Republican Senator Blasts US Justice Dept’s Boeing 737 MAX Plea Deal

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks during the confirmation hearing for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson before the Senate Judiciary Committee on her nomination to be an Associate Justice on the US Supreme Court, in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Wash., on March 22, 2022. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

WASHINGTON—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 $2.5 billion 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.