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Samuel Dewey on Congressional Investigations in the 117th Congress: Senate Investigations Are Coming

With a new administration has come more than 20 requested inquiries targeting the private sector. In particular, Senate Investigations are targeting regulations surrounding tech and social media companies, inaccuracies in congressional hearings regarding student loan service providers, and questionable practices by pharmaceutical companies resulting in decreased corporate taxes and increased prices for consumers.
Samuel Dewey is a lawyer with extensive experience in Congressional Investigations. In this article, Mr. Dewey provides an overview of some Senate Investigations planned and underway in the 117th Congress.
Tech and Social Media
Both parties have long been calling for corporate responsibility for major social media platforms to take down fake news, disinformation, and to take more responsibility for regulating bad actors who want to exploit their applications and websites.
At the heart of the issue is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (47 U.S.C. § 230), a law signed into effect in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton protecting internet companies from liability for user-created content published on their platforms.
While Democrats and Republicans disagree on why Section 230 should be amended, they may both agree on some measure of reform. Facebook, Twitter, Google, and even Wikipedia stand a lot to lose if this should come to pass.
Former President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized Section 230 in conflicts with major social medial companies and is currently suing Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube for suspending his accounts after the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Congressional Hearings Revisited
The Senate is conducting follow-up hearings for “false and misleading testimony” provided by loan service providers to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on student debt issues.
The questions in the original hearing were to discuss the mismanagement of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency in its Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, but the case has since evolved with the discovery of allegedly inaccurate denials during the original testimony
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Drug Pricing
The pharmaceutical manufacturing company AbbieVie is under investigation for its tax practices and the effects on consumer pricing. One year after the 2017 tax law was passed, AbbieVie’s tax rate fell to 8.6%, far below the statutory corporate income tax rate of 21%.
Meanwhile, the company was also drastically raising drug prices to American consumers for life-saving treatments. In a letter to AbbieVie’s CEO from Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, he states that “It appears that AbbVie shifts profits offshore while reporting a domestic loss in the United States to avoid paying U.S. corporate income taxes and that the current U.S. international tax system seems to encourage that.”
Similarly, Gilead Sciences, Inc. is under investigation for high pricing for its drugs treating hepatitis C and HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis. The Committee on Finance is accusing the company of anti-competitive behaviors and the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to block drug pricing proposals through questionable lobbying efforts.
In addition, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that advertising by drug manufacturers may have contributed to increases in Medicare beneficiary use and spending. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Senator Chuck Grassley intend to introduce legislation that requires the pharmaceutical industry to disclose the product’s cost in advertising, with the intent of more cost transparency to make patients more aware of lower-cost generics and ultimately lower drug spending for consumers.
About Samuel Dewey
Samuel Dewey is a successful lawyer and former Senior Counsel to the US House of Representatives Financial Services Committee and Chief Investigator and Counsel to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging. Mr. Dewey specializes in: (1) white-collar investigations, compliance, and litigation; (2) regulatory compliance and litigation; and (3) complex public policy matters. Within these fields, Mr. Dewey is considered an expert in Congressional investigations and attendant matters. Mr. Dewey has a BA in Political Science, a JD from Harvard, and is admitted to practice law in Washington, D.C., and Maryland.

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Violent Typhoon Mawar sets sights on Philippines, Taiwan and Japan after blow to Guam

The powerhouse typhoon is the equivalent of a very strong Category 4 hurricane as it approaches the northernmost island of the Philippines before turning to the north, continuing its damaging path.

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Japan says scrambled fighter jets after Russian planes spotted

The country’s defence ministry says Russian ‘intelligence-gathering’ aircraft spotted near its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan.
Japan scrambled fighter jets after spotting Russian “intelligence-gathering” aircraft off its coasts along the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Japan on Thursday, the country’s defence ministry has said.
One Russian aircraft travelled from Japan’s north down along part of its west coast, while the other took a similar route along the opposite coast and returned the same way, the Joint Staff office run under the defence ministry said in a brief statement.
“In response, fighters of the Air Self-Defence Force’s Northern Air Force and other units were scrambled,” it added.
There was no further information on the incident, which comes days after Japan hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit of Group of Seven (G7) – a grouping of rich nations – in Hiroshima city.
Japan has joined Western allies in sanctioning Moscow over its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and has warned of the threat posed by Russia.
Its latest security document, which once called for enhanced ties and cooperation with Russia, now warns that Moscow’s military posturing in Asia and cooperation with China are “a strong security concern”.
Last May, Chinese and Russian military jets carried out joint flights near Japan immediately after a meeting of the United States-led Quad grouping in Tokyo. India and Australia are other members of Quad.
And more recently, Moscow has carried out military exercises, including test-firing missiles, in the Sea of Japan.
Russia considers Japan to be a “hostile” country – a designation it shares with all European Union countries, the US and its allies, including the United Kingdom and Australia.
Tokyo had complex relations with Moscow before the invasion of Ukraine in February, and the two sides have yet to sign a post-World War II peace treaty.
Attempts to do so have been hampered by a long-running dispute over islands controlled by Russia, which calls them the Kurils.

News
France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

France has banned domestic short-haul flights where train alternatives exist, in a bid to cut carbon emissions.
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
The ban all but rules out air travel between Paris and cities including Nantes, Lyon and Bordeaux, while connecting flights are unaffected.
Critics have described the latest measures as “symbolic bans”.
Laurent Donceel, interim head of industry group Airlines for Europe (A4E), told the AFP news agency that “banning these trips will only have minimal effects” on CO2 output.
He added that governments should instead support “real and significant solutions” to the issue.
Airlines around the world have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic, with website Flightradar24 reporting that the number of flights last year was down almost 42% from 2019.
The French government had faced calls to introduce even stricter rules.
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
But this was reduced to two-and-a-half hours after objections from some regions, as well as the airline Air France-KLM.
French consumer group UFC-Que Choisir had earlier called on lawmakers to retain the four-hour limit.
“On average, the plane emits 77 times more CO2 per passenger than the train on these routes, even though the train is cheaper and the time lost is limited to 40 minutes,” it said.
It also called for “safeguards that [French national railway] SNCF will not seize the opportunity to artificially inflate its prices or degrade the quality of rail service”.


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