A Texas federal judge on Thursday dismissed the 737 Max criminal conspiracy case against Boeing. The judge did not acknowledge either the Trump Administration’s going too easy, nor his own complicity in delaying the case last year.
The Administration announced May 23rd a deal with Boeing to avoid prosecution over deadly 737 Max crashes. Boeing must pay fines and funds for victims, compliance, safety, and quality. But, Boeing had originally submitted to a criminal plea last year that would have been much tougher. It would have had to plead guilty on criminal fraud charges – because of how it had deceived the government about its horrifying safety failures – such a felony fraud conviction being the mark of Cain for a defense contractor like Boeing. And, Boeing would have had to submit to a Justice Department—appointed compliance monitor, with the independence and power to impose stern safety reforms. Instead, under the deal just OK’s by Texas federal judge Reed O’Connor, Boeing not only gets no fraud conviction at all, but it will get to retain its own compliance consultant — some agreeable figure it chooses, not an independent outside monitor — a sweetheart deal if ever there was one.
Much of the press has ignored that Boeing is getting the kid glove treatment now, falling for the Administration’s manipulative press handling that did not draw a contrast with the 2024 plea deal. Almost none of the press has caught on to O’Connor’s role – except Reuters which observed “the finalization of an agreement was delayed when O’Connor, who has a record of ruling in favor of conservative causes, raised question,” thereby postponing the day of reckoning from the tough 2024 Biden treatment to the soft 2025 Trump handling.
The story of how Boeing got to today’s much more generous deal than last year’s has several parts.
Boeing has been trying for years to put behind it two crashes of its Max plans, the Lion Air flight in 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines flight in 2019. It reached a settlement in 2021 in the final days f the first Trump Administration that shielded it from prosecution for three years. Then, in January 2024, the door panels blew out of a Max of Alasa Airlines, when Boeing failed to install key bolts. Prosecutors said Boeing violated the 2021 agreement, moved forward with new charges, and made a plea deal on criminal fraud in July 2024. Then Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said “Boeing’s employees chose the bath of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of is 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up their deception.”
Let us look at this Administration’s stance toward Boeing. Boeing is both a major defense aircraft contractor and a major civilian aircraft contractor. Starting with its role as a defense contractor, for Boeing to have faced the tougher plea of last year for criminal fraud would have meant it being branded as a felon. This makes it problematic for Boeing to sell to the government, although the government could mitigate the problem by giving Boeing waivers. About 32% of Boeing’s $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit.
As for this Administration’s defense contracting, a March 21, 2025 Reuters headline said it all: “Trump awards Boeing much-needed win with fighter jet contract.” This is the next generation fighter, replacing Lockheed Martin’s F-22 Raptor. The engineering and manufacturing development contract alone is worth more than $20 billion. Reuters figured that Boeing’s victory would mean that it will make the fighter, receiving orders worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the contract’s multi-decade lifetime. Trump announced the deal in a highly visible press conference.
As for civilian air manufacture, Boeing is this Administration’s contender for the world market principally against Europe’s Airbus and China’s Comac. The Administration puts great emphasis on competition in world markets. Last Spring, Boeing’s CEO accompanied President Trump on a trip to the Middle East and thanked the president for helping to broker a $96 billion order from Qatar Airways. By making this advantageous deal, the Administration has released Boeing from being guilty of fraud, and from having an outside compliance monitor – a tremendous boost.
Which leads to a look back at the past. Boeing could have been stuck with the plea deal of last year. It agreed to that plea. It submitted the plea along with the Justice Department. But, it was not an accident that the plea deal got dismissed and it got to delay until it got the much better deal from the new Administration, in which it is found doing no worse than a conspiracy to obstruct.
Rather, the plea deal with to U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor of the federal court in Fort Worth Texas. And Judge O’Connor is famed as an extreme political conservative. His nomination (by President George W. Bush in 2007) came right after from 2003 to 2007, he worked on the staff of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, and from 2005 to 2007 he even served as chief counsel to Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex). Few judges have a less judicious background, a more political one, than a staffer for many years to Senate republicans.
But it is his record on the bench which is most ideological. He has long been a favorite of conservative lawyers and Attorneys General of Texas looking for the right court for lawsuits against policies issued by Democratic presidents.
In 2015, he held a portion of the federal Gun Contract Act of 1968 was unconstitutional. This ruling was reversed on appeal.
In 2018, the judge issued a widely criticized ruling striking down President Barack Obama’s hallmark Affordable Care Act. This was the third time the statute had gone to the Supreme Court. It was considered remarkable that a judge would send in there a third time. His ruling was overturned without difficulty.
In 2023 he issued a nationwide injunction blocking an ATF rule that classified receiver blanks as firearms. The Supreme Court reversed his decision in an opinion written by Justice Neil Gorsuch. In other words, he is even much further out than the conservatives on the Supreme Court.
Many other rulings could be cited. There are few judges who have been brought as many opportunities by conservative lawyers to rule their way – and has taken them.
What is crucial is what Judge O’Connor secured in terms of timing by his decision rejecting last year’s plea deal, rather than its grounds. The grounds were that the plea deal would have DEI aspects in the choice of the monitor. That is interesting, and shows the judge thinks like this Administration. But, what is crucial is not the grounds of the ruling, but rather that his ruling put off the timing of the making of the final plea deal so that it was not the one made by the Biden Administration, but by the new Administration. And so, Judge O’Connor’s ruling is how Boeing got the opportunity to get a new deal from the new Administration — a much better deal.
Do not think of Boeing as an object of one-way charity from either O’Connor or the Trump Justice Department. It will surely find ways to express back its gratitude. It would be better if the press did not look the other way as this happened.
