Clayton Previews SDNY's Revised Corporate Self-Disclosure Policy, Feb. 5, 2026
February 5, 2026 · Docket Media LLC · 0:30:35
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
Jay Clayton, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sat for the keynote question-and-answer session at the Securities Enforcement Forum New York on February 5, 2026, at the JW Marriott Essex House in New York City, in conversation with Sullivan & Cromwell partner Steven Peikin, according to the session’s published record on the Docket Media channel.
Clayton previewed his office’s revised voluntary self-disclosure program for corporate crime. Under the program as he described it and as law-firm summaries of the forum recorded it, a company that self-discloses criminal conduct would receive a conditional letter of declination early — close in time to the self-report rather than at the end of a long investigation — committing to standard cooperation, remediation, and making victims whole, with the declination finalized once those conditions are met. A disclosure made in the good-faith belief that the information was not known to the government would earn the declination even if the government already knew it, according to Skadden’s summary of the announcement. The design, as his office’s officials put it at the forum, is to maximize the ability to prosecute individuals while maximizing certainty for cooperating companies: Clayton’s stated goal was “getting bad people out of hopefully good companies,” according to BakerHostetler’s forum summary, paired with a warning recorded in the same summaries: “If you do not cooperate and there is criminal activity, you’re going to pay for not cooperating.”
Clayton also signaled that fraud prosecutions involving prediction markets were coming: “a prediction market doesn’t insulate you from fraud,” he said, offering point-shaving and other manipulation schemes as examples, according to JD Supra’s report of the forum.
Why it matters
This session is the fullest public statement of the enforcement philosophy Clayton ran at the Southern District — early certainty for companies that cooperate, personal accountability for the individuals inside them — and it is the record the Senate Intelligence Committee weighed five months later: Chairman Tom Cotton’s opening statement at Clayton’s July 15, 2026 confirmation hearing cited his SDNY national-security and financial-crime prosecutions as the experience he would bring to leading the intelligence community.
Scoreboard watch
This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the SDNY self-disclosure framework Clayton announced on February 5, 2026 — early conditional declination letters, good-faith-belief credit, and prosecution of culpable individuals — checkable against the office’s published policy and its declination record.
Sources: Securities Enforcement Forum New York, keynote Q&A with U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, February 5, 2026 (session as published by Docket Media LLC, embedded above); Skadden, February 2026, and JD Supra / BakerHostetler forum summaries, February 2026, on the policy preview and Clayton’s remarks. All characterizations as stated by Mr. Clayton and forum participants.
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