In an abrupt turn of events, a federal judge probing two ex-Girardi Keese partners who failed to alert him that clients of the Lion Air crash hadn’t been paid their full settlement funds turned his attention Thursday to Edelson, the Chicago firm that first notified him of the $2 million in missing money on Dec. 2, 2020.

“You’re the closest to this case in front of me,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin of the Northern District of Illinois told Edelson’s lawyers at an evidentiary hearing in his Chicago courtroom. “I’m surprised and don’t really understand why I had to learn about this in December.”