By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters] – Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican senator from Texas, backed passengers who died in the fatal Boeing (NYSE 🙂 737 MAX crash and harshly criticised the Justice Department’s delay of prosecution with Boeing.

Near the end of President Donald Trump’s term, the $2.5 Billion Boeing deferred prosecutor agreement was made. This is a form of corporate plea deal. The agreement concluded a 21 month government investigation into design and production of the 737 MAX. This was after two deadly crashes that occurred in Indonesian in 2018 and Ethiopian in 2019. A total of 346 victims were killed.

The families of the victims in both crashes sought relief from U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Texas. He declared that deferred prosecution agreements were not in compliance with federal law, and recommended appropriate remedies.

Cruz is the Senate Commerce Aviation subcommittee’s ranking Republican. O’Connor received a late Monday letter in which he stated that Boeing had engaged in criminal conduct and defrauded regulators. This led to hundreds of deaths in avoidable crashes.

Boeing and Justice Department refused to comment.

Cruz stated that Cruz’s assertion by the Justice Department, that relatives of victims were not victims under Crime Victims Rights Act, was simply absurd.

This settlement consisted of a $243.6M fine, $1.77B in airline compensation and $500M for victims of crashes. The agreement was made over fraud conspiracy charges related to the aircraft’s defective design.

Cruz sent O’Connor a letter stating that “it is probable that the crashes wouldn’t have happened if Boeing had been truthful with regulators regarding the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System problems on the Boeing 737 MAX plane.” If the government doesn’t consider these people victims, then it would be difficult to explain why it believed a $500,000 compensation fund was appropriate.

O’Connor scheduled a hearing for May 3, at the request of the families.

In February, the Justice Department opposed families’ requests but apologized for not meeting with crash victim beneficiaries prior to entering into the deferred prosecution arrangement. On Jan. 26, Attorney General Merrick Grland met with some family members.

Boeing’s crashes cost them $20 billion. They also led to the 20-month grounding that was completed in 2020. This lead to legislation being passed by U.S. legislators to improve new aircraft certification.

A Texas jury convicted a former Boeing Chief Technical Pilot of Fraud to Federal Regulators who Approved the Company’s 737 MAX.