Federal Proffer Agreements

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

What is a proffer agreement, and what am I giving up?

A proffer agreement — a “queen for a day” letter — is a written contract letting you answer the government’s questions on limited terms. The government agrees not to use your statements in its case-in-chief. It almost always reserves the right to use them to impeach you, to rebut contrary evidence or arguments, and to follow leads. Most letters also waive Fed. R. Evid. 410, and the Supreme Court has held those waivers enforceable.

Key takeaways on federal proffer agreements

• The protection is one narrow lane, not a shield. A typical letter bars use of your statements as affirmative proof in the government’s case-in-chief and preserves everything else.
• Fed. R. Evid. 410 would protect plea-discussion statements — but the letter usually waives it. In United States v. Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. 196 (1995), the Supreme Court held such waivers “valid and enforceable” absent an affirmative indication they were unknowing or involuntary.
• The rebuttal carve-out can be triggered by your lawyer, without you ever testifying. In United States v. Barrow, 400 F.3d 109 (2d Cir. 2005), the Second Circuit held that “[f]actual assertions made by a defendant’s counsel in an opening argument or on cross-examination plainly fall within” a standard waiver’s language.
• U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8 is a separate and stronger protection that most pages omit. Where your cooperation agreement includes the government’s promise not to use it against you, self-incriminating information you provide “shall not be used in determining the applicable guideline range” — but it protects the guideline calculation, not admissibility, and it has five express exceptions.
• A proffer is not immunity, not a cooperation agreement, and not a plea deal. It can end with no agreement at all, and the government keeps every lead it developed.
• Lying in the room is a new federal crime. 18 U.S.C. § 1001 reaches materially false statements “in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive … branch,” punishable by up to five years.

What the proffer letter protects — and what it does not

This is the table competitors do not build. Each row is a standard clause found in most U.S. Attorney proffer letters, what it actually does, and the authority that governs it. Your letter’s exact wording controls; these are the categories that wording falls into.

Protection or carve-out	What the letter typically says	What that means in practice	Authority
The core protection	Statements made in the proffer will not be offered against you in the government’s case-in-chief	The government cannot build its affirmative case out of your own words	Fed. R. Evid. 410(a)(4); the letter’s own terms
Carve-out 1 — impeachment	Statements may be used to cross-examine you if you testify inconsistently	If you take the stand and contradict the proffer, the proffer comes in	Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. at 210
Carve-out 2 — rebuttal	Statements may be used to rebut “any evidence offered or elicited, or factual assertions made, by or on behalf of” you at any stage	Your lawyer can trigger this in opening or on cross — you never have to testify	Barrow, 400 F.3d at 117–19; United States v. Velez, 354 F.3d 190 (2d Cir. 2004)
Carve-out 3 — derivative use	The government may make derivative use of, and pursue investigative leads from, the information	Everything you point them toward becomes independent evidence that is not covered at all	The letter’s own terms; contrast the use-and-derivative-use immunity of 18 U.S.C. § 6002
Carve-out 4 — false statements	Nothing limits prosecution for perjury, false statements or obstruction	Lying in the room is a separate, chargeable crime	18 U.S.C. § 1001; Fed. R. Evid. 410(b)(2)
Carve-out 5 — breach	If you breach, all protections evaporate	Definitions of “breach” vary enormously and are usually the government’s to assess in the first instance	Puig Valdes, No. 23-3214 (9th Cir. May 29, 2025)
The Rule 410 waiver	You waive the protections of Fed. R. Evid. 410 and Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(f)	The evidentiary rule that would otherwise exclude the statements is contracted away	Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. at 210
The separate guideline shield	Usually not in the proffer letter at all — it lives in the Guidelines	Self-incriminating information you give under a cooperation agreement containing the government’s non-use promise “shall not be used in determining the applicable guideline range”	U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8(a)

Table: the standard architecture of a federal proffer agreement — the single protection it grants, the five things it preserves for the government, and the separate guideline protection that does not come from the letter at all.

Why Fed. R. Evid. 410 usually does not save you

Start with what the law would do if no letter existed. Fed. R. Evid. 410(a) provides that “[i]n a civil or criminal case, evidence of the following is not admissible against the defendant who made the plea or participated in the plea discussions,” and the list includes “(4) a statement made during plea discussions with an attorney for the prosecuting authority if the discussions did not result in a guilty plea or they resulted in a later-withdrawn guilty plea.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(f) points to the same place: the admissibility of “a plea, a plea discussion, and any related statement is governed by Federal Rule of Evidence 410.”

Read alone, that is real protection — and note how far it reaches: it covers statements made in plea discussions that produce no plea, and statements behind a guilty plea that is later withdrawn. It is also, in the ordinary proffer, protection you signed away on the first page.

In United States v. Mezzanatto, 513 U.S. 196 (1995), Thomas, J., delivered the opinion of the Court and framed the question exactly this way: “Federal Rule of Evidence 410 and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11(e)(6) provide that statements made in the course of plea discussions between a criminal defendant and a prosecutor are inadmissible against the defendant. The court below held that these exclusionary provisions may not be waived by the defendant.” The Court reversed, holding: “absent some affirmative indication that the agreement was entered into unknowingly or involuntarily, an agreement to waive the exclusionary provisions of the plea-statement Rules is valid and enforceable.”

(A citation note, because older sources trip on it: Mezzanatto refers to Rule 11(e)(6), which was renumbered Rule 11(f) in the 2002 restyling of the criminal rules. Same protection, current number.)

What Mezzanatto actually decided — and what it expressly did not

Here is the distinction almost every competing page collapses, and it is the most valuable thing on this page.

The waiver in front of the Court in Mezzanatto was an impeachment waiver. The Court’s reasoning was tailored to that: “The admission of plea statements for impeachment purposes enhances the truth-seeking function of trials and will result in more accurate verdicts.” The Court did not bless every waiver a prosecutor might draft.

Ginsburg, J., concurring — joined by O’Connor and Breyer, JJ., the three votes without which there was no majority — said so directly: “It may be, however, that a waiver to use such statements in the case in chief would more severely undermine a defendant’s incentive to negotiate, and thereby inhibit plea bargaining. As the Government has not sought such a waiver, we do not here explore this question.”

That question has never been resolved by the Supreme Court. The Ninth Circuit noted in United States v. Rebbe, 314 F.3d 402 (9th Cir. 2002), that because the government there had not used the proffer statements in its case-in-chief, “[t]he concerns raised in Justice Ginsburg’s concurring opinion, as a result, are not implicated,” and it expressly declined “to address the larger issue.”

Meanwhile, the courts of appeals have enforced waivers well beyond bare impeachment — including rebuttal waivers permitting substantive use — in decisions such as United States v. Burch, 156 F.3d 1315 (D.C. Cir. 1998), United States v. Krilich, 159 F.3d 1020 (7th Cir. 1998), Rebbe, and Velez, 354 F.3d 190. The practical position for a defendant sitting down today: assume the waiver in your letter will be enforced as written, and read it as though every clause will be used.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The most useful thing a defense lawyer does before a proffer is not preparing the client for the questions. It is reading the letter clause by clause and asking the AUSA to change the ones that are negotiable. Trigger language is sometimes negotiable. The definition of breach is sometimes negotiable. Whether the protection survives a failed negotiation is sometimes negotiable. You will never know which without asking, and once the meeting has happened there is nothing left to negotiate about.

The rebuttal carve-out: how a proffer comes in without you ever testifying

Most people who sign a proffer letter believe the impeachment risk is under their control — that if they simply do not testify, the statements never come in. That belief is wrong, and it is wrong in a way that has cost defendants trials.

The standard modern waiver is not limited to the defendant’s own testimony. It permits the government to rebut “any evidence offered or elicited, or factual assertions made, by or on behalf of the defendant at any stage of a criminal prosecution.” Those last five words are the problem. Your lawyer acts on your behalf.

United States v. Barrow, 400 F.3d 109 (2d Cir. 2005), is the leading treatment, and it draws the line with unusual precision. Three things it holds:

One — counsel’s opening and cross-examination can trigger the waiver. “Factual assertions made by a defendant’s counsel in an opening argument or on cross-examination plainly fall within this broad language.”

Two — but attacking the government’s proof does not. This is the protective half, and it matters: “a defense argument that simply challenged the sufficiency of government proof on elements such as knowledge, intent, identity, etc., would not trigger the waiver here at issue.” The court added, citing Krilich, that “[t]he mere fact that a defendant pleads not guilty and stands trial is not a factual assertion that triggers the proffer agreement waiver.” You may put the government to its proof. You may challenge a witness’s ability to perceive or remember.

Three — an accusation of fabrication crosses the line. “[A] question accusing a witness of fabricating an event … does implicitly assert that no such meeting ever took place.” Cross-examination that says this never happened asserts a fact. Cross-examination that says you could not have seen it clearly does not.

Barrow also holds that “rebuttal” is not limited to direct contradiction: it “encompasses any evidence that the trial judge concludes fairly counters and casts doubt on the truthfulness of factual assertions advanced, whether directly or implicitly, by an adversary.” And the Third Circuit reached the same conclusion about cross-examination in United States v. Hardwick, 544 F.3d 565 (3d Cir. 2008).

One counterweight worth knowing: even where a waiver is triggered, the district court retains discretion under Fed. R. Evid. 403 to exclude the statements. Barrow is explicit that “[a] waiver agreement between the parties does not divest a district court of its considerable discretion to exclude relevant evidence that may inject ‘unfair prejudice’ or ‘confusion'” — a court may instead strike a question and instruct the jury. That is a real argument at trial. It is not a plan you make in advance.

The consequence for a defendant deciding whether to proffer is concrete: signing narrows the defense you can present at trial. Not eliminates it — you can still test the government’s case — but a proffer that admits participation makes any affirmative defense theory dangerous, because asserting it lets your own admissions in. That is a cost to weigh against everything else happening in the pre-trial process, and it is a cost that arrives long after the meeting is over.

The derivative-use carve-out: the leads are permanent

The third carve-out is the quietest and, in the long run, often the most consequential. A typical letter permits the government to make derivative use of the information — to pursue leads, interview people you named, subpoena records you identified, and build a case out of what it finds.

Evidence developed that way is generally not the proffer statement at all. It is a witness, a bank record, a phone. It walks into the courtroom with no proffer label on it.

This is where the difference between a proffer letter and statutory use immunity becomes visible. Under 18 U.S.C. § 6002, a witness compelled to testify after an immunity order receives protection against use and derivative use of the compelled testimony. A proffer letter is not an immunity order and does not give you that. It is a contract in which the government reserves the derivative use that § 6002 would forbid.

Say the practical version plainly: if the proffer goes badly and no deal is reached, the government keeps everything it learned. There is no unwinding it. That asymmetry — you cannot get the information back, they cannot un-know it — is the single strongest argument for treating the decision to proffer as a strategic decision made once, with counsel, after the discovery is understood, rather than as an early gesture of good faith.

U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8: the separate shield nobody writes about

Everything above concerns admissibility at trial. Sentencing is governed by a different provision, and it is stronger, though not automatic, and almost entirely absent from competing pages.

U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8(a) provides:

“Where a defendant agrees to cooperate with the government by providing information concerning unlawful activities of others, and as part of that cooperation agreement the government agrees that self-incriminating information provided pursuant to the agreement will not be used against the defendant, then such information shall not be used in determining the applicable guideline range, except to the extent provided in the agreement.”

The Commission’s own illustration in Application Note 1 is worth stating because it makes the rule concrete: a defendant arrested with one kilogram of cocaine who, under a cooperation agreement, admits helping import three more kilograms not previously known to the government — that admission “would not be used to increase his applicable guideline range, except to the extent provided in the agreement.”

Understand what this does and does not do. It governs the guideline calculation, not admissibility. It is not the same protection as the proffer letter’s use limits, and it does not depend on them. And it applies where there is a cooperation agreement in which the government makes that promise — which is why the sequencing of proffer letter and cooperation agreement matters, and why counsel should be asking early whether § 1B1.8 protection attaches to what is about to be said.

The five exceptions in § 1B1.8(b)

The protection has express limits, and they are exactly where the disappointments occur:

Exception	§ 1B1.8(b) text	What it means
(b)(1)	Information “known to the government prior to entering into the cooperation agreement”	You get no protection for what they already had. Timing determines value
(b)(2)	Information “concerning the existence of prior convictions and sentences in determining §4A1.1 (Criminal History Category) and §4B1.1 (Career Offender)”	Your record is never protected. Not for criminal history, not for career-offender status
(b)(3)	Information used “in a prosecution for perjury or giving a false statement”	Lying is carved out of every layer of protection, every time
(b)(4)	Information used “in the event there is a breach of the cooperation agreement by the defendant”	Breach removes the shield
(b)(5)	Information used “in determining whether, or to what extent, to impose a sentence that is below the otherwise applicable guideline range pursuant to a government motion under §5K1.1”	The court may consider protected information in deciding how far to go below the range — including as a reason to go less far

Table: the five statutory exceptions to U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8(a), quoted from the 2025 Guidelines Manual.

A November 2025 change worth flagging. Amendment 836, effective November 1, 2025, rewrote (b)(5) — replacing “a downward departure from the guidelines is warranted” with “to impose a sentence that is below the otherwise applicable guideline range” — as part of the Commission’s removal of departure language throughout the Manual. It also struck from Application Note 1 the Commission’s former statement that information protected under § 1B1.8 “shall not be used to depart upward.” Subsection (a) itself was not changed. The consequences of that commentary deletion have not been tested in the courts of appeals, and this page does not claim to know them; the broader restructuring — including what became of the downward departure framework generally — is covered on the amendment 836 page.

What cooperation can actually earn at sentencing — the government’s motion, the factors, how far courts go — belongs to the 5K1.1 substantial assistance page and, for reductions after sentencing, the rule 35 motion page. This page stops at the door.

A proffer is not immunity, not cooperation, and not a plea agreement

These four things are routinely confused, including by people already inside the process. They are different documents with different consequences.

	Proffer agreement	Formal immunity order	Cooperation agreement	Plea agreement
What it is	A contract limiting how your statements may be used in one interview	A court order compelling testimony in exchange for protection	A contract to provide ongoing assistance	A contract resolving the charges
Source of authority	The parties’ agreement	18 U.S.C. §§ 6002–6003	The parties’ agreement; U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8	Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(c)
Protects derivative use?	No — typically reserved to the government	Yes — use and derivative use	Depends on the agreement	N/A
Guarantees a charge outcome?	No	No	No — assistance is evaluated afterward	Yes, subject to court acceptance
Can end with nothing?	Yes — and the government keeps the leads	No	Yes	No
Requires a judge?	No	Yes	No	Yes

Table: how a proffer agreement differs from the three documents it is most often confused with.

The sentence that should stay with you: a proffer is a look under the hood, and it can end with no deal at all. The government listens, evaluates whether you have anything worth having, and decides. Nothing in the letter obligates it to offer you anything afterward.

How a proffer differs from a safety-valve disclosure

A related confusion, and a common one in drug cases. The safety-valve provision at 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(5) requires that, not later than sentencing, “the defendant has truthfully provided to the Government all information and evidence the defendant has concerning the offense or offenses that were part of the same course of conduct or of a common scheme or plan.” It goes on to provide that the fact the defendant has no relevant or useful other information, or that the Government is already aware of the information, “shall not preclude a determination by the court that the defendant has complied.”

Two differences matter. First, safety-valve disclosure is about your own conduct and the offense conduct — it does not require you to implicate anyone else. A proffer is usually about other people. Second, safety valve is a defined statutory route to relief from a mandatory minimum, while a proffer promises nothing. The criteria, the timing, and the case law on what counts as a complete disclosure are covered on the safety valve federal sentencing page; the interaction with mandatory minimum sentences is covered there too.

What actually happens in the room

The procedural reality is unglamorous and worth knowing in advance, because surprise is what produces bad answers.

Who is there. One or two Assistant United States Attorneys. One or more case agents — FBI, DEA, HSI, IRS-CI, ATF, or a task force. Sometimes an analyst. Your lawyer, always. You do not attend a proffer without counsel, and no competent lawyer would let you.

How long it takes. A first session commonly runs two to four hours. Multiple sessions are ordinary in a document-heavy case.

What gets written down. The agents take notes and later write a report — in FBI practice, an FD-302. That report is the government’s record of what you said. It is written from memory and notes, not a transcript, and it is not read back to you for correction. This is one of the strongest reasons to answer narrowly and precisely: a compressed or slightly-off summary of your answer becomes the official version.

What it feels like. The questioning is usually calm and often begins with material the government already knows — which serves as a test of your candor before anything new is discussed. Expect to be asked the same thing more than once in different forms.

You can stop. The meeting can be terminated. Your lawyer can ask for a break at any point, and should, whenever a question moves into territory you have not prepared for. Ending a session early is not a breach; it is a decision.

No recording, no transcript, and no do-over. Nothing you say gets clarified later on the record. What exists afterward is the agents’ report and their recollection.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The single most common regret I hear from people already in custody is not that they proffered — it is that they proffered early, before anyone had read the discovery, on the theory that going first would earn goodwill. Going first has value only if you actually have information the government needs and does not have. Working out whether that is true requires knowing what they already have, and you cannot know that before the discovery is reviewed. The legal judgment about timing belongs to your lawyer, and it should be made with the file open.

The false-statement exposure: the one risk with no ceiling

Every layer of protection discussed on this page carves out false statements. Fed. R. Evid. 410(b)(2) permits admission of a covered statement “in a criminal proceeding for perjury or false statement, if the defendant made the statement under oath, on the record, and with counsel present.” U.S.S.G. § 1B1.8(b)(3) excludes protection for information used “in a prosecution for perjury or giving a false statement.” Your proffer letter will contain its own version of the same carve-out.

The statute doing most of the work is 18 U.S.C. § 1001, which makes it a crime to, “in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully — (1) [falsify], conceal, or cover up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact; (2) make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation,” punishable by a fine and “imprisoned not more than 5 years.” A proffer session with federal agents is squarely a matter within the executive branch’s jurisdiction.

Notice that § 1001 reaches concealment as well as affirmative falsehood. A carefully true answer that omits the thing you most want to leave out is not obviously safe. Minimizing your own role while accurately describing everyone else’s is the specific pattern that generates trouble — it feels like advocacy and reads like a lie.

There is a second-order consequence at sentencing as well: conduct the court finds obstructive can affect acceptance of responsibility, and how the presentence report characterizes your candor will follow you through the presentence report and PSR objections process and into the federal sentencing hearing.

The rule that follows from all of this is short: tell the truth completely, or do not go. There is no version of the proffer where partial candor is the safe middle path.

What to settle in writing before anyone sits down

The letter is a contract, and some of its terms are negotiable. Whether they get negotiated depends entirely on whether your lawyer asks before the meeting is scheduled. Puig Valdes is the proof of concept: the government there lost the use of a defendant’s own written statement because of how its own trigger clause was drafted.

Question to resolve in the letter	Why it matters	What to look for
What exactly triggers the rebuttal waiver?	Determines whether your lawyer can cross-examine freely at trial	Language reaching “evidence offered or elicited, or factual assertions made, by or on behalf of” you is the broad form — Barrow, 400 F.3d at 117
Does the government get case-in-chief use, or only rebuttal?	The Supreme Court has never decided whether a case-in-chief waiver is enforceable	Ginsburg, J., reserved it in Mezzanatto; Rebbe declined to reach it
Who decides whether you breached, and on what standard?	Some letters make it the government’s unilateral call	In Puig Valdes, the requirement of a court “finding” of breach is what defeated the waiver
Does the protection survive if no deal is reached?	A proffer that ends in nothing is the ordinary outcome, not the unusual one	Look for language limiting use “in the event no agreement is reached”
Is derivative use reserved?	Almost always yes — but the scope varies	Compare to the use-and-derivative-use protection of § 6002
Will § 1B1.8 protection attach?	Guideline-range protection depends on a cooperation agreement containing the government’s promise	Sequencing of proffer letter and cooperation agreement — § 1B1.8(a)
Does it cover statements by your lawyer during negotiation?	Attorney proffers are sometimes handled separately	Ask explicitly rather than assuming
Is there a scope limit on subject matter?	Some letters are open-ended	A defined scope protects against drift into unrelated conduct

Table: the eight terms to resolve in writing before a federal proffer session, with the authority explaining why each one matters.

What happens after a proffer

Four outcomes, in rough order of frequency.

Nothing formal, for a while. The government evaluates, corroborates, and decides whether what you offered has value. Weeks or months can pass. Silence is not a signal in either direction.

A cooperation agreement. If the information is useful, the government may offer an agreement contemplating continued assistance and, potentially, a motion at sentencing. The substance of that motion — what it requires and what courts do with it — is covered on the 5K1.1 substantial assistance page.

A plea agreement with no cooperation component. Common where the proffer showed the government you have less than they hoped, or where what you have duplicates a cooperator they already have. The mitigation work then proceeds on the ordinary track, and the routes to a federal sentence reduction that do not depend on cooperation become the ones that matter.

No agreement at all. The government keeps its leads, you keep your exposure, and the case proceeds — now with your defense narrowed by what you said. This is why the decision belongs at the point where the discovery is understood, not at the point where the offer first arrives.

Whatever follows, the sentencing work is separate and starts early: the presentence report, the guideline objections, the mitigation record, and the character letters a family assembles. In a drug case, whether a role reduction applies — and how the November 2025 amendment 833 changed that analysis — may matter more to the outcome than the proffer does. In a firearms case with prior convictions, the armed career criminal act may dominate everything else.

Is a proffer worth it?

The honest answer is that it depends on three things, and none of them is your willingness to cooperate.

Do you have information the government does not have? § 1B1.8(b)(1) excludes from protection anything “known to the government prior to entering into the cooperation agreement.” Information they already possess buys you protection you do not need and credit you may not receive.

Is what you have provable? Uncorroborated assertions about other people do not generate cooperation credit. Documents, communications, and testimony that can be tested are what have value.

What does signing cost your trial defense? A proffer that admits participation makes an affirmative defense theory hazardous, because Barrow and its successors let your admissions in to rebut it. If the case is genuinely triable, that cost can exceed anything the proffer produces.

A fourth consideration sits underneath all three: cooperation carries consequences inside a facility that have nothing to do with the guidelines, and those are real and should be discussed candidly with counsel before, not after.

What this page will not do is tell you whether to sign, or predict what any of it produces at sentencing. Those questions turn on the discovery, the charges, the district, the AUSA, and the judge — and no page can answer them for your case.

Why work with Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C.

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a boutique federal criminal defense and appellate firm founded in 2019, running a national federal practice on an intentionally small caseload. Elizabeth Franklin-Best has more than 20 years of federal and appellate criminal defense experience and has handled more than 330 federal proceedings, over 100 of them appeals, with sixteen published decisions as counsel of record. She is admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court and twelve of the thirteen U.S. Courts of Appeals — every regional circuit (1st–11th) plus the D.C. Circuit — and has been admitted pro hac vice in federal courts from Montana to Florida. She is recognized by Best Lawyers in America 2026 for Appellate Practice and by Chambers USA 2026 for Litigation: White-Collar Crime & Government Investigations.

The firm has offices in Columbia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, and represents clients nationwide in federal court. Proffer decisions sit inside the larger federal sentence mitigation picture — the guideline objections, the mitigation record, and the sentencing presentation — and are best made with that whole picture in view. Where the advice a defendant received about a plea or a proffer was itself deficient, that can become a claim later, addressed on the ineffective assistance in a guilty plea page.

What to do next before signing a proffer letter

If you have a proffer letter, do not sign it and do not schedule the meeting until a lawyer has read the actual document. The categories on this page are standard; the wording is not, and the wording is what governs. Bring the letter, the indictment or complaint, and whatever discovery you have.

If the meeting is already scheduled and you do not have counsel, that is the more urgent call.

Call (843) 620-1100, or schedule a consultation directly.

This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Proffer agreements vary by district and by prosecutor; nothing here describes the terms of any particular letter, and no outcome is promised or implied.

Frequently Asked Questions About Proffer Agreements

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026