Export Control Agencies Still Issuing Subpoenas Despite Employee Departures, Lawyer Says
The recent departure of many career employees at the Bureau of Industry and Security and other government agencies hasn’t necessarily translated into less export control and sanctions enforcement activity, lawyers said last week.
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Dozens of career officials have left U.S. enforcement agencies since the beginning of the Trump administration, including BIS senior engineers, division directors and top experts on the Export Administration Regulations (see 2503260007, 2502270009, 2502270004, 2504290035 and 2505060015).
But Clinton Yu, a trade lawyer with Barnes & Thornburg, said the pace of government probes hasn't slowed. Some of his clients are still receiving administrative subpoenas from BIS, grand jury subpoenas from DOJ or inquiries from DHS, “all involving export control and [Office of Foreign Assets Control] sanctions investigations,” he said.
“I haven't really seen a slowdown in enforcement, and so I don't think there are any particular resource issues there right now,” Yu said during a webinar last week hosted by BDO, a business advisory firm.
Kristen Krishnamurthy, a trade lawyer with Verizon and former Commerce Department official, said that despite the employee turnover and the administration’s changes to the structure of portions of the federal government, the “fundamental structure of the export control agencies is still the same.” She doesn’t believe there has been “any serious talk about restructuring or moving” export control and sanctions agencies, including BIS, OFAC and the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls.
But Krishnamurthy said the turnover could be affecting export licensing wait times. BIS began pausing new export license applications in February as part of a Trump administration policy review (see 2502130068) and has since lifted and reinstated the pause multiple times (see 2502280006, 2503060013 and 2504020051).
“The processing times for BIS license applications seem to be increasing,” Krishnamurthy said. “We don't have super-good visibility into the staffing levels at BIS and what those levels are like, but I would suspect that perhaps staffing levels have played a role in that increase in wait.”
Yu also said he has seen a slowdown in licenses, although it’s currently not a “complete stop.” He said he was able to secure approval for a client earlier this year for a license application caught in the pause, adding that he had to “do additional work” to speak with a BIS licensing officer and other U.S. agencies, including DOD and the State Department, “to triage and request expedited treatment of it.” The license was eventually approved after a few weeks, likely because it was for “commodities that were helpful or useful for health and safety purposes,” Yu said.
“But if that license were, say, to go to somewhere in China, obviously I think the outcome would have been very different,” he said.