Dan Novack, an enterprising First Amendment attorney, is one of the country’s foremost experts at prying documents out of the federal government using the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA. Novack first came to my attention several years ago, after he successfully obtained a draft complaint in which Benjamin Wagner, then the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, alleged inconsistencies with JPMorgan Chase’s due-diligence process in the lead-up to the financial crisis. The document was never filed, and shortly thereafter, JPMorgan reached a then-record $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. I later wrote about the saga for Vanity Fair. If Novack hadn’t unearthed it, despite the bank’s efforts to keep it buried, it’s likely it never would have seen the light of day.
The Epstein Posthumous Legal Battle
William D. Cohan
January 21, 2022
