Law360 Quotes David Laufman on Joining Caplin & Drysdale

Caplin & Drysdale has hired out of retirement the former U.S. Department of Justice counterintelligence chief who investigated Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server for classified information, Russian interference in the 2016 election and other high-profile investigations, the firm announced Wednesday.

David Laufman is joining the firm as a senior counsel in its Washington, D.C., office. He most recently was a Wiggin and Dana LLP partner, where he worked for about five years.

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In an interview with Law360 Pulse on Monday, Laufman said he wanted to come out of retirement to join Caplin & Drysdale because of the reputation the firm has for great legal work. Laufman has been in his new role for a week, he said.

That reputation was especially true of its work with Foreign Agents Registration Act matters and congressional, government investigations' groups, he said.

"The chance to partner with the members of that group and with other outstanding lawyers at the firm, was very appealing and was more than enough incentive to return," he said

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"Since most FARA fact patterns present as civil enforcement rather than criminal enforcement, that rollback for criminal enforcement in and of itself is unlikely to have a major impact on FARA enforcement, assuming that they continue to enforce it even from a civil standpoint," Laufman said.

It remains to be seen what the administration's other adjustments to the Justice Department's focuses will be, Laufman said, including the end of FCPA enforcement. Courts have already felt the ripple effect of Trump's executive order, with a New Jersey District Court judge asking parties in a case involving tech executives who allegedly authorized a bribe to an Indian official, to brief him on how the Trump administration's decision would affect their case.

"Are they abandoning foreign commercial corruption-related efforts, as well as public corruption efforts, which could materialize given how they are hollowing out the public integrity section?" Laufman said. "There's just too many open questions about what enforcement is truly going to look at going forward.

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