A new Public Citizen report found that President Joe Biden’s Justice Department (DOJ) prosecuted fewer corporate criminals in 2024 than in any previous year over the past three decades. Over the course of Biden’s four-year term, the DOJ prosecuted fewer corporate criminals than any previous president’s four-term as far back as the first Clinton administration.
The prosecution of only 80 corporations in 2024 – a 29% drop from the previous fiscal year – caps off a disappointing term by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who vowed to ramp up enforcement against corporate crime and failed.
Garland and Monaco’s DOJ continued to overrely on corporate leniency agreements and declinations, allowing corporations that admit to criminal misconduct – including harassment, financial crime, fraud, and bribery – to avoid prosecution. Among the corporations that avoided prosecution through leniency agreements during Biden’s final year in office were Morgan Stanley, Wynn Las Vegas, and eBay.
“The Biden administration’s broken promise to crack down on corporate crime was a tragic missed opportunity to restore faith in the Justice Department by demonstrating that the wealthy and powerful are not above the law,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the report. “Now that Trump is in power, there’s every reason to expect a drop off in corporate enforcement from the already low Biden baseline.”
Corporate enforcement plummeted the first time President Donald Trump took office, and so far, Trump has already halted or dropped more than 100 enforcement actions against corporate misconduct from several federal agencies. Trump’s DOJ inherited at least 188 investigations and cases against alleged corporate misconduct from the Biden administration. Of those, 27 have already been halted, and ten have been dismissed or withdrawn, according to Public Citizen’s report.
This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.
Newswire Editor | Radio Free (2025-04-17T16:24:10+00:00) Biden’s Lax Corporate Crime Enforcement Gives Way to Trump’s Total Lawlessness. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/17/bidens-lax-corporate-crime-enforcement-gives-way-to-trumps-total-lawlessness/
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