The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky declared a mistrial in a case against defense contractor Quadrant Magnetics for violating export controls after the government sent the company thousands of pages of documents relevant to the case immediately prior to and during the company's trial (United States v. Quadrant Magnetics, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-00088).
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
A State Department notice declaring that all agency efforts to control international trade now constitute a "foreign affairs function" of the U.S. under the Administrative Procedure Act will ultimately be subject to the discretion of the courts, trade lawyers told us.
Export Compliance Daily is providing readers with the top stories from last week in case you missed them. You can find any article by searching for the title or by clicking on the hyperlinked reference number.
Robert Rasmussen, a technology policy coordinator within the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, resigned from his role after accepting the terms of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, he announced March 8 on LinkedIn. Rasmussen also worked as an export compliance specialist in the Bureau of Industry and Security from 2016 to 2020 before joining DDTC in 2023. The White House offered the deferred resignation program to federal employees earlier this year, promising to pay them through September in exchange for their resignation.
The U.S. should take more steps to slash export barriers hindering defense trade with close allies, especially Australia, industry officials and a researcher said last week.
Ola Craft, who left the government earlier this year as director of strategic trade and nonproliferation with the National Security Council, has joined Lowenstein Sandler as a senior trade adviser in its global trade and national security practice, the firm announced. Craft held senior export control roles in the Bureau of Industry and Security and the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls before joining the NSC in 2024.
Marissa Cloutier, a former government official who worked on foreign military sales and State Department export controls, has joined K&L Gates as a national security policy adviser, the firm announced. Cloutier was most recently the chief of the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls’ Compliance and Civil Enforcement Division. She left the government earlier this year while on a special assignment as the Air Force’s foreign military sales country director for Latin America.
A federal court in Kentucky found that Arms Export Control Act and International Traffic in Arms Regulations licensing requirements for technical data don't violate the First Amendment as a restriction on free speech. Judge David Hale of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky said the licensing requirements "advance important government interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech" and don't burden "substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests" (United States v. Pascoe, W.D. Ky. # 3:22-88).
The State Department needs a better system to review export license applications for firearms, and the Bureau of Industry and Security needs to address employee shortages that are hindering its end-use checks for those exports, the Government Accountability Office said in a new report.