EFTA00935989.pdf

From: "Jeffrey E." <[email protected]> To: Valeria Chomsky Subject: Fwd: Fw: Law360 MVP profile published Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2017 19:47:14 +0000 Inline-Images: image002.jpg; image001.png he is willing to be trustee. lets see after the holiday Forwarded messa e From: Weingarten, Reid Date: Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 12:24 PM Subject: Fw: Law360 MVP profile published To: "jeevacation®gmail.com" <[email protected]> Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone. From: King, Kathryn < Sent: Friday, December 22, 2017 11:10 AM To: Weingarten, Reid Cc: Heberlig, Brian; Hare, Debra; Eliopoulos, Steven; Schmidt, Meggie; Walsh, John Subject: Law360 MVP profile published Hello Reid, I don't know if you've seen it yet, but your Law360 MVP profile was published yesterday. It's a very long profile this year and quite good. I've posted the full text below. We'll get a news item posted to the firm's website, intranet, Linked and Twitter accounts. Thanks for winning one for the team. We submitted 7 MVP nominations to Law360 this year — the most ever — and you were the only one selected. Best, Kathy MVP: Steptoe & Johnson's Reid Weingarten Law360, New York (December 21, 2017, 1:55 PM EST) -- ptoe & Johnson LLP's Reid Weingarten has duked it out in courtrooms and finessed his way through conference rooms over the past year on behalf of clients EFTA00935989 ranging from a millionaire accused of bribery to an elderly Turkish cleric living in the Poconos, securing him a place as one of Law360's 2017 White Collar MVPs. gihttps://dlbjbjzgnk95 t.cloudfront.net/09890 00/989495/mvp- logo.png gihttps://dlbjbjzgnk95t.cloudfr ont.net/0989000/989656/0ce69 2d3d396a7af2a5426348e34003 bl5a996d3- weingarten_reid.jpg Reid Weingarten Steptoc & Johnson HIS BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT THIS YEAR: The story of Weingarten's biggest accomplishment this year begins last year, when prosecutors slapped his client, suburban Philadelphia businessman Richard Ireland, with a 79-count indictment accusing him of funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to former Pennsylvania treasurer Rob McCord as part of an alleged pay-to-play scheme. McCord, who made a failed bid for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in Pennsylvania in 2014, allegedly received the contributions in exchange for steering state treasury investment contracts to businesses affiliated with Ireland, who then stood to make fees off the arrangements, prosecutors said. The government had secured McCord's cooperation as part of a plea deal and had obtained wiretaps of McCord's phone as well as McCord's secret recordings of conversations with Ireland, all as part of its effort to meet its burden of establishing an explicit quid pro quo between McCord and Ireland. But once Ireland's trial began in March, the government's case began to crumble. After four days of questioning and cross-examination on the witness stand, McCord hadn't delivered any clear testimony about Ireland asking for treasury contracts in exchange for contributions. Weingarten and his defense team used these weaknesses to Ireland's advantage during trial and, after the government's case was concluded, they persuaded the judge to grant their Rule 29 motion for acquittal of Ireland. Prosecutors hadn't presented the case they were supposed to, the judge found. It was quite an upset — rarely does the government see its case thrown out mid-trial that way. That's why Weingarten, himself a former prosecutor in the U.S. Department of Justice's public integrity section, calls the ruling a "very sweet victory." EFTA00935990 "It was also interesting intellectually because the subject matter of the bribery charges were almost entirely campaign contributions, and it's a complex technical question having constitutional implications as to when campaign contributions can actually be a bribe," Weingarten explained. OTHER NOTABLE REPRESENTATIONS: Given his reputation as one of the country's best white collar attorneys, it may come as no surprise that international clients often seek out Weingarten for his expertise in handling U.S. legal matters. Since last year, for example, Weingarten has led a Steptoe team serving as lead counsel to Volkswagen AG in the U.S. Department of Justice's criminal investigation of the German caretaker over its diesel emissions scandal. His team's negotiations with the government resulted in a $2.8 billion penalty for Volkswagen earlier this year, an amount far below the $34 billion that the government said it could have sought. Weingarten has also been part of the defense team for Fethullah Gillen, a Turkish Islamic preacher now living in Pennsylvania who has been accused by Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of remotely masterminding last year's attempted coup in that country. The Turkish president has also called for Gillen's extradition from the United States, which would involve proving to the Justice Department that there is probable cause Gillen committed a crime in Turkey that is also a crime in the United States. "So we frequently and routinely advocate before the Department of Justice, trying to persuade them that there's nothing even remotely like probable cause that Gillen committed crimes," Weingarten said. "After all, he's an ascetic, he writes books and he doesn't do anything else." Gillen was already an unusual client — Weingarten notes he's never represented a septuagenarian "frail Turkish imam who has 10 million followers" before — but the job got even more unusual over the past year after it was reported that former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn and his son talked with Turkish government representatives late last year about having Gfilen kidnapped and transported out of the country in exchange for as much as $15 million. "To say it was an interesting year would be an understatement," Weingarten said. WHAT MOTIVATES HIM: From day one, Weingarten says, his desire to solve problems for people has been a driving force behind his practice. "Cases big and small, cases on the front page or the secretary down the hall who has an issue, I get pleasure when somebody comes to me, says this is the issue and then I'm able to fix the problem," Weingarten said. And when people do come to Weingarten, the variety of problems they bring with them stimulates his deep sense of curiosity. That leads to the second great pleasure that Weingarten cites: learning new things. "Basically every time someone walks into my office, it's a new industry, it's a new company, it's a new person I don't know, so I learn a bunch of stuff I never knew existed before," Weingarten said. A fraud case he handled last year, for example, involved defending a health care executive accused of conspiring to break federal law by misleading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the true intended use of a medical device called the Relieva Stratus Microflow Spacer, which was billed as a spacer that created breathing room in a sinusitis sufferer's head. As a result, Weingarten found himself in the unusual of having to study EFTA00935991 anatomy in order to get to the bottom of the government's allegations. "You have four sinuses!" Weingarten remembered. "I had no idea." HIS ADVICE FOR YOUNG ATTORNEYS: Weingarten is emphatic that it takes more than just smarts to excel in the white collar world. "If somebody wants to do what I do, in almost every instance it is enormously helpful to get hands-on experience in the government either as a public defender or as a prosecutor," Weingarten said. "It can be at the local or state or federal level, but you've gotta get up at that podium. You have to cross-examine cops. You have to get hands- on experience." It's difficult to acquire this experience any other way, Weingarten said. Although younger attorneys may feel financial pressure to take a BigLaw job after law school, they won't get the same opportunities there to handle those in-courtroom responsibilities, no matter how bright, motivated and competitive they are. "In these large firms, in these huge white collar cases, it's very difficult for young lawyers to get the experience they want and need," Weingarten said. — As told to Jon Hill Law360's MVPs are attorneys who have distinguished themselves from their peers over the past year through high-stakes litigation, record-breaking deals and complex global matters. A team ofLaw360 editors selected the 2017 MVP winners after reviewing more than 1,000 submissions. please note The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. 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