Welcome to Compliance Hot Spots, our snapshot on white-collar, regulatory and compliance news and trends. Wilmer Hale's Jamie Gorelick talks with us about coronavirus crisis management—and much more. Highlights below. Plus: Covid-19 is slowing CFIUS reviews. Scroll down for major headlines, Who Got the Work and all the notable moves, including a new white-collar leader at Latham.

We hope you, colleagues, family and friends are staying safe and healthy. Thanks for reading, and we'd love your feedback. Contact C. Ryan Barber in Washington at [email protected] and at 202-828-0315. Follow @cryanbarber.

'It's Just Been Unreal': Catching Up With Wilmer Hale's Jamie Gorelick on Coronavirus Crisis Management

One Friday early last month, as businesses stood on the verge of shuttering their offices amid the coronavirus outbreak, the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr had its employees work from home.

It was an experiment of sorts, a one-day test of how the firm would function in what would soon become the new normal.

"It worked," said Jamie Gorelick (above), a Wilmer Hale partner who served as deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration. "And then we never came back."

In the weeks since, holed up at home in suburban Washington, Gorelick has been called upon to help clients navigate the fallout of the coronavirus outbreak as a co-leader of Wilmer Hale's crisis management group.

Gorelick recently shared some insights into her work guiding companies through the recent tumult. Here are some highlights from our conversation, which you can read here.

>>> On how past experiences have influenced her response to the coronavirus outbreak: I personally have dealt with a lot of crises. So, whether they're small or large, geographically distinct or global, the skills and the characteristics that you need to summon are the same. You think about the Oklahoma City bombing, where I was at the Justice Department, or the 9/11 attacks, where I was inside a company. Or you think about any number of crises when I was at [the Defense Department]. It may seem weird to say this, but this is what I do.

>>> On the fundamentals of a crisis response: One is to stay calm. Two is to exhibit leadership for the rest of the people who are in your organization. Three is to think very clearly about what needs to happen. And four is to imagine what is likely to happen next or could happen next before it happens and prepare for it.

>>> On the demands of this tumultuous period: I've been so flat out that I work pretty much all day and most of the evening, and then I go to sleep. I have read the same three pages of a book over and over again, and then I fall asleep. That has to stop, but that is where I currently am.

COVID-19 and CFIUS: Coronavirus Pandemic Slows National Security Reviews

The COVID-19 pandemic is slowing down national security reviews of foreign investment deals in the United States, lawyers told my colleague MP McQueen in a report at Law.com.

While mergers and acquisitions in general were declining as the novel coronavirus spread across the globe, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States at the U.S. Treasury Department, which reviews transactions for national security concerns, is also being affected by the new working conditions, lawyers added.

"It is not that CFIUS is closed, but there is an impact on CFIUS too, and you have to factor that into your planning," said David Fagan, co-chair of the firm's cross-border investment and national security practice at Covington & Burling in Washington.

The pandemic also could influence the panel's thinking about national security with respect to foreign investment in, and acquisition of, U.S. manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and devices such as N95 respirators and ventilators, CFIUS lawyers said.

Who Got the Work

>> Dechert LLP has joined the defense teams representing Huawei Technologies Co. in the U.S. Justice Department's fraud case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Dechert will team with Sidley Austin's Thomas Green, Mark Hopson and Michael Levy. Sidley has been working with Jenner & Block, including partner David Bitkower, in defending the embattled Chinese telecommunications company.

>> The law firms Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky and Sandler, Reiff, Lamb, Rosenstein & Birkenstock are suing the U.S. Small Business Association on behalf of political consultants and lobbyists who claim they are being denied access to Care Act loans. Read the complaint here in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Bloomberg News has more here.

>> Mayer Brown, including partner John Mancini, is representing 3M Co. in a new federal suit alleging price gouging and other claims against a New Jersey business over the sale of respirator masks. The WSJ has more here. Mayer Brown is also representing 3M in a mask trademark suit filed in California.

>> Morrison & Foerster white-collar partner Carl Loewenson Jr. in New York is representing a former financial services executive, Asante Berko, in a new FCPA case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Compliance Reading Corner

Companies Jostle for Aid in Coronavirus Lobbying Frenzy. "Companies don't have an endless supply of cash, and many have thousands of employees," Marc Lampkin of Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber Schreck said. "That creates a sense of urgency. [They say] 'we need help from our government and we need to understand how these programmes work so we don't have a cataclysmic interruption.'" [Financial Times] The Associated Press has more here.

Coronavirus Hobbles Corporate Compliance Monitoring. "Lockdowns intended to blunt the spread of coronavirus are delaying the work of corporate monitors who rely on visits to companies and access to sensitive data to ensure that regulator-mandated changes to compliance regimes are being upheld. With travel restricted as well, monitors have reached for digital tools to continue their work. But observing corporate culture and day-to-day operations at a virtual remove is less than ideal. 'When you do a site visit and you're actually there, you can see how people interact and how they relate,' said Pam Davis, a partner at law firm Winston & Strawn LLP in San Francisco who has been an independent monitor and consultant in foreign bribery cases." [WSJ]

Leading Through the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Q&A With CVS Health General Counsel Thomas Moriarty. "Health care and health care providers and all we can deliver for patients and customers is very much in focus," Moriarty (at left) said. "We serve the needs of one in three Americans across our enterprise. Also, legal affairs and regulation and all the implications of the CARES Act [Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act], as well as all the requirements at the state and local level in supporting access to health care providers, are at the center of our attention right now." [Law.com]

Who's Getting These Hundreds of Billions in Government Aid? For Now, the Public May Be in the Dark. "The names of businesses that collectively will receive hundreds of billions of dollars in coronavirus relief from the federal government may not be disclosed publicly, an omission that critics say could make the massive spending program vulnerable to fraud and favoritism. The $2.2 trillion Cares Act approved by President Trump last month requires that the names of recipients of some forms of federal aid be published, but those requirements do not extend to significant portions of the relief." [The Washington Post]

Why We Desperately Need Oversight of the Coronavirus Stimulus Spending. "Who will conduct oversight of this staggering amount of taxpayer money? We need to ensure that this government aid is not being stolen, wasted or given to political cronies. And we need to make sure that the public is aware of how and to whom those trillions are distributed. In short, we need watchdogs. As it prepares for more relief in the wake of vast economic ruin caused by Covid-19, Congress has leverage—and must use it," Jenner & Block's Neil Barofsky writes. [NYT]

In Unusual Statement, 2 SEC Officials Urge Companies to Talk About the Future. As nearly every public company struggles with what to say about the impact of COVID-19 on the business and how to say it, two officials at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission released an unprecedented statement detailing what companies should disclose. [Law.com]

Christie's to Pay Up to $16.7 Million Fine Over Tax Violations. "After in-house legal personnel in New York began objecting to the situation, the company's general counsel announced that Christie's Private Sales would start collecting New York sales tax, prosecutors said." [NYT] Read DA Cyrus Vance's news statement here.

Trump Administration Moves Against Chinese Telecom Firms Citing National Security. "The Trump administration is moving aggressively on national security grounds against Chinese telecom firms, with key agencies this week recommending that a subsidiary of China's largest landline provider have its U.S. license revoked." [The Washington Post]

Notable Moves and More

• Latham & Watkins said Douglas Greenburg will be the firm's next white-collar defense and investigations chair, taking over for Kathryn Ruemmler, who left the firm Friday for Goldman Sachs. Greenburg, chairman of Latham's Washington litigation and trial department, will lead the practice group, which has around 44 partners, 14 counsel and 60 associates assigned to it full-time, he said.

• Husch Blackwell has selected partner Catherine Hanaway to succeed chairman Greg Smith next year. Hanaway, who joined the firm 2013, helped form and then lead its government solutions group. She will become chair April 1, 2021.

• Comcast Corp. has named Candy Lawson (at left) chief compliance officer and senior deputy general counsel. "Prior to joining Comcast, Ms. Lawson was Senior Vice President, Deputy General Counsel, and Group Chief Compliance Officer at 21st Century Fox, where she advised on compliance matters, including strategies, policies and procedures to mitigate risk across all areas of the business," the company said. My colleague Sue Reisinger has more here at Law.com on the selection of Lawson.

• The SEC has named Natasha Guinan, a former Cravath, Swaine & Moore litigation associate, as the top lawyer for the commission's chief accountant. Guinan served from 2008 to 2013 as a senior counsel in the SEC's enforcement division. After a stint in the enforcement division of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, she returned to the SEC in 2014 as a senior special counsel for legal policy in the SEC general counsel's office.

• Vinson & Elkins said it has hired Michael Ward as a white-collar and investigations partner in San Francisco, Bloomberg Law reports. "Ward has spent the past 15 years in-house leading compliance efforts at companies like Target Corp., McKesson Corp., Adobe Systems and Cisco Systems. Prior to that, the former Shearman & Sterling associate spent nearly 16 years as an assistant U.S. attorney in Minneapolis," the report said.

• Hunton Andrews Kurth has brought on Kevin Hahm as a partner in the firm's competition and consumer protection practice, my colleague Dan Packel reports. Hahm is a former assistant director of the Federal Trade Commission's Mergers IV Division.