CNN
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The US Department of Justice is set to drop a criminal case against aircraft maker Boeing despite the fact that the company agreed to plead guilty last year, according to attorneys for families of victims of two fatal crashes of the 737 Max that led to the case.
The victims’ attorneys say they were notified by Justice Department officials Friday morning that it is looking at dropping the case and will instead reach a non-criminal settlement with the company. The new settlement will include an additional $444.5 million into a crash victims’ fund that would be divided evenly per crash victim.
The attorneys said the family members are outraged by the decision and that they will object to the decision in court.
“This is morally repugnant. It is a slap on the wrist. And it feels like a bribe,” said Sanjiv Singh, an attorney who represents 16 victims in the 2018 crash of a Lion Air Boeing 737 Max.
The Justice Department declined to comment on the statement from the victims’ families, and Boeing did not immediately responded to a request for comment Friday.
The families’ attorneys said they were informed this morning that Boeing now no longer is agreeing to plead guilty, and would take its chances at a trial, and that is the reason that the Justice Department is considering no longer pursuing the criminal charges. But Robert Clifford, an attorney for families in the Ethiopian crash, said the is no “litigation risk” as now being claimed by the Justice Department, given the uncontested evidence against Boeing.
The Lion Air crash and a crash of an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019 killed a total of 346 people, and led to fraud charges against Boeing alleging that it deceived the Federal Aviation Administration during the initial certification process for the Max jets.
The decision to drop the case against Boeing is another sign that the Trump administration could go easier on prosecution of corporate misdeeds than had been the case under the Biden administration.
In the final days of the first Trump administration, Boeing agreed to a “deferred prosecution” settlement on the same charges that could have relieved it of ever facing criminal prosecution. But in January 2024, days before a three-year probationary period on that original agreement ended, a door plug blew out of the side of a 737 Max flown by Alaska Air.
While no one was killed in that incident, it opened the door for the Justice Department to again resume prosecution of the company.
Six months later, Boeing agreed to the guilty plea.
The original guilty plea reached in July included $487 million in fines — a fraction of the $24.8 billion that families of crash victims wanted the aircraft maker to pay. It also stipulated that Boeing would have to operate under the oversight of an independent monitor – a person to be chosen by the government – for a period of three years.
The victims families objected to that guilty plea, arguing it let the company off too lightly for its misdeeds. In December Reed O’Connor, the federal judge hearing the case, rejected the guilty plea, not because it was too lenient, or too harsh, but because he had problems with how the independent monitor would be selected.
“It is fair to say the government’s attempt to ensure compliance has failed,” O’Connor wrote in his opinion. “At this point, the public interest requires the court to step in. Marginalizing the court in the selection and monitoring of the independent monitor as the plea agreement does undermines public confidence in Boeing’s probation.”
The attorneys for the families cheered O’Connor’s decision in December to reject the plea, and they say they will turn to him again if the Justice Department moves to drop the criminal case against Boeing.
“You have all the facts you need to prosecute this case,” Clifford said in a statement. “These families are willing to take the risks that their government apparently is unwilling to take to hold these criminals responsible. We are offended by this deal, and we will challenge this.”
CNN’s Evan Perez contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
