AM Roundup: Persky Prevails

Law Blog rounds up the morning’s legal news:

Authorities allege $1 billion fraud at Platinum Partners: Top executives at the hedge-fund firm, including founder Mark Nordlicht, were arrested and charged with defrauding investors in one of the biggest such cases since Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. [WSJ, Bloomberg]

Judge Persky cleared: A California judicial disciplinary panel found no grounds to sanction Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky over the six-month sentence he gave to an ex- Stanford University student-athlete convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. [WSJ, LA Times]

HB2 repeal: The North Carolina legislature is expected to meet Tuesday to repeal House Bill 2, a law passed in March stating that transgender people must use the public bathroom associated with the sex listed on their birth certificate. [WSJ]

• The Charlotte City Council agreed to a symbolic repeal of its nondiscrimination ordinance in hopes that state lawmakers would scrap HB 2. [Charlotte Observer]

EU vs. Facebook: Europe’s top competition-enforcement body is accusing Facebook of giving “incorrect or misleading information” to investigators who were probing its purchase of chat app WhatsApp in 2014. [WSJ, NYT]

Apple appeal: In a new filing, Apple fought back against the EU’s decision that $13.5 billion in tax breaks the company received from Ireland were illegal. [WSJ]

Corruption convictions overturned:  In a rebuke to federal prosecutors, a U.S. appeals court in Boston threw out the 2014 convictions of three former Massachusetts probation department officials  accused of rigging their agency’s hiring system for political gain. [Boston Globe]

• One of the trio’s lawyers called Monday’s ruling by the First Circuit a “great reversal” that’s part of a trend to rein in federal prosecutors. [Boston Herald]

Clinton email case: A Manhattan federal judge ordered the release of the search warrant that FBI agents used to reopen their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. [NY Post, NYT]

Rewriting Dodd-Frank: The fate and shape of the sweeping financial deregulation promised by President-elect Donald Trump hangs on Sen. Mike Crapo and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the point men in their respective chambers on financial policy. [WSJ]