Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) called on the U.S. Department of Justice to take strong civil and criminal actions against Volkswagen for any violations following the German carmaker’s actions that misled hundreds of thousands of American consumers and resulted in tens of thousands of tons of additional pollution emissions.

In a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the senators called for a “thorough but expeditious” investigation.  ‎

“Officials at Volkswagen should be granted no get out of jail free card, and the Department should accept no plea agreement with Volkswagen that does not ensure any and all information regarding criminal acts by high level officials is provided to the Department,” Blumenthal and Klobuchar wrote. “The U.S. government needs to make it clear that these actions, whether involving safety defects, consumer deception, or regulatory violations, will not be tolerated by the American public.”

Press reports revealed that Volkswagen willfully deceived regulators and the general public to artificially lower emissions of its 2009-2015 Volkswagen and Audi diesel vehicles.

Volkswagen installed a “defeat device” on nearly 500,000 of these vehicles that hid levels of nitrogen oxides as high as 40 times that of allowable U.S. emissions standards.

Approximately 482,000 diesel vehicles sold in the United States and 11 million cars worldwide have been affected.

Blumenthal was a leader in the push for corporate accountability in the GM ignition switch case and the ongoing saga of defective Takata airbags. He’s the author of the Hide No Harm Act, which would make it a crime for a corporate officer to knowingly conceal the fact that a corporate action or product poses a danger of death or serious physical injury to consumers and workers.