with one another to discuss the most pressing issues facing their communities.

Each year, the Attorney General addresses the conference. In recent years, Attorneys General have delivered their remarks only to the U.S. Attorneys, in a small windowless room upstairs in this building.

This year, I wanted to talk to everyone, here in this Great Hall.

First, and foremost, to thank you — all of you — the over 115,000 public servants who make up this Department.

Every day, in communities across the country and around the world, you do difficult and often dangerous work on behalf of the American people.

When a heinous crime has been committed, you are the ones to whom victims and survivors turn to seek justice on their behalf.

You are the ones to whom the American people turn for help:

… when a community is targeted by hate crimes;

… when a neighborhood is poisoned by toxic chemicals;

… when workers and consumers are harmed by corporate monopolies;

… when voters are unlawfully blocked from participating in our democratic process;

… when our country faces threats ranging from violent crime and drug trafficking to terrorist organizations and authoritarian regimes.

You are the agents, prosecutors, correctional officers, victims service specialists, grantmaking experts, administrative professionals, and so many others who step up when you are needed the most.

And in the wake of horrific tragedies, you are the ones to whom communities look for protection — and for solace.

Yesterday, we marked the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on our country. As we took time to remember all those who were taken from us on that day and in the years since, we honored the DOJ employees who risked their lives in responding to the attacks.

They are heroes.

Their service and sacrifice remind us that, when the American people look to see what the Justice Department stands for, they are looking to the example of the people who work here — all of you.

I know that is an enormous responsibility. So, I want you to know that you have not only my gratitude, but the gratitude of every person whose life you have saved or changed through your work.

You do not hear it often enough: thank you.

Thank you for being selfless public servants and patriots.

Thank you for the countless hours, the nights and weekends, holidays and time away from family that you have spent because you believe in the mission of this Department and because you want to serve the American people.

And thank you not only for the work you do, but for the way you do your work — with skill and integrity.

That is what I want to talk about today — this workforce’s ironclad commitment to the principles of fairness and impartiality that have long guided it, and why that commitment is as important as it ever has been.

Eighty-four years ago, then-Attorney General Robert Jackson delivered a now-famous address to the U.S. Attorneys right here in this Great Hall.

In that speech, he sought to remind U.S. Attorneys of the enormous power they hold as federal prosecutors, and the responsibilities that come with that power.

He defined what he deemed “a good prosecutor” as a person “who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.”

That speech, which he titled, “The Federal Prosecutor,” outlined values that have echoed in the halls of this Department, and outside of it, for generations.

He gave voice to the principles that have guided not only prosecutors but all of our employees, who understand deeply what is at stake when it comes to the fair and impartial application of our laws.

His words have inspired generations of public servants, including me.

I first came to the Justice Department more than forty years ago, at a time when both the leadership and the career employees of this Department were working to restore public confidence in the fair and impartial application of our laws in the wake of Watergate.

To do so, Department leaders like Attorneys General Ed Levi, Griffin Bell, and Benjamin Civiletti developed and formalized a set of norms to guide the Justice Department’s adherence to the rule of law.

Relying on values foundational to our democracy — in particular, the promise of equal justice under law — they put forward a set of policies to guide the Justice Department’s work. Those included:

… policies designed to protect the independence of the Justice Department from partisan influence.

… guidelines for FBI investigations

… regulations to protect the freedom of the press, and

… policies to ensure respect for the Department’s career lawyers, agents, and staff.

And they included a project to set out, for the first time in a single authoritative source, a set of principles to guide the exercise of prosecutorial discretion.

In my first job at the Justice Department, working for Attorney General Civiletti, I assisted on that project. 

The result was a slim paperbound volume entitled, Principles of Federal Prosecution, published in 1980. As you well know, the current version of the Principles is now a 23,000-word electronic document enshrined in the Justice Manual.

The purpose of those principles, as we wrote in the Preface, was “to promote the reasoned exercise of prosecutorial authority and contribute to the fair, evenhanded administration of the federal criminal laws.”

Much of that document is devoted to giving guidance to prosecutors about which factors they should consider in a multitude of situations — from initiating prosecution, to selecting charges, disclosing exculpatory information, entering into plea agreements, and making sentencing recommendations.

But the core of the Principles is its directive about which factors an attorney for the government may not consider.  In the words of that document:

“[T]he attorney for the government may not be influenced by:

[a] person’s race, religion, gender, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, or political association, activities, or beliefs;

by [t]he attorney’s own personal feelings concerning the person, the person’s associates, or the victim; or

by [t]he possible effect of the decision on the attorney’s own professional or personal circumstances. …”

This provision of the Principles ends with an admonition: “Federal prosecutors and agents may never make a decision regarding an investigation or prosecution … for the purpose of affecting any election, or for the purpose of giving an advantage or disadvantage to any candidate or political party.”

In short, we must treat like cases alike.

There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, or different rules depending on one’s race or ethnicity.

To the contrary, we have only one rule: we follow the facts and apply the law in a way that respects the Constitution and protects civil liberties.

Over the past three and a half years, I have spoken to you often about the importance of these norms.

I know that, to many outside of this Department, they may seem abstract or even inconsequential. They are anything but. And they must not be taken for granted.

For us, adhering to these policies, principles, and norms in everything we do is how we fulfill the promise that is foundational to our democracy — that all people will be protected equally under the law, and that all people will be held accountable equally under the law.

Our norms are a promise that we will fiercely protect the independence of this Department from political interference in our criminal investigations.

Our norms are a promise that we will not allow this Department to be used as a political weapon.

And our norms are a promise that we will not allow this nation to become a country where law enforcement is treated as an apparatus of politics.

Over the course of four decades, during which I served in different jobs — both career and non-career — in this Department, and in a completely different job in the Judicial Branch, I watched as those norms became woven into the fabric of the Justice Department and were sustained by its dedicated career employees.

When I came back to DOJ in 2021, after a particularly difficult period for the Department, I said that my mission as Attorney General would be to reaffirm and strengthen those norms as the principles upon which the Justice Department operates.

So, we took steps to better protect the Department’s criminal and civil law enforcement decisions and its legal judgments from partisan or other inappropriate influences.

To name only a few of those steps:

We reinstituted policies regulating contacts between Department personnel and both the White House and Congress.

We strengthened and clarified the guidelines for sensitive FBI investigations.

We implemented remedial measures to ensure robust compliance with Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We updated protections for the press in law enforcement investigations, in order to safeguard the essential role that a free press plays in our democracy.

We published new policies to guide prosecutorial discretion with respect to charging, pleas, and sentencing.

We supplemented our state secrets privilege policy to ensure that the United States invokes that privilege only when there is a genuine risk to national security.

And Department leadership restated and demonstrated through our actions, again and again, our respect for the work and integrity of the career employees who constitute the institutional backbone and historical memory of this Department.

Over the past three and a half years, I have seen how the public servants of this Department have continued to uphold and strengthen those norms.

I have seen how you have risen to meet a range of extraordinary challenges.

And I have seen the incalculable toll this work has taken on so many of you, especially those of you who risk your lives every day.

I am thinking of heroes like Tommy Weeks, the Deputy U.S. Marshal who was killed while apprehending a fugitive earlier this Spring. And I am thinking of heroes like Tommy’s family, who have made the kind of sacrifice no one should ever have to make.

In addition to seeing how you have operated in the face of dangers like violent crime and terrorism, I have also seen how you have bravely carried on in the face of an unprecedented spike in threats targeting a range of public officials across the country.

Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents, and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work.

These attacks have come in the form of conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out, and threats of actual violence.

Through your continued work, you have made clear that the Justice Department will not be intimidated by these attacks.

But it is dangerous — and outrageous — that you have to endure them.

It is dangerous to target and intimidate individual employees of this Department solely for doing their jobs.

And it is outrageous that you have to face these unfounded attacks because you are doing what is right and upholding the rule of law.

You deserve better.

You deserve gratitude for the noble and difficult work you do.

You deserve recognition for the integrity and skill with which you do that work.

You deserve to be honored.

The work you do every day makes a difference.

And the way you do that work makes clear that the public servants of the Department of Justice do not bend to politics. And that they will not break under pressure.

The choices you make in every investigation, in every filing, in every trial, in everything you do to ensure the fair and impartial application of the law make this Department and our democracy worthy of the public we serve.

And for that, you deserve respect.

As I hope you already know, you have mine — wholeheartedly.

You also have my promise, that nothing will ever stop me from defending this Department, and the extraordinary people who work here.

I came back to DOJ as Attorney General believing that our norms are some of the most powerful tools we have to ensure our adherence to the rule of law. Having now served as Attorney General for the past three and a half years, I continue to believe deeply that our norms matter, now more than ever, to our Department and to our democracy.

I also believe, now more than ever, that the most important resources the Justice Department has are the dedication and integrity of the people who work here.

As we wrote in the Preface to the first edition of the Principles of Federal Prosecution:

“Important though these principles are to the proper operation of our federal prosecutorial system, the success of that system must rely ultimately on the character, integrity, sensitivity, and competence of those men and women who are selected to represent the public interest in the federal criminal justice process. . . [I]t is with their efforts that the purposes of these principles will be achieved.”

I know that many of you have heard me talk about why the work of the Justice Department is so important to me personally.

I have often shared that I wanted to give back to the country — and to the system of laws — that took my grandparents in and protected them when they had nowhere else to go.

That protection is what distinguishes America from so many other countries. The protection of law, the rule of law, is the foundation of our system of government.

Our democracy relies on an independent law enforcement agency — the Department of Justice — to ensure those protections.

And critically, our democracy depends on people who dedicate themselves and their careers to ensuring those protections.

People like all of you.

Protecting the rule of law is the obligation of every generation of public servants at the United States Department of Justice.

In this time and place, that responsibility is yours, and it is mine.

I know we are up to it.

I am grateful to each of you for your commitment to this Department, to the norms that sustain it, and to the people we all serve.

Thank you.

Source: United States Department of Justice

A jury today convicted Omali Yeshitela, 82, Penny Hess, 78, Jesse Nevel, 34, all of St. Louis, and Augustus C. Romain Jr., 38, of Atlanta, of conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government. The defendants were charged in a superseding indictment on April 13, 2023.

According to evidence presented at trial, from at least May 2015 until July 2022, Yeshitela, Hess and Nevel agreed to act on behalf of the Russian government within the United States. Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, a resident of Moscow, was the founder and president of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), an organization headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and funded by the Russian government. Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel were leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) or components thereof. Augustus C. Romain was a high-level leader of the APSP who, in November 2018, left and formed a Georgia-based group called the Black Hammer. Ionov’s influence efforts were directed and supervised by Moscow-based Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, including indicted defendants Aleksey Borisovich Sukhodolov and Yegor Sergeyevich Popov.

In May 2015, Ionov invited Yeshitela to Russia for an all-expenses paid trip to “communicate on future cooperation.” Prior to this trip, Hess relayed a request to Ionov to ensure that Yeshitela would be able to meet with an “official representative of the Russian government.” According to subsequent email communications, which were shared with Hess, Nevel and Romain, Yeshitela explained that it was “clear” that Ionov was an instrument of the Russian government. In these same communications, Yeshitela further explained that Ionov represented “a method by which the Russian government is engaging the U.S. and Europe in serious struggle” by utilizing “forces inside of the U.S. to s[o]w division inside the U.S.” In a subsequent meeting, at which Hess and Nevel were present, Yeshitela explained that Ionov would only provide resources for actions that would support Russia’s efforts to “undermin[e] the U.S.” 

Acting under Ionov’s direction, the defendants took several actions within the United States. For example, in August 2015, Ionov requested that Yeshitela, Hess and Nevel draft and publish a petition to the United Nations charging the United States with actively committing genocide against African people. When Hess resisted, Ionov insisted that the APSP had to publish the petition because Ionov and his Russian backers were “not exactly Black to demand it for ourselves.” Hess subsequently drafted and published the requested petition, which Ionov promoted in Russian media.

In January 2016, Ionov provided a $12,000 guarantee letter to fund a four-city tour to promote the genocide petition that the APSP had published at his direction. Yeshitela and Hess oversaw the tour and reported information about the tour to Ionov. After the tour, Yeshitela explained in an APSP meeting that the APSP had “developed a relationship with forces in Russia who are involved in their own struggle with the US.”

In 2017, and again in 2019, Ionov attempted to influence local elections in St. Petersburg, Florida, on behalf of the FSB, although there is no evidence that he succeeded in doing so. For example, in July 2017, Ionov reached out to Nevel —who was a candidate for Mayor in St. Petersburg — to offer support, including “campaign finance.” In 2019, Ionov regularly reported to the FSB concerning an election for local office in St. Petersburg, referring to one candidate as the candidate “whom we supervise.” And, in January 2020, FSB Officer Popov directed Ionov that the United States’ 2020 Presidential election was the FSB’s “main topic of the year.”

In April 2020, Ionov invited Nevel and Yeshitela to speak at a conference to promote the right of self-determination for Russian-backed secessionist movements in eastern Ukraine. Shortly thereafter, Yeshitela provided a video-recorded statement of support for the Russian-backed secessionist group. Ionov reported to the FSB concerning these activities.

In late February 2022, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ionov complained to FSB Officer Sukhodolov concerning Russia’s failure in the information war surrounding the invasion. Sukhodolov directed Ionov to “join in” in the information war. Ionov then directed Yeshitela and Romain to engage in demonstrations at a social media company headquarters in California to demonstrate against suppression of pro-Russian viewpoints. Ionov paid for Romain and three other members of Black Hammer to fly to California to conduct the demonstration, and Yeshitela directed members of the APSP located in California to conduct a similar protest a few days later. After the Black Hammer demonstration, Romain messaged Ionov: “This is great! That was fun! Who we attacking next? With more time I can get a bigger crowd.”

In May 2022, at Ionov’s direction, Romain demonstrated at a media company in Atlanta, Georgia, to celebrate Russia’s “Victory Day.” In June 2022, at Ionov’s direction, Ionov demonstrated at the Georgia state capitol in support of Russia. During the demonstration, Romain stated that he was “not ashamed to say that the Black Hammer Party has relationships with the Kremlin,” in reference to Ionov.

Each defendant faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison. A sentencing date has not yet been set.

Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division and Executive Assistant Director Robert Wells of the FBI National Security Branch made the announcement.

The FBI is investigating the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Daniel J. Marcet and Risha Asokan for the Middle District of Florida and Trial Attorney Menno Goedman of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you for that introduction, James. And thank you to the organizers and to everyone around the world who has come here to Fordham to learn from one another and exchange ideas. This has always been a great event, and I am sure this year will be no different.

We meet today at a truly historic moment in competition policy. We have gone from years of debating how to evolve competition enforcement to a moment when the new era is emerging before us. In cases throughout the country and the world, we are seeing the reinvigoration and modernization of antitrust and competition law enforcement emerge before our very eyes. Many in this room are supporting that process, whether as advocates before the agencies and courts on each side, or as experts providing their uniquely important perspective.

You can feel the energy of this new era of competition enforcement in the air. Increasingly, I hear messages of hope from the people I meet with around the country. Suddenly, Americans have a sense that the creeping erosion of their economic power can actually be slowed, stopped and maybe even reversed. People beam with optimism about the prospect of economic opportunity, freedom and self-determination.

Our work at the Justice Department is leading the way. Just last month, the Antitrust Division won its first major monopolization action in decades and only the second in nearly 50 years. This win is one of more than 170 significant actions the Antitrust Division has taken on behalf of the American people in just the last two and a half years. In that time, we have seen more than 20 mergers abandoned in response to division concerns, and we are seeing fewer problematic deals come in front of us to begin with. Our criminal program has obtained more than 60 criminal convictions and resolutions, using proactive detection methods like wiretaps and innovative remedies like divestitures to send a clear message that antitrust violations are a serious crime.

Our work has both driven and built upon a wave of historic court decisions protecting competition in airlines, book publishing, fast food work and many more industries in both public and private cases.[1] These cases rely on the application of timeless antitrust precedents to protect competition in modern markets. And our work comes against the backdrop of unprecedented success by competition enforcement authorities throughout the world.

Although some opponents of antitrust enforcement had expressed the misguided idea that the federal courts would elevate narrow policy objectives over statutory text and binding precedent to defend a hands-off approach to antitrust, the rule of law has proven resilient. Enforcers understand that we can succeed by presenting courts rigorous cases that reflect a sound application of modern facts to settled law. The record of recent decisions in the U.S., from Chase and Duke on refusal to deal, to Google on monopolization, to JetBlue and Penguin on the incipiency standard, among so many others, demonstrates that the Sherman and Clayton Acts are not just alive and well but thriving.

And the incredible series of decisions, merger abandonments and criminal resolutions in the last few years are just the beginning. In the United States, federal and state enforcers have many important cases under way, seeking to protect and restore competition in so many industries that impact the daily lives of the American people. By way of example, we have historic actions involving concert tickets, groceries, smartphones, agriculture and even the cost of rent. Together with a revitalized merger enforcement program backed by the 2023 Merger Guidelines, these actions will lower prices and ensure greater freedom of opportunity for the American people.

That is just in the United States. Enforcers around the world have also engaged in this transformative moment. I have seen firsthand what the international enforcement community can do together to level up their expertise and engage with today’s challenges by bringing together time-honored principles and laws with state-of-the-art tools and expertise. We have benefitted enormously from incredible communication and engagement across the international community as we enforce our respective laws and protect our sovereign interests for the benefit of our respective countries.

Events like this conference are so important because the advances in thought and understanding that underlie today’s successes have at their heart the engagement and deployment of expertise. Conferences like this, and international institutions like the International Competition Network (ICN) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), were created to support the debate and dissemination of competition expertise to help enforcers do their jobs better at home. Expertise plays a critical role in antitrust policy.

And then in the crucible of litigation, those same experts can help guide the litigants and courts to better understand market realities and reach sound conclusions.

But we have a crisis of expertise in our antitrust and competition community, and it is growing. That is what I want to discuss today.

Among enforcement authorities, I have heard whispers of this problem for years. Recently, the volume and frequency of these concerns have grown to the point that I think it is time we talk openly, publicly, and respectfully about how to address issues that have become too significant for our community to ignore any longer.

Let me start by asking you what these three stories have in common:

• Story one — an international enforcer attended an event thinking they were receiving training from experts associated with the U.S. government. Later, they were shocked to learn the training was funded by companies the enforcer was scrutinizing, with topics and content geared toward encouraging non-intervention.
• Story two — an academic associated with an institute funded by several large technology firms signed an amicus brief opposing a country’s enforcement action. Later, without disclosing that fact, they gave a purportedly expert presentation at the OECD attacking that same enforcement action and advocating the OECD take a position favoring the institute’s funders.
• Story three — a Court of Appeals cited an economic study written by a professor paid by the defendants in support of the defendants’ litigation position. But the paper had no disclosure and so the court had no way to know it was citing advocacy, not merely academic expertise. That appellate decision has become binding precedent in some courts that impacts scores of unrelated cases.

I should mention, these are all true stories. What do they have in common?

You may be thinking these stories involve the same academics, or maybe the same small group of companies, but they do not. These are just a few of countless examples of a pervasive breakdown in the distinction between expertise and advocacy in competition policy.

All over the world, money earmarked specifically to discourage antitrust and competition law enforcement is finding its way into the expert community upon which we all depend.

Economics teaches that incentives matter. And the inevitable incentive of that flow of money is to distort the academic dialogue and reshape expertise into advocacy.

We see this playing out from legal academia, to economics, to public policy. We see it in academic workshops, treatises and wonky empirical reports. In competition policy today, the expertise-buying game is ascendant. Conflicts of interest and capture have become so rampant and commonplace that it is increasingly rare to encounter a truly neutral academic expert.

Let me say this clearly — this will not end well. Already we see a seeping distrust of expertise by the courts and by law enforcers.

Unless we find a new way forward, we may see the critical role of expertise in competition policy dwindle away. No one should welcome that outcome.

I do not stand before you with definitive answers or solutions. But I know that we need to start having the conversation in earnest. With my time today, I will share my views on three related topics.

First, the important role of expertise as distinct from advocacy. Second, how corporate money is threatening expertise in competition policy as it once did in tobacco regulation. Third, why I believe international antitrust and competition law enforcers and policy makers are uniquely equipped to lead the way toward developing solutions to address this crisis.

1. We need expertise in addition to advocacy.

First point: we need expertise in addition to, and as distinct from, advocacy.

Competition enforcers rely on expertise in nearly every part of our work, and for good reason. Expertise is a critical element of understanding market realities and of assessing and evolving the legal landscape. At the Antitrust Division, we rely heavily on our Expert Analysis Group (EAG) — dozens of PhD economists, statisticians, data scientists, financial analysts and technologists whose work is vital to our mission. I am so proud of the critical work of EAG. They remain the gold standard.

Increasingly, EAG is relying on varied forms of expertise, from behavioral economists to algorithmic experts, in order to understand the market realities in our cases. And we routinely pull in outside experts in our cases, as part of policy and fact-gathering efforts and in our international dialogues.

These experts, in turn, rely on academic communities like the legal and economics academies for the building blocks of their analyses. But if a paper was shadow-funded or influenced by corporate money, it can pass that influence and whatever flaws or biases it introduced into the papers that build on it. This insidious ripple effect is difficult — if not nearly impossible — to detect.

That is a problem because we trust expertise for the deep-rooted tradition of academic independence on which it draws. The academy has a reputation of integrity and independence forged over generations. It is fundamental to the expert enterprise.

Over a century ago, the American Association of University Professors incorporated academic freedom directly into its founding principles.[2] They declared that the goal of a university is to “advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators.”

One of the chief purposes of a university, the association explained, was to develop impartial expertise for the benefit of government decisionmakers. They recognized that, “to be of use to the legislator or the administrator, [an academic] must enjoy their complete confidence in the disinterestedness of [his or her] conclusions.”

The Supreme Court has similarly described the special and unique independence of academic inquiry. As Chief Justice Warren wrote in 1957, “[t]o impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation.”[3]

I agree with that view. The world is a murky enough place. We believe in an independent academic dialogue as a critical element of seeking and finding truth. And as markets evolve, we need that in order to get competition policy right.

The kind of independent expertise that the academy was created to promote, and that academic tenure and free speech rights still protect, is distinct from advocacy.

We also need advocacy, of course. I love the crucible of debate and have made my own career as an advocate. I want to be extremely clear: I do not think we should do anything to chill honest and open debate. Advocacy is the cornerstone of our system. I have no quarrel with advocates taking positions, whether it is in a court of law or public opinion. I have no quarrel with individuals or organizations such as issue-based think tanks and trade associations openly and honestly debating or defending positions.

Today, the concerns I am raising relate to the more insidious influence that flows from the blurring of lines between advocacy and expertise. Put simply: we need both because advocacy and expertise serve different purposes.

When experts engage and opine, they help create the building blocks of further development in their fields in a way that advocates simply cannot. We need the building blocks of expertise to be solid. Trusted experts, whether in courtrooms or in academic journals, are critical to the expansion of human knowledge.

For generations, universities have resided as neutral centerpieces of expertise and thought leadership in the antitrust and competition policy community. Academic institutions have functioned as trusted and integral incubators for emergent ideas and technical refinement. But that trust is eroding among enforcement authorities. I am here as a call to action so that we can restore that trust and reinvigorate independent academic expertise to coexist alongside the important role that advocates play on all sides of our issues.

2. The threat that money earmarked for influence poses to expertise.

My second point is that money earmarked for influences threatens expertise.

It is precisely because disinterested expertise is so valuable that the crisis we face is so concerning. Money earmarked by corporations and foundations to discourage antitrust enforcement is flowing by the millions into academia. It funds conferences, centers, papers and everything in between. It provides professors with connections, influence, opportunities and consulting dollars.

And one thing is for sure: the companies cutting all those checks are not doing so in order to encourage the “unfettered discussion of impartial investigators” on which the American Association of University Professors was chartered.

No. Checks are being cut, university centers and institutes are being established and conferences being funded specifically to influence the evolution of expert thought in competition policy. All that money is turning our experts into advocates. Sometimes knowingly and directly. Sometimes indirectly by affecting incentives and capturing institutions. Not only does this undermine the trust in those academics and institutions, but it unfairly calls into question and erodes confidence in the academics who choose not to associate or affiliate with advocates.

This playbook is not new. We saw it play out most tragically with Big Tobacco’s successful campaign to twist scientific research about the harms caused by its products.

The story is well-known:[4] In the 1950s, the tobacco industry was faced with emerging science on the negative health effects of cigarette smoking. The industry recognized that it could not solve the problem through advertising, which would come off as transparently self-interested. Instead, it decided to seize control of the scientific process from within. Tobacco companies poured millions into scientific research, identifying, supporting, and amplifying skeptics of the emerging health research — with the goal of attracting more researchers to their view.

The strategy was massively successful, suppressing for decades the scientific consensus that smoking causes lung cancer, and leading to countless deaths in the process. It infected the legal system as well, with Big Tobacco’s hand-picked experts — the products of their influence operation — testifying repeatedly that there was no conclusive link between smoking and health.

Influence campaigns like this are pernicious precisely because they are subtle. Many of the academics involved may consider themselves sufficiently distant from the funding that the money makes no difference.

But research shows us that corporate influence can impact a researcher in a wide range of different ways — whether consciously or unconsciously.[5] We see reports of academics who receive funding from corporations feeling pressure to self-censor, or corporations lobbying university administrations behind the scenes.[6] Or, just as we saw with tobacco, corporate money impacts what work gets promoted and amplified, with the inevitable impact this promotion has on future research.[7]

Fordham antitrust law professor Mark Patterson has written on this exact topic, noting that “conflicts may be reflected in subtle research choices whose implications will be very difficult for legal fact finders to assess.”[8] As Upton Sinclair said, “[i]t is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”[9]

As enforcers, we are learning more how the expert influence game in antitrust is being played. One tactic involves the use of academic research centers, which allow corporate funders to evade disclosure requirements. For example, disclosure policies for academic journals and other institutions often do not require disclosure of an institution’s funding sources.[10]

This is not to say that some progress has not been made. Some leading economics journals now require disclosure statements and that authors provide data and code for replication purposes.[11] But this practice is new and not widespread in the profession, and even these new policies do not clearly require disclosure of an academic research center’s corporate donors and often fail to account for the invasive and insidious capture that occurs over years or decades of influence and funding.

This means that if a company seeking to buy influence channels money through a separate center, endowment or the like, they can often avoid impacted professors and trainings having to report the company’s involvement.

The problem with all of this is that it leads to advocacy being deceptively presented as expertise. I admire and appreciate advocacy — just because someone is paid to argue a position does not mean they are wrong. But we put advocacy through a different kind of crucible of debate and dissection than we do independent expertise.

When expertise loses its independence, when it becomes just more argument to be dissected, we lose something profoundly important. The reputation of our academic institutions — built over generations, will quickly erode. The building blocks of the academic dialogue may prove too weak a foundation even for the remaining disinterested academics. The ability to grow our knowledge iteratively through dialogue and publication will crumble away.

I fear that as the line blurs between expertise and advocacy, we risk losing expertise altogether. But that is precisely where we are heading as a community.

3. How the international antitrust community can help.

Third, I want to talk about why the international antitrust community is uniquely positioned to help address this growing problem.

International forums like this one, and like OECD and ICN, not only bring together the stewards and leaders of our profession, but they engage the most directly with our expert community.

I hope that today can mark the beginning of an open and candid discussion. As we have in many other areas over the past few years, we can learn from each other and build a consensus around how to address the problem of paid influence in our expert community while respecting the rights of all involved. We can engage candidly with the expert community to better understand and define effective rules, disclosures and prohibitions against conflicts of interest. We can understand the different challenges that agencies face in engaging with experts and how to mitigate those challenges.

Perhaps most importantly, we can find ways to create a model for the world to follow. This is delicate. We cannot and should not chill free speech. But I am confident there are meaningful steps that we can take as a community to better distinguish and disclose the lines between advocacy and expertise so that our community can benefit from both.

 Ultimately, this will make us all more effective both as an international antitrust community and as enforcers of our respective national laws. I look forward to that conversation.

Before I leave the podium, I would like to acknowledge the exceptional career of Executive Vice President (EVP) Margrethe Vestager. She has truly been a force, and an inspiration for competition leaders all around the world like myself. EVP Vestager, on behalf of the Antitrust Division, my deepest thanks for your friendship and for the great relationship you have helped foster between our agencies. Your courage and leadership have been an inspiration, and your indelible presence will be felt and admired for generations to come.

Thank you.