Republican Senator blasts US Justice Dept's Boeing 737 MAX plea deal

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz backed the families of passengers killed in two fatal Boeing 737 MAX crashes and sharply criticizing the Justice Department's deferred prosecution agreement with Boeing. The $2.5b Boeing deferred prosecution agreement, a type of corporate plea agreement, was reached in January 2021 near the end of former President Donald Trump's administration. It capped a 21-month government investigation into the design and development of the 737 MAX following two crashes, in Indonesia in 2018 and Ethiopia in 2019, that killed a total of 346 people. Families of some of those killed in the two crashes asked Texas-based US District Judge Reed O'Connor to declare that the deferred prosecution agreement was negotiated in violation of their rights as crime victims under federal law and determine appropriate remedies. Cruz, who is ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce aviation subcommittee, told O'Connor in a letter made public late Monday that "Boeing engaged in criminal conduct that defrauded government regulators and left hundreds of people dead in preventable plane crashes." Cruz said the Justice Department's position - that the relatives of those killed were not victims under the Crime Victims Rights Act - was "simply nonsensical." The settlement included a fine of $243.6m, compensation to airlines of $1.77b and a $500m fund for crash victims over a fraud conspiracy charge related to the plane's flawed design.<br/>