§3512 Foreign Requests for Assistance in Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions

Summary

Federal judges can, when a Justice Department lawyer asks, issue orders to help a foreign authority with a criminal investigation, a prosecution, or related matters like forfeiture, sentencing, and restitution. Those orders can include search warrants; orders for stored electronic communications or related records; pen‑register or trap‑and‑trace orders; and orders that make someone appear, give testimony or a statement, or produce documents or other things. A judge can also appoint a person to take testimony and collect documents. That person can require appearances, give oaths, take testimony or statements, and receive documents or other things. Applications for these orders can be filed where the person or the documents are located, in any one district if things are in multiple places, where a related U.S. criminal case is happening, or in the District of Columbia. But a search‑warrant application (except under the stored‑communications law) must be filed where the place or person to be searched is located. A judge may issue a search warrant only if the foreign offense would be punishable in the United States by more than one year in prison. Except for that search rule, orders and warrants can be served anywhere in the United States. "Federal judge" and "attorney for the Government" mean what the federal criminal rules define. "Foreign authority" means a foreign court, prosecutor, investigator, or an official named under a treaty to make such requests.