During its initial year in office, the Trump administration redirected a sizable share of DOJ’s prosecutorial and investigative manpower toward border and violent-crime matters, and away from other enforcement domains. Immigration prosecutions surged, tripling in the first half-year, and nearly one-fifth of FBI personnel were reassigned to immigration work.
That shift left other enforcement areas with thinner staffing, prosecutors, and, most critically, courtroom time.
One area appeared particularly vulnerable to budgetary and priority cuts: white-collar crime enforcement, especially the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) — the long-standing federal anti-bribery statute aimed at curbing global corporate graft and a cornerstone of DOJ’s white-collar enforcement toolkit. For decades, the FCPA has steered how American multinationals conduct business overseas and served as a moral shield against illicit demands. Under President Trump, the federal government has increasingly deprioritized this statute.
Since Trump reclaimed the White House, his administration has signaled repeatedly that the FCPA — used for years to pursue firms like Goldman Sachs, Siemens, and Airbus for bribes to foreign officials for favorable deals — was falling out of favor. Soon after inauguration, Trump signed an executive order halting new and existing FCPA actions for 180 days and asked then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to assess all FCPA matters and issue revised enforcement guidelines. Since then, the DOJ’s FCPA Unit has shrunk by about one-third, and the SEC’s FCPA unit has been dissolved entirely. Just last week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced a National Fraud Enforcement Division that notably excluded the DOJ’s FCPA unit.
Enforcement has not only hit prosecutors but the FBI agents who underpin investigations. “If prosecutors are the quarterbacks, then FBI agents are the linemen. You can have the best hotshot quarterback in the world, but if you don’t have a left tackle, it doesn’t make a f–king difference,” said a former assistant U.S. attorney who spoke to The Dispatch on condition of anonymity. “[The administration] is starving the [DOJ] of staffing in the areas they dislike, and that is very intentional.”
Prosecutors still file FCPA cases and win trials, but the overall tempo of enforcement has slumped, and about half of ongoing investigations were dropped last year. In 2025, DOJ brought just six core FCPA actions, down more than 70 percent from 2024’s 22, the smallest annual tally since 2006. The first corporate indictment in 15 years did occur—against Smartmatic, a voting-technology firm that some Trump allies claimed aided in the 2020 election—though many viewed it as a politically charged prosecution.
“You have to admit enforcement is not what it used to be,” said Alex Kramer, who served as an assistant chief in the DOJ’s FCPA unit from 2022 to early 2025. Of the six enforcement actions DOJ brought last year, three targeted individuals and three involved corporations. Several deferred-prosecution agreements were ended prematurely. Yet, DOJ proceeded with four of the five individual FCPA trials scheduled for 2025, securing convictions in all. In Q1 2026, DOJ added one more corporate action and indicted three individuals.
Some of the decline in FCPA enforcement actions stems from the need to deploy DOJ manpower elsewhere. The FCPA unit had 32 attorneys in 2024 but dwindled to 22 by the end of 2025; estimates vary, with some suggesting a still lower headcount. Some lawyers moved to other DOJ divisions, while others left the government for private-sector jobs. The surge in immigration enforcement by the DOJ has also required prosecutors who would otherwise tackle more complex, resource-intensive white-collar matters to redirect their focus. In the first month of the administration, DOJ announced it would pull line prosecutors from all 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices to bolster border enforcement priorities. “In any organization with finite resources, new priorities mean diverting time from other areas,” said Jason McCullough, a former assistant U.S. attorney in D.C., speaking to The Dispatch. “There are only 24 hours in a day.”
Upstream resources—law enforcement and investigators who craft cases—have also shrunk, further tightening enforcement capacity. Typically, cases begin with the FBI and other agencies, which handle the initial investigations before handing off to prosecutors. However, two FBI units focused on influence operations and public corruption were disbanded last year. The DOJ also shut its internal anti-kleptocracy team, and the Public Integrity Section’s staff fell from around 30 lawyers during the Biden era to fewer than five by May 2025, per the Washington Post.
Alongside resource limits, the DOJ is grappling with a new set of FCPA enforcement guidelines. On June 9, 2025—119 days into the administration’s 180-day enforcement pause—then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche published a memo outlining revised priorities. He introduced four factors to consider when pursuing FCPA matters: 1) whether the alleged conduct relates to cartel or transnational criminal organization operations, 2) whether the misconduct harms U.S. companies’ economic interests, 3) whether it threatens U.S. national security, and 4) whether it reflects serious corrupt intent rather than routine business practices. The memo also requires sign-off from the criminal division’s assistant attorney general or a higher DOJ official on every FCPA matter, removing such decisions from career prosecutors and placing them with political appointees.
Not all information about dropped cases or new probes is public, making it hard to gauge how Blanche’s four new factors have already affected enforcement. Veteran observers of FCPA enforcement doubt that the four-factor framework has materially changed day-to-day enforcement. “I don’t know there’s been a meaningful shift in FCPA enforcement,” said Mike Koehler, a law professor and expert on the topic, in The Dispatch. “Same enforcement theories and same resolution routes are in play.” A former DOJ FCPA attorney, granted anonymity, agreed: “FCPA enforcement has returned to a pre-pause normalcy in terms of case types; it’s not the sea change—like focusing on cartels and terrorism—that many expected.”
Kramer contends that Blanche’s memo may shape new investigations more clearly than it influences decisions on closing or continuing existing cases. “Investigations can stretch for years, and the Blanche memo largely targeted which inquiries will be approved going forward,” he explained. “We’ll likely observe the effects of these guidelines more in the future than we’ve already seen.” Koehler, who has tracked shifts in FCPA theory for decades, remains less convinced the guidelines will alter enforcement patterns. “Policy memos suggest different things, yet DOJ practice over the last 15–20 years has shown many of those ideas never come to fruition.”
The DOJ also confronts broader uncertainty after Trump dismissed Bondi earlier this month. Trump designated Blanche as acting attorney general until a nominee is selected and confirmed, though the timing remains unclear. Recently, Blanche issued a memo creating a National Fraud Enforcement Division aimed at zealously pursuing those who steal or misuse taxpayer funds. This division—first floated by Vice President J.D. Vance in January—will be led by Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald and will bring together the Criminal Division’s Tax Section, Health Care Fraud Unit, and Market, Government, and Consumer Fraud Unit. Notably, the unit does not include the DOJ’s FCPA attorneys, whose status and rationale are still opaque.
Even so, the FCPA Unit is adjusting to leadership changes. In December, Tysen Duva was named the new assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division, which supervises the Fraud Section and FCPA Unit. Whether he will push a broader white-collar approach remains to be seen, but in a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire last year he conveyed ambivalence about the FCPA. “As the President correctly observed, FCPA enforcement in recent years has gone beyond its original purpose, burdening American firms and harming our national interests,” he wrote.
Yet despite FCPA not being favored under Trump, the era of unfettered corporate bribery is not imminent. Even with a smaller scope and capacity, DOJ’s seasoned white-collar prosecutors appear ready to enforce the FCPA. “When companies ask, ‘Is the FCPA gone? Can we dial back on it?’ my answer is a definite no,” said Kramer, now defending corporate clients. “For the most part, companies with anti-corruption policies remain in place and aren’t planning to roll them back entirely due to any one administration’s priorities, since they recognize that the issue could again become central later.” Ultimately, Trump’s era isn’t the first to move resources in and out of white-collar enforcement, nor will it be the last. “Every administration shifts priorities,” a former DOJ FCPA official noted. “This one just feels more dramatic than most.”
