The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

Independent research. Not affiliated with any government, agency, or company.

Agency

Department of Justice

Documented money flows

Findings that rest on exhibits naming this entity

  • INF-4.6: Google's U.S. table lists 717 court and government requests naming 6,991 items in 2021, mostly for defamation, trademark and privacy, with no misinformation category. Meta's report excludes government reports handled under its Community Standards and lists 3 U.S. items for the first half of 2021 and 21 for the second, and X's report for January to June 2024 has no separate U.S. line in its removal table.
  • INF-4.7: No public dataset states how many government reports to platforms from 2017 to 2024 led to removal, by agency, platform and administration. The only figure in the record is the FBI agent's recollection of about half.
  • INF-4.12: Executive Order 13925 (Trump, 28 May 2020) was revoked by Executive Order 14029 (Biden, 14 May 2021). Executive Order 14149 (Trump, 20 January 2025) directs that no federal officer, employee or agent engage in or facilitate conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.
  • INF-4.13: The 2026 consent decree in Missouri v. Biden bars the Surgeon General, the CDC and CISA from threatening platforms with punishment unless they remove or reduce protected speech, and records no admission (para. 17). The Ninth Circuit held in O'Handley (2023) that compliance with a California office's flag was optional for Twitter, with no intimation of adverse consequences, and that Twitter's moderation was not state action. Twitter's 2023 brief in Trump v. Twitter, a litigation position, argues that coercion requires the threat of a government sanction and that the FBI's emails were advisory.
  • POL-4.6: News reports state that the Justice Department closed its inquiries into Senators Loeffler (R), Feinstein (D) and Inhofe (R) by 26 May 2020, Perdue (R) by 25 November 2020 and Burr (R) in January 2021 without charges. A letter released by Loeffler's spokesperson, whose authenticity the committee staff did not confirm, says the Senate Ethics Committee dismissed the matter on 16 June 2020, and Burr says the SEC took no action.
  • POL-4.7: Burr said he relied solely on public news reports, Loeffler's spokesman called the inquiry politically motivated, Feinstein's office said her assets were in a blind trust and her husband traded, Inhofe said he does not make his own trades, and Perdue's campaign spokesman called the outcome 'exonerating evidence' and the allegations 'baseless accusations.'
  • AGR-5.1: USDA data show that the four largest packers' share of steer and heifer slaughter rose from 36 percent in 1980 to 85 percent in 2019, and their share of hog slaughter rose from 34 percent to 67 percent. In 2019 the four largest firms held 53 percent of broiler chicken and 55 percent of turkey production.
  • AGR-5.2: USDA's Economic Research Service attributes the rise in beef and pork packing concentration mostly to larger plants and says mergers played a limited role. ERS also reports that the farm-to-wholesale beef price spread doubled between 2015 and 2019. GAO estimated that fed cattle prices in 2013 to 2015 may have been about 9 percent higher in areas with less packer concentration than in areas with more, and stated that this evidence alone does not imply anticompetitive or improper behavior.
  • AGR-5.3: USDA rules defining unfair practices under the Packers and Stockyards Act were proposed in 2010, limited by a 2011 appropriations rider, issued in 2016, withdrawn in 2017, finalized in 2020, expanded in 2024 and, for broiler grower payments, delayed in 2026 to December 31, 2027. Administrations and Congresses of both parties acted at each step, and White Houses of both parties described meat processing as insufficiently competitive in January 2022 and September 2026.
  • AGR-5.4: Pilgrim's Pride pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to fix prices and rig bids for broiler chicken products and was sentenced to a criminal fine of $107,923,572 on February 23, 2021. ERS reports that individual defendants in the DOJ broiler cases were acquitted in jury trials. Tyson's filing states that the first civil broiler antitrust jury trial ended in a verdict for the defendants.
  • AGR-5.5: Tyson has agreed to class settlements of $221.5 million in the broiler case, $183 million in the pork case and $182 million in the beef case, and states that it does not admit liability. JBS USA settled three beef classes for $161.0 million and three pork classes for $57.3 million, and Pilgrim's Pride settled three broiler classes for $195.5 million.
  • AGR-5.6: DOJ sued Agri Stats in September 2023, alleging that its information exchanges among meat processors reduced competition. In May 2026 DOJ filed a proposed settlement that would end Agri Stats' company-level and facility-level production, cost and labor reports.
  • AGR-5.7: On July 16, 2026 the District of Minnesota certified four classes in the beef antitrust litigation, and the Eighth Circuit has agreed to review that certification. National Beef disclosed that DOJ told it in September 2025 that it was closing the federal investigation of fed cattle and beef packing markets, and that DOJ opened a new civil antitrust investigation in November 2025.
  • AGR-5.8: According to Reuters, President Trump said on 7 November 2025 that he had asked DOJ to investigate beef packers, and Attorney General Pam Bondi replied that an investigation was underway. According to Capital Press, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced antitrust investigations of meatpacking on 4 May 2026.
  • AGR-5.9: The filings cited record no court decision on whether the largest beef packers fixed prices or manipulated cattle prices.
  • AGR-5.10: Two seed companies accounted for 72 percent of planted U.S. corn acres and 66 percent of soybean acres in 2018-20. USDA's 2023 seed competition report counts Bayer, Corteva, ChemChina and BASF as owning 95 percent of corn, 84 percent of soybean and 74 percent of cotton plant intellectual property.
  • AGR-5.11: In 2017 and 2018 antitrust agencies cleared ChemChina-Syngenta, Dow-DuPont and Bayer-Monsanto only with divestitures. DOJ called the roughly $9 billion Bayer divestiture to BASF the largest merger divestiture ever required by the United States.
  • AGR-5.12: No retrospective study of the Bayer-Monsanto divestiture's effect on competition has been located.
  • AGR-5.13: The average price farmers paid for seed rose 270 percent from 1990 to 2020, against 56 percent for commodity prices and 463 percent for crops grown mostly with genetically modified traits. ERS states that the evidence is mixed on whether concentration caused the rise.
  • REL-5.9: The CARES Act created the Paycheck Protection Program and passed the Senate 96 to 0 on 25 March 2020, and President Trump approved it on 27 March 2020. President Biden approved the PPP Extension Act on 30 March 2021. SBA proposed removing its religious-status exclusions on 19 January 2021 and removed paragraph (k) of 13 CFR 120.110 in a final rule of 30 June 2022.
  • DEF-6.7: The Senate BCCI report found that Justice Department personnel obstructed the Manhattan District Attorney's inquiry and that the CIA continued to use BCCI and First American after it knew BCCI was a criminal enterprise.
  • POL-6.1: FARA requires a person who acts at the direction or control of a foreign principal and engages in political activities in the United States to register and file disclosures. A willful violation or false statement in a filing carries up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, and the Attorney General may seek a civil injunction. Since 1995 an agent of a non-government foreign principal who registers under the Lobbying Disclosure Act is exempt from FARA registration.
  • POL-6.2: DOJ's registrant files show 66 new FARA registrations in 2014, 150 in 2019 and 138 in 2025. DOJ's report for July to December 2025 lists 565 active registrants representing 858 foreign principals, and the inspector general counted 916 active registrations in 1987 and 360 at the end of 2014.
  • POL-6.3: The DOJ inspector general found in 2016 that DOJ brought seven criminal FARA cases from 1966 to 2015 and had not sought civil injunctive relief since 1991. The audit found that 62 percent of initial registrations were untimely and that the National Security Division does not track FARA cases it declines to prosecute.
  • POL-6.4: GAO reported in 2008 that DOJ lacks clear legal authority to inspect the records of persons it believes should register, that DOJ sought that authority in 1991 without success, and that its FARA Registration Unit fell from 13 staff in 1990 to 8 in 2008.
  • POL-6.5: DOJ's 2019 fact sheet states that more than twenty individuals and entities were criminally charged in 2018 with violations involving FARA, more than in the prior 50 years, and that its May 2019 civil action was the first since 1991. The fact sheet lists the 17 January 2019 settlement in which Skadden agreed to register after admitting that it acted as an agent of the Government of Ukraine in a 2012 media campaign.
  • POL-6.6: The September 2018 Manafort superseding information charges that from at least 2006 to 2015 Manafort conspired with Richard Gates, Konstantin Kilimnik and others to act as unregistered agents of Ukraine, including by arranging payment of over $2 million from offshore accounts to two unnamed Washington lobbying firms, which the information does not identify. On 31 March 2017 DOJ's FARA unit told the Podesta Group and Mercury Public Affairs in separate letters that each had an obligation to register for political activities for the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.
  • POL-6.10: DOJ's report for July to December 2025 lists 29 registrants with a Qatar-related foreign principal, and 19 of them report amounts received. The largest listed amounts are $1,820,400 for Finn Partners from Qatar Museums and $420,000 each for BGR Government Affairs and Bachner Group.
  • POL-6.12: As of 10 November 2026, DOJ's FARA registrant file contains no registrant named Brookings, the Atlantic Council or the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
  • POL-6.19: The Podesta Group's FARA registration (no. 5926) was dated 1 April 2009 and terminated on 31 December 2017, with 33 foreign principals on the registration record. The firm reported $24.04 million in Lobbying Disclosure Act income for 2016 and $18.13 million for 2017.
  • POL-6.20: Ballard Partners holds two FARA registrations in the record: no. 6415, dated 5 April 2017 and terminated 6 February 2021, with 12 foreign principals, and no. 7070, dated 13 January 2022 and active, with 6 foreign principals listed on 10 November 2026.

Exhibits naming this entity

  • Exhibit 318 December 1992. United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations: The BCCI Affair, S. Prt. 102-140 (Kerry and Brown)
  • Exhibit 326 1 September 1995. U.S. Department of Justice: Federal Court Releases $393 Million for BCCI Victims (DOJ press release #465)
  • Exhibit 462 19 January 2021. U.S. Small Business Administration: SBA Proposed Rule, Ensuring Equal Treatment for Faith-Based Organizations, 86 FR 5036
  • Exhibit 608 June 2023. USDA Economic Research Service (MacDonald, Dong and Fuglie): Concentration and Competition in U.S. Agribusiness (Economic Information Bulletin 256)
  • Exhibit 611 30 October 2008. Congressional Research Service (Renee Johnson): Recent Acquisitions of U.S. Meat Companies (CRS Report RS22980)
  • Exhibit 619 3 January 2022. The White House (Biden administration): FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Action Plan for a Fairer, More Competitive, and More Resilient Meat and Poultry Supply Chain
  • Exhibit 620 4 September 2026 (published 10 September 2026). The White House (Trump administration): Executive Order 14424: Promoting Fair Competition in Livestock Markets and Expanding Market Access for American Meat Producers (91 FR 57761)
  • Exhibit 621 26 September 2025. DOJ Antitrust Division and USDA: Memorandum of Understanding between the Antitrust Division, Department of Justice, and the Department of Agriculture: Cooperation with Respect to Strengthening Competition for Agricultural Inputs
  • Exhibit 622 12 May 2020. U.S. Senators (Fischer, Crapo, Daines, Jones, Enzi, Rounds, Hoeven, Smith, Cramer, Hyde-Smith and others): Letter from 19 U.S. Senators to Attorney General William Barr requesting a DOJ investigation of the cattle industry
  • Exhibit 624 7 November 2025. Reuters: US Justice Department probes meatpackers, attorney general says (Reuters, via U.S. News)
  • Exhibit 625 5 May 2026. Capital Press: U.S. attorney general probing beef packers seeks tips from ranchers (Capital Press)
  • Exhibit 626 23 February 2021. DOJ Antitrust Division: One of the Nation's Largest Chicken Producers Pleads Guilty to Price Fixing and is Sentenced to a $107 Million Criminal Fine (Press Release 21-172)
  • Exhibit 627 28 September 2023. DOJ Antitrust Division: Justice Department Sues Agri Stats for Operating Extensive Information Exchanges Among Meat Processors
  • Exhibit 628 7 May 2026. DOJ Antitrust Division and Office of the Attorney General: Justice Department Requires Agri Stats to End Exchange of Competitively Sensitive Information Among Nation's Largest Meat Processors (Press Release 26-453)
  • Exhibit 629 3 August 2026. Tyson Foods, Inc. (SEC filing): Tyson Foods, Inc., Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 27 June 2026 (Contingencies: Broiler, Pork and Beef Antitrust Litigation; DOJ civil investigative demands)
  • Exhibit 631 6 November 2026. U.S. Premium Beef, LLC (SEC filing): U.S. Premium Beef, LLC, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 26 September 2026 (Note 10, Legal Proceedings, describing National Beef Packing Company)
  • Exhibit 633 15 June 2017. DOJ Antitrust Division: Justice Department Requires Divestiture of Certain Herbicides, Insecticides, and Plastics Businesses in Order to Proceed with Dow-Dupont Merger
  • Exhibit 634 29 May 2018. DOJ Antitrust Division: Justice Department Secures Largest Merger Divestiture Ever to Preserve Competition Threatened by Bayer's Acquisition of Monsanto (Press Release 18-698)
  • Exhibit 635 4 February 2019. DOJ Antitrust Division: United States v. Bayer AG et al.; Response to Public Comments (84 FR 1493)
  • Exhibit 636 May 2012. DOJ Antitrust Division: Competition and Agriculture: Voices from the Workshops on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement in our 21st Century Economy and Thoughts on the Way Forward
  • Exhibit 752 26 May 2020. NBC News: Justice Department drops insider trading probes into three senators
  • Exhibit 753 19-20 January 2021. CBS News / Associated Press: Justice Department closes investigation into Senator Richard Burr over stock sales
  • Exhibit 755 Late 2020. The New York Times via Yahoo News: Stock trades by Senator Perdue said to have prompted DoJ inquiry (New York Times report)
  • Exhibit 816 8 June 1938 (as amended). U.S. Congress: Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, 22 U.S.C. 611 (definitions)
  • Exhibit 817 19 December 1995 (Pub. L. 104-65, sec. 9(3); amended Pub. L. 105-166, 1998). U.S. Congress: Foreign Agents Registration Act, 22 U.S.C. 613(h) (Lobbying Disclosure Act exemption)
  • Exhibit 818 Read 10 November 2026. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division: FARA Enforcement (NSD FARA Unit web page)
  • Exhibit 819 September 2016. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General: Audit of the National Security Division's Enforcement and Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, Audit Division 16-24
  • Exhibit 820 30 July 2008. U.S. Government Accountability Office: Post-Government Employment Restrictions and Foreign Agent Registration: Additional Action Needed to Enhance Implementation of Requirements, GAO-08-855
  • Exhibit 821 25 September 2019. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division: Foreign Agents Registration Act Fact Sheet
  • Exhibit 822 2026. U.S. Department of Justice: Report of the Attorney General to the Congress on the Administration of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, six months ending December 31, 2025
  • Exhibit 823 Downloaded 10 November 2026. U.S. Department of Justice, FARA Unit: FARA eFile bulk data: all registrants and all foreign principals (CSV)
  • Exhibit 825 31 March 2017. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division: Letter, DOJ NSD Counterintelligence and Export Control Section to Caplin & Drysdale re Podesta Group, Inc. and the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine
  • Exhibit 826 31 March 2017. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division: Letter, DOJ NSD Counterintelligence and Export Control Section to Skadden Arps re Mercury Public Affairs and the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine
  • Exhibit 1118 25 March 2026. U.S. District Court, W.D. La. (Judge Terry A. Doughty), entered on the consent of the plaintiffs and the federal defendants: Consent Decree, Missouri v. Biden, No. 3:22-cv-01213 (W.D. La.), Doc. 478
  • Exhibit 1122 4 February 2026. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Chief Judge Boasberg): Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 23-3004 (JEB) (D.D.C.), Memorandum Opinion, Doc. 27
  • Exhibit 1130 16 March 2026. Joshua Aaron and All U Chart, Inc. (plaintiffs; Sher Tremonte LLP), filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia: Amended Complaint, Aaron v. Bondi, No. 1:25-cv-04250-DLF (D.D.C.), Doc. 22
  • Exhibit 1131 24 April 2026. U.S. Department of Justice for the federal defendants, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia: Defendants' Reply in Support of Their Motion to Dismiss, Aaron v. Bondi, No. 1:25-cv-04250-DLF (D.D.C.), Doc. 28
  • Exhibit 1149 Data through the first half of 2026; accessed 10 November 2026. Meta Platforms, Inc.: Content Restrictions Based on Local Law (Meta Transparency Center): United States page, FAQ, and CSV download
  • Exhibit 1159 20 January 2025 (published 28 January 2025). President Donald J. Trump: Executive Order 14149, Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship (90 Fed. Reg. 8243)
  • Exhibit 1237 23 February 2021. United States District Court for the District of Colorado (filed by the Antitrust Division and Pilgrim's Pride Corporation): Plea Agreement, United States v. Pilgrim's Pride Corporation, No. 1:20-cr-00330-RM (D. Colo.), Document 58
  • Exhibit 1248 7 January 2021. U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division Fraud Section and U.S. Attorney's Office, N.D. Texas, with The Boeing Company: United States v. The Boeing Company, Deferred Prosecution Agreement (N.D. Tex.), filed as Exhibit 10.1 to Boeing Form 8-K
  • Exhibit 1292 read 10 November 2026. U.S. Department of Justice, National Security Division, FARA Unit (efile.fara.gov): FARA eFile records: Podesta Group, Inc. (no. 5926) and Ballard Partners (nos. 6415 and 7070)