Federal Investigation Attorney

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

If you have learned you are under federal investigation, the decisions that matter most are made before anyone is charged. This page explains how people find out, what the government’s designations mean, how long the government has, and where to go next depending on what arrived.

Two things are true at once and they pull in opposite directions. The pre-charge window is the most valuable period in a federal case, because nothing is fixed yet. It is also the period in which people do the most damage to themselves, because they act without counsel and without knowing what the rules are.

Start here: what arrived, and what it means

Find the document or event in the left column. The right column is where the detail is.

What arrived	What it signals	The clock	Go to
A target letter	The prosecutor regards you as a putative defendant and has not yet asked the grand jury to vote	No fixed deadline; the window closes when the grand jury votes	Federal target letter
A grand jury subpoena for testimony	You are a witness, a subject, or a target — the subpoena itself does not say which	The return date on the subpoena	Federal grand jury subpoena
A grand jury subpoena for documents	The government is building a record. Preservation duties attach immediately	The return date, but the preservation duty starts now	Federal grand jury subpoena
Agents at your door with a search warrant	A judge has already found probable cause. The investigation is advanced	None running for you; you are entitled to a copy of the warrant and a receipt	When agents come to the door
Agents at your door without a warrant	A voluntary interview. You are not required to speak	None	When agents come to the door
An SEC inquiry or a Wells notice	A civil enforcement track, frequently parallel to a criminal investigation you have not been told about	The Wells response deadline set by the staff	SEC investigation defense
A civil investigative demand	A False Claims Act investigation, which can be referred for criminal prosecution	The response date in the CID	Civil investigative demand response
Your employer’s internal investigation	Company counsel represents the company, not you	Set by the company, not by law	Internal investigations and employee counsel
An indictment	The investigative phase is over and the charging decision has been made	30 days from arrest or summons to indictment; 70 days to trial	Federal indictment

How to tell whether you are under federal investigation

There is no register you can check and no filing you can search. Federal investigations are conducted in secret, and grand jury proceedings are sealed by rule. Most people learn one of these ways:

• A target letter, a subpoena, or a civil investigative demand arrives addressed to you.
• Agents contact you, your family, your colleagues, or your accountant. Interviews of people around you usually precede any contact with you.
• Your bank, your employer, your broker, or your accountant receives a subpoena for your records. Financial institutions are often barred from telling you.
• Your employer opens an internal investigation, retains outside counsel, or puts you on leave.
• A business partner or former employee tells you they have been interviewed.
• Records you expected to receive are frozen, or an account is restrained.

What none of this tells you is how far along the investigation is or what the theory is. That is the first thing counsel establishes, and it is frequently established by asking the prosecutor directly.

Target, subject, or witness

The Justice Manual sorts people connected to a grand jury investigation into three categories. The difference is not cosmetic; it drives nearly every decision that follows.

A target is “a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant.” JM 9-11.151

A subject is “a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury’s investigation.” JM 9-11.151 That is a materially weaker statement, and it moves in both directions as an investigation develops.

A witness is someone the government believes has information. Witness status is not a promise. People are re-designated, and what most often re-designates them is what they said before they had counsel.

You are entitled to ask which you are, and prosecutors routinely answer. Department policy is that an “Advice of Rights” form be appended to grand jury subpoenas served on a target or a subject. JM 9-11.151 If you received a subpoena with that form attached, you are not being treated as an ordinary witness.

What a target letter does and does not mean

A target letter is not a charge and not a summons. Department policy is that where a target is not called to testify and does not ask to, “the prosecutor, in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury.” JM 9-11.153

Read the qualifiers. Notification is encouraged, not required, and only “in appropriate cases.” The same provision says notification “would not be appropriate in routine clear cases or when such action might jeopardize the investigation or prosecution because of the likelihood of flight, destruction or fabrication of evidence, endangerment of other witnesses, undue delay or otherwise would be inconsistent with the ends of justice.” JM 9-11.153

So the absence of a target letter proves nothing. What its arrival tells you is two things at once: the government believes it has substantial evidence, and it has not yet asked the grand jury to vote.

That gap is the opportunity. It is the window in which counsel can make a pre-indictment presentation, correct a factual premise the government has wrong, raise a legal defect before it is written into an indictment, or negotiate while positions are still soft. Once the indictment returns, each of those conversations becomes harder and more expensive. More on what a federal target letter means.

What the grand jury is, and what it is not

Most people picture something closer to a trial. It is not that, and the difference matters if you are deciding whether to testify.

A federal grand jury has 16 to 23 members and may indict only if at least 12 concur. Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(a)(1), 6(f)

Your lawyer cannot be in the room. Only attorneys for the government, the witness being questioned, interpreters where needed, and a reporter may be present while the grand jury is in session. Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(d)(1) A witness may leave to consult counsel outside.

The prosecutor does not have to present your side. The Supreme Court held in United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36 (1992) that “requiring the prosecutor to present exculpatory as well as inculpatory evidence would alter the grand jury’s historical role, transforming it from an accusatory to an adjudicatory body,” and that the grand jury “sits not to determine guilt or innocence, but to assess whether there is adequate basis for bringing a criminal charge.” The Court added that “neither in this country nor in England has the suspect under investigation by the grand jury ever been thought to have a right to testify or to have exculpatory evidence presented.”

The evidence does not have to be admissible. In Costello v. United States, 350 U.S. 359 (1956) the Court held that “neither the Fifth Amendment nor any other constitutional provision prescribes the kind of evidence upon which grand juries must act,” and that an indictment “valid on its face, is enough to call for trial of the charge on the merits.” An indictment resting entirely on hearsay stands.

Secrecy does not bind you. Rule 6(e) lists the people who may not disclose matters occurring before the grand jury — jurors, interpreters, reporters, transcribers, government attorneys, and certain recipients of disclosure. Witnesses are not on that list, and the rule provides that “no obligation of secrecy may be imposed on any person except in accordance with Rule 6(e)(2)(B).” Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(2) You may generally discuss your own testimony with your own lawyer.

An indictment may also be sealed and kept secret until the defendant is in custody or released pending trial. Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)(4) People are sometimes charged before they know it. What a grand jury subpoena requires of you depends on whether it calls for testimony, documents, or both.

When agents come to the door

With a search warrant. A judge has already found probable cause, which means the investigation is well advanced. Do not obstruct the search; it will proceed regardless. Ask for and keep a copy of the warrant — the executing officer “must give a copy of the warrant and a receipt for the property taken to the person from whom, or from whose premises, the property was taken.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(f)(1)(C) An officer must also prepare and verify an inventory of what was seized. Fed. R. Crim. P. 41(f)(1)(B) The warrant and the inventory together are the first real window into the government’s theory, and counsel will want both immediately.

A warrant authorizes a search. It does not require you to answer questions.

Without a warrant. That is a voluntary interview, whatever it is called. You are not required to speak, and declining is not evidence of anything. Agents are trained interviewers, they are working from material you have not seen, and they are not obliged to tell you what they already know.

Applied Insight — Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney: The first question on a pre-charge intake is not what happened. It is what the government has already seen. A search warrant and its inventory, the categories in a subpoena, and the names of people who have been interviewed tell you more about the prosecutor’s theory than any account the client can give, and they tell you which of the government’s premises are wrong. The cases where pre-indictment work changes the outcome are almost always the ones where counsel got in before the client had explained himself.

The two mistakes that cost the most

Talking to agents without counsel. A materially false statement, made knowingly and willfully in a matter within federal jurisdiction, is chargeable under 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and carries up to five years — whether or not the conduct being investigated was ever a crime.

There is no exception for a simple denial. In Brogan v. United States, 522 U.S. 398 (1998) the Supreme Court held that the word “no” in response to a question “assuredly makes a ‘statement’” within the meaning of § 1001, and that “neither the text nor the spirit of the Fifth Amendment confers a privilege to lie.” Declining to answer is protected. Answering falsely is a separate federal felony, and people are convicted of the interview who would never have been convicted of the underlying case.

Touching the documents. Once you know an investigation exists, deleting, altering or tidying records builds a second case that is cleaner and easier to prove than the first. Knowingly altering, destroying, concealing or falsifying a record “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence” a federal investigation — or in contemplation of one — carries up to twenty years under 18 U.S.C. § 1519. Note the reach of that statute: it applies “in relation to or contemplation of” a matter, so the investigation need not have formally begun.

Section 1512(c) reaches evidence tampering aimed at an official proceeding and also carries twenty years. Its residual clause was narrowed in 2024: in Fischer v. United States, 603 U.S. 480 (2024) the Supreme Court held that to prove a violation of § 1512(c)(2), “the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or . . . other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so.” That narrowing does not help anyone who deletes files. It is exactly the conduct still covered.

The affirmative point is the one people miss: when you learn of an investigation, the duty is to preserve. Suspend automatic deletion, stop routine destruction schedules, and tell counsel what systems exist before anything else happens.

If your employer is investigating

Company counsel is not your counsel. In Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383 (1981) the Supreme Court held that the attorney-client privilege covers communications made by employees “to counsel for [the company] acting as such, at the direction of corporate superiors in order to secure legal advice from counsel.” The privilege in that interview exists for the company’s benefit.

The Court also held that the privilege “only protects disclosure of communications; it does not protect disclosure of the underlying facts by those who communicated with the attorney.” What you know remains discoverable from you.

Employees are routinely interviewed, given a warning that company counsel represents the company, and interviewed anyway. Whether you need separate counsel is covered on our internal investigations and employee counsel page.

How long a federal investigation takes

There is no statutory deadline for the government to finish investigating. The outer limit is the statute of limitations. For most federal offenses it is five years: no person may be prosecuted “unless the indictment is found or the information is instituted within five years next after such offense shall have been committed.” 18 U.S.C. § 3282(a) Many categories carry longer periods, and some carry none.

Within that window, white-collar investigations commonly run one to three years and sometimes longer. Complexity, document volume, foreign evidence, parallel civil proceedings and grand jury scheduling all extend it.

The clocks only start running once you are charged or arrested. An indictment or information must be filed within thirty days of arrest or service of a summons, extended by another thirty if no grand jury was sitting in the district. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(b) Trial must then begin within seventy days, subject to a long list of exclusions. 18 U.S.C. § 3161(c)(1)

The practical consequence: silence is not closure. An investigation you have heard nothing about for two years may still be open.

How an investigation ends

• Declination. The government closes without charging. It usually does not announce this, and there is often no letter.
• No bill. The grand jury declines to indict. Rare, because at least 12 of 16 to 23 jurors must concur and the prosecutor controls what they see.
• Indictment. A felony punishable by more than one year must be charged by indictment unless the defendant waives. Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(a)(1) What follows is set out on our federal indictment page.
• Information. A defendant may waive indictment in open court and be charged by information instead. Fed. R. Crim. P. 7(b) This is how negotiated resolutions are usually charged, and a proposed information is a signal that a plea has been discussed.

Where to start

Each guide below is written for the document or the moment that brought you here.

• Federal target letter — what it means, what it signals about the government’s theory, and what happens next.
• Federal grand jury subpoena — your obligations, your risks, and the difference between testimony and documents.
• Federal indictment — what follows, step by step, from arraignment through pretrial motions.
• SEC investigation defense — Wells notices, testimony, and the parallel-proceeding problem.
• Civil investigative demand response — answering a False Claims Act CID without creating criminal exposure.
• Internal investigations and employee counsel — individual representation when your employer’s investigation turns toward you.

Speaking with counsel before you respond

Elizabeth Franklin-Best, P.C. is a national federal criminal defense and post-conviction practice. Pre-charge work runs on a shorter clock than anything else the firm handles: the useful window is measured in days, and it closes when the grand jury votes.

Bring the letter, the subpoena or the demand, and whatever you have been asked to produce. The initial consultation is one hour and is paid. Call (843) 620-1100 or book a consultation.

Frequently Asked Questions About Federal Investigations

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