Federal Judge Blows Up Boeing Plea Deal In Public Tantrum Over WOKE

Not a Trump judge, but definitely a Trump-y judge.

Photo by Sven Piper on Unsplash

Judge Reed O’Connor is mad at DEI. In fact, the mere sight of the word “diversity” sends the Texas judge into such a paroxysm of rage that last week, he blew up a billion-plus dollar settlement that would have compensated the families of victims killed in two airline disasters. Take that, woke mind virus!

Flying The Unfriendly Skies

O’Connor is presiding over a criminal fraud indictment filed against Boeing on January 7, 2021. The indictment came in the wake of two high profile crashes of the airline’s 737 MAX planes. Lion Air Flight 610 crashed after leaving Jakarta on October 29, 2018, killing 189 passengers and crew members. And on March 10, 2019, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing 157 passengers and crew. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board faulted Boeing for multiple manufacturing and training errors that led to a design flaw in the autopilot system. The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide from March of 2019 through November of 2020, causing massive disruptions to commercial air travel.

Concurrent with the indictment, Boeing entered into a deferred prosecution agreement under which it would pay a $243.6 million fine, $1.77 billion in compensation to airline customers, and an additional $500 million to relatives of the crash victims. The agreement would have concluded on January 7, 2024 so long as Boeing continued to make sure nothing went wrong with its 737 MAX planes.

In December of 2021, the surviving family members moved to intervene in the case pursuant to the 2004 Crime Victims Rights Act, which guarantees victims the right to participate in proceedings against the perpetrator. The families argued that the agreement was secretly negotiated, in violation of their statutory rights, and they requested that the court withhold approval. Senator Ted Cruz filed a statement in support of the families, accusing the Biden DOJ of “colluding” with Boeing to let the company off the hook.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the intercession of America’s worst senator, Judge O’Connor denied the families’ motion to intervene and void the agreement in February of 2023.

But then, on January 5, 2024, with just two days left on the clock, a panel blew off of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet in the air, leaving “a neat, refrigerator-sized rectangular hole in the aircraft.” Thanks to the heroism of the crew, that flight landed safely with no injury or loss of life. But the airplane was a Boeing 737 MAX, which meant that the deferred prosecution agreement was off the table, and the company was going to have to accept criminal responsibility.

In the summer of 2024, the Department of Justice announced a new plea deal. Boeing would plead guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to defraud the United States under 18 U.S.C. § 371. The fine was doubled, and the company was required to increase its restitution to the families of the victims. Boeing also agreed to a three-year probationary period, during which it would be supervised by a compliance monitor to “reduce the risk of misconduct.”

And that’s when the shit hit the fan, because of this terrifying sentence:

Independent Compliance Monitor selections shall be made in keeping with the Department’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.

The Woke DOJ

As we discussed on the show, that sentence had the effect of waving a red flag in front of Judge FedSoc. In a September 27 order, he demanded that the DOJ and Boeing show up and explain why he should bless the plea agreement. And suddenly he was very interested in the victims’ complaints about the negotiation process … well, sort of.

At the hearing on October 11, the victims protested what they called a “rotten deal,” negotiated in secret. They demanded greater input over the selection of the monitor, both for themselves and for the court. But O’Connor was concerned about something else entirely. As originally flagged by Reuters, he was fixated on the language about “diversity and inclusion.”