Justice Department agrees to end Biden-era felony case against Boeing

The company would admit wrongdoing and pay more than $1 billion while escaping prosecution in connection with two crashes that claimed a total of 346 lives.

The Justice Department announced an agreement Friday to end its felony case against Boeing for the plane-maker’s role in two passenger jet crashes that killed a total of 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia — less than a year after the company agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with the Biden administration.

In return, Boeing must spend over $1.1 billion on fines, safety improvements and compensation for families of the people who died in the crashes in October 2018 and March 2019. Those disasters, involving Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 jet, kicked off years of still-unresolved questions from lawmakers and safety experts about the federal government’s oversight of the giant manufacturer and defense contractor.

Boeing would have to “admit to conspiracy to obstruct and impede” federal regulators, but DOJ would ask a judge to dismiss the case, the department said in a court filing. The government would have the option of refiling the charges later.

Under last year’s agreement, Boeing would have pleaded guilty to a felony of conspiracy to defraud the government, paid a total of $698 million in fines and other costs and subjected itself to an independent third-party monitor, among other provisions.

The brand of felon would have complicated life for Boeing, a major contractor for the U.S. military and NASA that is also the traditional supplier of Air Force One. A guilty plea would not have necessarily kept the company from continuing to reap billions of dollars in federal contracts, but it would have faced increased scrutiny from contracting agencies, would have had to update its certification with the military services, and probably would have faced increased inspections of its products.

Now it gets to escape all of that — for a price.

“Nothing will diminish the victims’ losses, but this resolution holds Boeing financially accountable, provides finality and compensation for the families and makes an impact for the safety of future air travelers,” the Justice Department said in a statement. Boeing declined to comment.

Democratic lawmakers assailed DOJ’s shift, the latest in a string of cases in which President Donald Trump’s administration has offered more leniency to alleged corporate wrongdoing than Biden’s agencies had.

“This special deal for Boeing is an outrageous injustice to victims and their families whose losses resulted from Boeing’s unforgivable failures,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, said in a statement Friday. He added: “Victims, families, and the flying public deserve better. They deserve justice, not this sham.”

Paul Cassell, an attorney for some of the families, called the agreement “unprecedented” and “obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history.” Robert Clifford, who represents other crash victims’ families, underscored that the latest move from DOJ is “a sweetheart deal.”

The watchdog group Public Citizen called the new agreement “unfathomable and unconscionable” — while saying the Biden-era version had “let [Boeing] off easy for wrongdoing that led to the needless deaths of hundreds of human beings.

“The deal marks one of the most shocking lapses of criminal enforcement against a major corporation in memory,” Public Citizen co-President Robert Weissman said in a statement Friday. “The Trump administration touts how it is tough on crime, but when it comes to the world’s most powerful institutions, it is an all-time patsy.”

Boeing will ‘admit to conspiracy’

Lawmakers of both parties had scorched Boeing’s safety record at a Senate hearing last June, where then-CEO David Calhoun stood and apologized to family members of some of the 346 victims. The senators focused not only on the 2018-19 crashes but also on more recent signs of trouble with the MAX, including a January 2024 incident in which a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines jet over Portland, Oregon. Whistleblowers at an earlier hearing last year testified to what they called a culture of promoting business over safety at Boeing.

The deal, however, leaves open the possibility of refiling the criminal charge if the department finds Boeing to be non-compliant with the new terms. According to the government’s court filing Friday, Boeing will have to “admit to conspiracy to obstruct and impede the lawful operation of the Federal Aviation Administration Aircraft Evaluation Group,” and the non-prosecution agreement “will not provide protection against prosecution for any other misconduct.”

“On top of the financial investments, Boeing must continue to improve the effectiveness of its anti-fraud compliance and ethics program and retain an independent compliance consultant,” DOJ said in its statement.

The agreement says Boeing will pay or invest over $1.1 billion, on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars it has previously spent in penalties and compensation for the families.

That includes a criminal monetary penalty of $487 million, minus a credit of roughly $244 million that Boeing had shelled out for earlier penalties. It will also pay $444.5 million into a fund to benefit crash victims’ relatives, in addition to $500 million it had paid for the families under a deferred prosecution agreement in 2021.

DOJ will also require Boeing to invest $455 million to strengthen the company’s compliance, safety, and quality programs.

Last year’s deal with Biden’s DOJ included similar monetary payments but not the additional $444.5 million for the families.

While non-prosecution agreements typically don’t need court approval, Boeing’s previous guilty plea remains pending in the Northern District of Texas. Judge Reed O’Connor could dismiss the case ahead of next month’s scheduled trial.

Families of the crash victims filed a petition with the Texas court on Friday to oppose the dismissal of the case.

The first Trump administration’s handling of the two deadly 737 MAX crashes drew criticism at the time, including for the FAA’s slowness to join other countries throughout the world in ordering the jet grounded after the second crash in 2019. At one point, Trump spoke by phone with then-Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who reassured the president that the MAX was safe to fly.

Investigators blamed the crashes on Boeing’s failure to inform the FAA about details of a new flight control software system in the MAX, which was implicated in both disasters. They also faulted the FAA’s over-reliance on Boeing employees to vouch for the safety of the plane’s design, among a host of other issues.

The fraud conspiracy charge stemmed from allegations that Boeing had violated the terms of the 2021 deferred-prosecution agreement, in which Trump’s Justice Department allowed Boeing to avoid criminal charges in exchange for fines and internal changes at the company. The department announced that deal at an exceedingly volatile moment in Washington: one day after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol.

Families of the 346 victims’ families have criticized the federal government’s handling of the case virtually from its inception, including the 2021 agreement and last year’s plea deal. They had wanted the department to pursue criminal charges, alleging that the company had knowingly put people in harm’s way, but the DOJ has maintained that it couldn’t prove such charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Victims are at the heart of the Department’s mission, and this case is no exception,” the DOJ statement said Friday. “The Department has met extensively with the crash victims’ families. While they are all experiencing grief, they hold a broad set of views regarding the resolution, ranging from support to disagreement. Ultimately, in applying the facts, the law, and Department policy, we are confident that this resolution is the most just outcome with practical benefits."

Alaska Airlines blowout triggered new scrutiny

After the January 2024 door plug blowout over Oregon, the department told a federal judge in May that newly revealed quality-control problems showed that the company had violated the 2021 agreement. That presented Boeing with a choice: take a plea or potentially stand trial. Boeing has maintained that it honored the terms of the deal.

Despite last summer’s plea agreement, however, the case was not over. A federal judge rejected the deal in December, expressing concerns about diversity policies at both Boeing and the DOJ, and noting that victims’ families also objected to the proposed oversight process. Boeing subsequently sought to withdraw its agreement to plead guilty, The Wall Street Journal reported in March.

DOJ’s new about-face is already drawing ire on Capitol Hill.

Blumenthal and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) on Thursday sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi urging the department not to sign the agreement, saying it would be a way for Boeing to “weasel its way out of accountability for its failed corporate culture, and for any illegal behavior that has resulted in deadly consequences.”

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), the ranking member of the Commerce Committee’s aviation subcommittee, said before the announcement that she viewed the move as the Trump administration going soft on a big corporation.

“I think Boeing and FAA have both shown that they’re incapable of proper oversight. ... They both have a terrible history,” she told POLITICO on Thursday.

The chair of that panel, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), demurred when asked about the legal proceedings. “My view is this is a judicial, prosecutorial question in the courts, not my domain,” he said Wednesday.

This story originally appeared in Politico.