Firm Files Amicus Brief Supporting Military Families in Terrorism Financing Case Against Deutsche Bank

Yesterday, the firm filed an amicus brief in the Second Circuit on behalf of former high-ranking intelligence and defense officials supporting Gold Star families in their lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and other international banks. The case, Wildman v. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft, involves hundreds of American military families seeking to hold banks accountable for allegedly laundering billions in Taliban drug proceeds and facilitating chemical supply chains that enabled IED attacks against U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan. The families argue that the banks’ money laundering operations provided the financial infrastructure that allowed al-Qaeda and Taliban forces to purchase weapons and explosives used in attacks that killed and wounded their loved ones. A Second Circuit panel had dismissed the families’ claims, but the plaintiffs have now filed a petition for rehearing. The amicus brief—filed on behalf of former senior intelligence officers and officials from the Defense Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, Department of Defense, and Department of the Navy—argues that the panel’s decision contradicts both Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization, which requires deference to political branch determinations about the narco-terrorism nexus, and Twitter, Inc. v. Taamneh, which establishes liability for foreseeable consequences of knowingly assisting illegal conduct. Amici have many decades of direct experience observing and working to disrupt this opium-to-terrorist-violence pipeline. The brief contends that decades of congressional and Executive Branch findings have established the connection between narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and terrorism financing, and that the panel improperly ignored this extensive governmental consensus in dismissing the families’ claims.