Commercial Litigation Update

In Part One of this series, we discussed the May 12, 2025, U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division’s new guidance memo on white-collar enforcement priorities in the Trump 2.0 Administration entitled “Focus, Fairness, and Efficiency in the Fight Against White-Collar Crime.” In this new DOJ memo, and in an accompanying speech by Matthew R. Galeotti, the Trump Administration’s appointed Head of the Criminal Division, the DOJ announced its priorities and areas of focus for white collar enforcement.

In Part Two of this series, we address the DOJ’s changes made the same day to its Corporate Enforcement and Voluntary Disclosure Policy (“the CEP”), contained within the Justice Manual. The revised CEP provides additional benefits to companies that self-disclose and cooperate. In his May 12^th speech, Galeotti asserted that prior versions of the CEP were “unwieldy and hard to navigate” and noted that the DOJ seeks to be “as transparent as [it] can to companies and their counsel about what to expect under [DOJ’s] policies.” As part of this effort to increase transparency, the revised CEP includes a flowchart of potential outcomes should a company decide to make a voluntary self-disclosure as well as definitions of key terms such as “Voluntary Self-Disclosure,” “Full Cooperation,” “Timely and Appropriate Remediation” and “Providing Cooperation Credit.”

Since October 2021, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been implementing a variety of changes to its corporate criminal enforcement policies. These efforts all reflect DOJ’s focus on individual accountability, punishing recidivist misconduct, prioritizing compliance and responsible corporate citizenship, promoting corporate self-disclosure, and incentivizing whistleblowers to come forward. The latest development in these efforts is the Criminal Division’s Pilot Program on Voluntary Self-Disclosures for Individuals that DOJ released on April 15, 2024.