Amid a flurry of shifts and shakeups in the U.S. Department of Justice, uncertainty shrouds the future of white-collar enforcement.

“In the early months of the Trump administration, the Justice Department has been in a period of reorganization, reallocation of resources and resetting of priorities,” says Steven Fagell, the co-chair of Covington & Burling’s white-collar defense and investigations practice. “So far, white-collar enforcement has not featured prominently in that reset.”

The DOJ historically has prosecuted white-collar crime, which includes corporate, securities and other financial fraud, foreign corruption and money laundering, through several of its offices. Among them are the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section; the National Security Division; and the Antitrust Division’s Criminal Enforcement Program.

Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump made clear that targeting drug cartels, transnational criminal organizations and illegal immigration were among his highest priorities. After being confirmed in February, U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi signaled through a series of decisions that the DOJ would alter its enforcement priorities to align with this mission.

In addition to focusing less on white-collar crime, the DOJ planned in March to slash the number of prosecutors who handle foreign corruption and money laundering cases as well as criminal cases against elected officials, according to the New York Times. The move came on the heels of the department’s firing, demoting and reassigning of dozens of prosecutors, including longtime career lawyers.

Fagell, a former senior official in the DOJ’s Criminal Division, says it often takes time for the white-collar enforcement program to “get its sea legs” in each administration. Senior leaders who bring the most significant corporate cases need to assume their positions, and once that happens, they often shift and refocus resources.

“I expect that once all the key players are in role and resources have been shuffled according to the new priorities, the Trump administration will put its own unique stamp on corporate white-collar enforcement,” Fagell says.

Other attorneys, including Aitan Goelman, the head of Zuckerman Spaeder’s securities and commodities litigation practice, say early changes under the Trump administration are more extreme than in past years.

“People who are not lawyers, who are not part of the system, who don’t practice white-collar law assume there’s going be a lot more change because of administration changes,” says Goelman, who previously served as a federal prosecutor with the DOJ. “But usually there’s a lot more continuity. There are these institutions, and they are largely continuing the same approach as their predecessors.”

That has not been true with the Trump administration, adds Goelman, a co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s White Collar Crime Institute.

“This administration is sea changes,” he says. “So, all the ways someone who may not be involved in white-collar crime thinks an election may matter, they matter in spades right now.”

A significant change involves enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was enacted in 1977 to make it unlawful for U.S. companies and individuals to bribe foreign government officials to obtain or retain business.

Bondi announced in a memo in February that the Fraud Section’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Unit will prioritize cases of foreign bribery that facilitate drug cartel and transnational criminal operations and shift its focus “from investigations and cases that do not involve such a connection.”

Trump subsequently issued an executive order directing Bondi to pause Foreign Corrupt Practices Act actions for six months. He said the attorney general will review all past and existing actions and issue revised enforcement guidance that promotes “American economic competitiveness” and “the efficient use of federal law enforcement resources.”

For Raymond Banoun, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, where he headed the Fraud Division, it’s too early to predict what will happen after the review period.

Banoun is another co-chair of the ABA Criminal Justice Section’s White Collar Crime Institute, which typically was used by DOJ officials to discuss their new priorities and policies. The DOJ skipped the March event this year.

If the DOJ deprioritizes enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the long term, Banoun says other groups could step in to fill the void.

“It will be interesting see what foreign governments do,” says Banoun, the owner of Banoun Law in Washington, D.C. “A lot of American companies operate all over the world, and foreign countries have their own FCPAs or anti-bribery laws. The question is to what extent are they going to be enforced?”

The 93 U.S. attorneys who enforce federal laws throughout the country could now exercise greater independence in their case selection, says Jacob Frenkel, the chair of government investigations and securities enforcement at Dickinson Wright. He adds that state attorneys general may move more quickly to bring their own enforcement cases.

“We’re still in the wait-and-see mode,” says Frenkel, who served in the public sector for 14 years, including as a federal prosecutor. “But even in the area of FCPA enforcement, we should not lose sight of the fact that most states have anti-bribery and anti-corruption statutes. If a corporation is domiciled in that state, there’s the potential for jurisdiction to be exercised.”

The California attorney general announced in April that regardless of the Trump administration’s order suspending Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement, it remains illegal to make payments to foreign officials to obtain or retain business under the state’s Unfair Competition Law.

“In large part, I think much of the shift may be in terms of who is bringing what types of cases rather than a broader sense of minimal enforcement,” Frenkel says.

The DOJ made other changes that indicate a move away from traditional white-collar enforcement.

Bondi said in February that the Criminal Division’s Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section will prioritize investigations into and prosecutions of drug cartels and transnational criminal organizations. As a result, Task Force KleptoCapture, which was launched in 2022 to enforce sanctions on Russian oligarchs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and other kleptocracy initiatives were being disbanded.

“Attorneys assigned to those initiatives shall return to their prior posts, and resources currently devoted to those efforts shall be committed to the total elimination of cartels and TCOs,” Bondi said in her memo.

In another February memo, Bondi said she would shift resources in the National Security Division “to free resources to address more pressing priorities.” This includes disbanding the division’s Foreign Influence Task Force and Corporate Enforcement Unit.

“We’re going to see a shift in terms of sanctions,” says Goelman, adding that the DOJ’s actions suggest sanctions involving Russia will be less of a priority.

Goelman also expects “a sea change in terms of the approach to crypto.” While he says the Biden administration was “overtly hostile” to the cryptocurrency industry, Trump pledged in a March executive order to make the United States a global leader in cryptocurrency. The DOJ followed up in early April, directing prosecutors to limit their investigations into cryptocurrency crimes.

According to a memo from U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the DOJ will prioritize investigations into “individuals who victimize digital asset investors or those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses such as terrorism, narcotics and human trafficking, organized crime, hacking, and cartel and gang financing.”

Blanche also said in the memo that the DOJ will disband its National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, which was launched by the Biden administration in 2022 to combat fraud and illicit finance.

“The question on crypto is what about the fraud and the manipulation that’s ubiquitous in the digital asset markets?” Goelman says. “Is this administration going to focus on them because they want to be very crypto friendly and create markets that have some policing in them so people who are buying and selling crypto are not as vulnerable to fraud? Or are they going to let it be the Wild West?”

Attorneys who practice white-collar law are paying attention to reorganizations and reductions in staff in several other government agencies, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Those have been, in the financial markets area, important players in investigations of accounting fraud, financial fraud, insider trading, Ponzi schemes, investor fraud and commodities fraud,” says Carrie Cohen, global co-chair of the investigations and white-collar defense practice group at Morrison & Foerster.

The SEC has dropped or paused many lawsuits and investigations it brought against cryptocurrency companies under the Biden administration, according to reports from Bloomberg Law and Wired.

In announcing that a new task force will develop regulatory guidance for crypto assets, SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda said the agency previously “relied primarily on enforcement actions to regulate crypto retroactively and reactively, often adopting novel and untested legal interpretations along the way.”

Trump campaigned on dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which he and other Republicans have accused of politicized and overzealous enforcement. In addition to implementing mass layoffs, acting director Russell Vought closed the bureau’s headquarters and ordered staff to halt its work in February.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since has said the Trump administration could lay off workers at the bureau but not dismantle it entirely.

Attorneys also anticipate major changes at the Internal Revenue Service, which has a criminal investigative arm that conducts financial crime investigations. According to an internal memo, which was obtained by Politico, the agency planned to cut 30,000 to 40,000 employees in mid-April. Thousands of the agency's employees already accepted buyout offers or were terminated.

If the reduction in workforce at the Internal Revenue Service impacts audits and criminal investigations, that also could impact civil and criminal enforcement of federal tax laws, says Frenkel.

Investigations of white-collar crime are complex and often take a long time, says Cohen, who notes that many attorneys in this area continue to work on matters that preexisted the Trump administration. As expected, she says her work with state attorneys general is growing, but she maintains an active federal practice.

Despite the administration’s recent orders, Cohen emphasizes that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and all other white-collar crime laws are “still the laws of the land.”

“All of those laws and regulations are still valid, existing laws, and companies, both public and private, do not want to be in the business of violating the law whether or not they believe they are going to be subject to a government investigation because of it,” Cohen says.