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Justice Department presents plea deal to Boeing over alleged violations of deferred prosecution agreement
The Justice Department has presented Boeing with a plea deal after it accused the airplane manufacturer of violating the terms of a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement that was put in place following two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019.
The Justice Department told Boeing it could plead guilty or go to trial, people familiar with the talks confirmed to CBS News. The agreement, which was presented to Boeing on Sunday, would have the company plead guilty to the conspiracy charge it originally faced in 2021. In exchange, Boeing would pay a fine and enter a three-year probationary period, the people said.
The Justice Department outlined the deal in a presentation to family members of the 737 Max crash victims earlier Sunday before presenting it to Boeing.
If Boeing agrees, a judge will have to sign off on the deal.
News of the plea deal was first reported by Reuters.
Paul Cassell, an attorney who represents 15 of the victims’ families, told CBS News the proposal was “another sweetheart plea deal” and said the families will “strenuously object” to the deal.
“The deal will not acknowledge, in any way, that Boeing’s crime killed 346 people. It also appears to rest on the idea that Boeing did not harm any victim,” Cassell said, adding that “Judge O’Connor will have to decide whether this no-accountability-deal is in the public interest. … The memory of 346 innocents killed by Boeing demands more justice than this.”
Boeing and the Justice Department declined to comment on the plea deal.
Boeing entered into the deferred prosecution agreement, an arrangement that allows companies to avoid prosecution if they meet certain terms, in 2021 after it faced a criminal conspiracy charge over two deadly 737 Max crashes. The deal included a $2.5 billion payment and demanded the company implement specific compliance and ethics programs. If Boeing was found to have complied with the deal, the charge would be dropped after a period of three years, which would have expired in July of this year.
But federal prosecutors in May told a judge Boeing had violated the terms of the agreement, claiming the company failed to set up sufficient compliance measures.
Boeing responded in June, saying it disagreed with the prosecutors’ assessment and that it had not violated the agreement.
The House Ethics Committee, which has been conducting an investigation into sexual misconduct and obstruction allegations against Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, scheduled a vote for Friday on whether to release its report, according to three sources with knowledge of the committee’s work.
Hours after President-elect Donald Trump said he planned to nominate Gaetz to be attorney general, Gaetz resigned his congressional seat, effective immediately.
“I do not intend to take the oath of office for the same office in the 119th Congress, to pursue the position of Attorney General in the Trump Administration,” Gaetz said in his resignation letter obtained by CBS News
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters that there was about an eight-week period during which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could fill his seat by setting the date for a special election.
Now that Gaetz has resigned, it is unclear whether the panel will vote on releasing the report, since Gaetz is no longer in Congress.
There is precedent in Congress on the Senate side for an ethics committee report to become public after a member resigns from Congress, however. In 2011, this happened when Sen. John Ensign of Nevada resigned amid allegations that he tried to hide an extramarital affair.
But it’s not clear that that would apply to the House, leaving open the possibility that the report on Gaetz would not be released.
In June, the House Ethics Committee released a statement saying it was investigating a range of allegations against Gaetz, including sexual misconduct, illicit drug use, and bribery.
Multiple sources at the time told CBS News that four women had informed the House Ethics Committee that they had been paid to go to parties that included sex and drugs, and that Gaetz had also attended. The committee has Gaetz’s Venmo transactions that allegedly show payments for the women.
Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has called the committee’s investigation a “frivolous” smear campaign.
Some of the allegations of sexual misconduct under review by the committee were also the subject of a previous Department of Justice probe into Gaetz. Federal investigators sought to determine if Gaetz violated sex trafficking and obstruction of justice laws, but no charges were filed.
The House Ethics Committee resumed its investigation into Gaetz in 2023, following the Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges against him.
Gaetz has long blamed then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, also a Republican, for the probe. And Gaetz later led the movement to sack McCarthy as speaker.
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