Boeing is seeking to withdraw an agreement to plead guilty in a criminal case that blamed the company for deceiving regulators before two deadly 737 MAX crashes.
The planemaker is pursuing the maneuver in a bid for potential leniency from the Trump administration, which is reviewing many pending white-collar criminal cases that haven’t yet been finalized by the courts, the newspaper reported.
The move is the latest twist in a long-running legal saga over the planemaker’s culpability for two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 that combined killed 346 people. It would potentially end a rare felony prosecution of a large US corporation, although Boeing would still maintain a commitment to spend about $400 million on safety and compliance enhancements, according to the report.