Boeing (BA) wants President Trump to let it out of a guilty criminal plea agreement the jet maker reached with Biden administration, according to a report.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Boeing is pushing Trump's new Justice Department officials to allow it to withdraw that 2024 plea, in which it admitted that its workers conspired to defraud aviation regulators.

Boeing did not comment on The Wall Street Journal report.

Avoiding a criminal conviction would be a major victory for the company that could allow it to avoid compounded headwinds as it tries to show progress on several fronts more than one year after a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines (ALK) 737 Max 9 jet made by Boeing.

Criminal convictions can foreclose or suspend a company’s right to contract with the federal government and frustrate its ability to secure loans, according to Eddie Jauregui, a white collar defense attorney with Holland & Knight and former federal prosecutor.

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Those consequences have particular meaning for Boeing, which counts the federal government as its largest customer and also happens to be the country’s largest exporter. Just last week Boeing won a major contract to build a new F-47 jet fighter for the Pentagon. 

Admitting guilt was meant to insulate Boeing from facing a criminal trial on the government’s allegation that the jet maker misled Federal Aviation Administration officials before two fatal 737 Max 8 crashes killed 346 people last decade. 

Those allegations initially produced a deferred prosecution agreement reached in 2021, but last year the DOJ notified Boeing that it had breached the agreement after a door plug blew off a Boeing-made 737 Max 9 flown by Alaska Airlines. 

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After Boeing and Biden's DOJ officials reached the guilty plea deal last year, they submitted it to a federal judge.

But that US judge for the Northern District of Texas, Reed O’Connor, decided late last year in an order that the deal was insufficient, in part because of its terms governing the selection and conditions for a corporate monitor tasked with protecting against future fraud.

via REUTERS / Reuters

O’Connor cited provisions in the agreement that included race as a condition in selecting a corporate monitor "inappropriate" and "against the public interest."

The judge said the crash victims’ families opposed race as a consideration in the selection of the corporate monitor, as well as a section that omitted Boeing’s compliance with the monitor’s anti-fraud recommendations as a condition of its probation.

Families who lost loved ones in the crashes also objected to the deal and called it a "sweetheart" scenario for Boeing. In their objection filed in the Texas court they said the DOJ made concessions to Boeing that it would not extend to any other criminal defendant.

O’Connor, a former President George W. Bush appointee, has a track record of siding with conservative litigants against the government, according to reporting from Reuters.

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Before Trump took office, Boeing and the Justice Department told that judge that they were still working "in good faith" on amending the plea deal.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the two sides are still negotiating changes to the deal and that proposal is expected to be submitted to the judge by April 11.

There was another legal development this week involving Boeing. A federal judge in Illinois ruled on Monday in a separate case that former Boeing CEOs Dennis Muilenberg and Dave Calhoun, as well as Boeing suppliers, could not be held liable for negligence claims brought by families of victims killed in the 2019 Max crash. 

The judge ruled that the plaintiffs lacked evidence that the executives knowingly participated in misconduct.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.

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