Senate

Update: On September 19, 2024, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) voted unanimously to adopt resolutions for civil and criminal enforcement of the Committee’s subpoena to Steward Health Care CEO Dr. Ralph de la Torre.  On September 25, 2024, the full Senate voted unanimously to refer…

Continue Reading An Empty Chair and a Not-so-Empty Threat:  Senate HELP Committee to Vote on Rare Civil and Criminal Subpoena Enforcement Actions Against Steward Health Care CEO 

Recently, the Senate adopted a power-sharing agreement providing some contours for organizing the equally divided body.  As we have discussed previously, such agreements are very rarely needed.  The Senate has only faced a 50-50 partisan split a handful of times.  The most recent instance, in 2001, prompted the first power-sharing…
Continue Reading Senate Subpoena Power Under the 2021 Power-Sharing Agreement

With control of the U.S. Senate at stake, hundreds of millions of dollars are expected to flow into Georgia over the next two months as voters decide the outcome of two U.S. Senate run-off elections.  Donors seeking to make contributions to support their preferred candidates in these run-offs should be…
Continue Reading Contribution Limits in Georgia U.S. Senate Run-Off Elections

Assistance from congressional offices can be invaluable to an organization with interests before executive branch agencies.  But it also can pose legal and optics risks to both the organization requesting the assistance and the congressional office and Member of Congress doing the outreach.  A number of high-profile scandals, including the…
Continue Reading Requesting Congressional Outreach: Key Compliance Considerations

The long saga of the legal challenge by Carl Ferrer, CEO of Backpage, to a subpoena issued by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (“PSI”) appears to have reached a conclusion.  A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit this week dismissed the case as …
Continue Reading D.C. Circuit Dismisses Major Case Concerning Attorney-Client Privilege in Congressional Investigations

Last week, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in a rare case that has the potential to contribute significantly to the case law concerning congressional investigations. It is uncommon for a federal court to have an opportunity…
Continue Reading The Senate’s District Court Win in the Backpage Subpoena Fight Could Have Significant Implications for Congressional Investigations

The notion that the House and Senate Ethics Committees are inactive bodies, often implied in media coverage, is far from the truth.

During the previous Congress, the House Ethics Committee issued more than 900 formal advisory opinions and addressed more than 40,000 informal requests for guidance.  In the first half…
Continue Reading Ethics Enforcement in the 114th Congress