On Tuesday, the Department of Justice will commence prosecution in a New Jersey courtroom of two American businessmen charged with making a $2 million bribe of officials of the Indian government to build a corporate headquarters in Chennai, India.

At first glance, the case appears to be a possible violation of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which strictly bans bribery of any foreigners by Americans.

However, a closer look at the Justice Department's pursuit of U.S. v. Coburn reveals it to be, at the very least, a clear violation of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last month.

At its worst, Coburn could easily be branded a very obvious case of the so-called "Deep State" in the Justice Department waging prosecutorial war on its terms.

On Feb. 10, the president signed an executive order pausing all future investigations and enforcement actions under the FCPA for at least 180 days. The delay, Trump explained, was to halt what he called "overexpansive and unpredictable FCPA enforcement" that he felt was undermining U.S. economic competitiveness abroad and national security.

The issue of mass prosecution under the FCPA and its consequences was something that the president felt strongly about. Along with the required 180-day pause, Trump's order requires the U.S. attorney general to resolve all existing FCPA probes or enforcement and to issue updated guidelines for enforcing the Act.

But federal prosecutors — all of whom were at the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden and former Attorney General Merrick Garland — decided to pursue U.S.v. Coburn in the courtroom of Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz.

The Trump executive order notwithstanding, several observers of Coburn wonder why the case is being advanced in court at all, more than six years after co-defendants Gordon Coburn and Steven Schwartz were indicted.

Coburn and Schwartz were respectively the Chief Operating Officer and Chief Legal Officer of the Cognizant technology corporation. They are charged with authorizing a $2 million bribe to officials of the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to obtain a permit to build a corporate headquarters in Chennai, India.

A very curious part of the indictment alleges that the bribe was paid not by the defendants but by multi-billion dollar conglomerate Larsen and Toubro, which is based in Mumbai. Hence the reason that Coburn and Schwartz are not being charged with bribery themselves but with conspiracy to bribe.

Newsmax asked the public affairs section of the Department of Justice whether it felt its pursuit of the Coburn case violated the president's executive order, but no comment was immediately available.

Whether the president is aware of the Coburn case and feels it violates his own executive order remains to be seen.

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.