Wall Street Journal reporting (article by Dave Michaels and Andrew Tangel) that former chief technical pilot, Mark Forkner, is expected to be charged criminally relating to his role in the development of the 737 MAX. The article does not identify what specific charge or charges are expected to be filed.
Among several factual items (familiarity with which is now presumed, among those following the sordid tale of the MAX) supporting a decision to charge - according to the article - are the explicit admissions made by Boeing about misconduct on the part of certain unnamed employees in Boeing's "plea bargain" in federal court in Texas, several months ago. More widely known is the regrettable reference to "jedi mind tricks" played on FAA, of course.
Whether this is part of a prosecutors' effort to "go up the ladder", I won't speculate. Especially after the recent posts here about decisions made by company officers and directors, though, if the employee -- whose job it was to carry out a plan for the MAX where that plan had deep and significant flaws to begin with -- gets charged, isn't it logical to expect serious consideration given to charging also those higher-ups who formulated that plan and authorized and directed its implementation from the start?