And here is the compliance filing: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

What we won’t know for a while is how much this impacts the Comey case. Will they pursue a new warrant? Will they pursue another indictment or only move forward with the appeal of the Halligan decision?

Well, the tone is not going to impress the judge, but I think they are actually right on the law.

Judge Currie should have issued a broader order.

This post seems misleading since these cancellations happened many months ago.

Seems like there is no probable cause to get a new warrant without the emails. The Comey is extremely unlikely to ever see a jury so these appeals and defense of their searches are all just a waste of time.

that include quotes from emails. Not having clear definitions complicates DoJ’s responsibility to preserve materials related to a potential Comey lawsuit. Wouldn’t stop going to another grand jury in the Comey case, but makes it harder to use that evidence in a trial.

We still don’t know if any of the discs with original material also contain a separate collection of responsive material because the government cannot access due to court order. We also don’t have a clear dividing line between copies of original material that should be deleted and memos/emails…

it is reasonable to interpret the court as asking for #1 and #2 . I’m not sure why the government isn’t doing a better job at removing the ambiguities here. /end

There are actually 3 categories of files:
1. Original seizures plus segregated responsive material
2. Extracted material such as the Comey grand jury exhibits
3. Derivative material such as memos or internal emails

I think the court is asking for #1 to be deleted including any full copies of #1.

In a third order the court wrote that it has not ordered the government to delete or destroy any evidence…but it is reasonable interpretation of its orders that it has because of the “extracted from” phrase in the original order which the “derivative files” clarification doesn’t address.

In a second order the court clarified that the covered materials do not include “any derivative files that the Government may have created“ so that addressed the concern with sharing internal information with Richman but leaves the problem of having to delete the evidence in the Comey investigation.

That ruling required the government to return those covered materials to Richman and to not retain any copies of covered materials. This would mean losing access to evidence being used in the Comey investigation and providing internal memos/emails to Richman. This is not what the court intended.

Original ruling includes “any materials directly obtained or extracted from those files” in the definition of covered materials. This clearly would include things like the emails used in the Comey case plus internal emails that quoted the emails.

The fact that a president had a call with the leader of particular foreign countries 8 years ago shouldn’t be classified. The government could address that to simplify data storage issues.

Depending if derived materials count, a declination memo could include seized emails. But it seems like a very small number of documents qualify and some sort of partition with seal would handle this. Comey’s letter: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Granted that there is still ambiguity in the judge’s order granting most of Richman’s Rule 41(g) motion. Is it just original materials plus segregated responsive materials? Does it also include derived materials and what counts as derived? Only thing that obviously counts are grand jury exhibits.

Also not dealing yet with all the copies of evidence that must exist on government computers like FBI agent written emails with evidence as attachments or memos with inline quotes of evidence. The only reasonable place to draw the line is between a corpus of seized material vs work product.

Based on the fact finding from the magistrate in the Comey case, it seems like the answer to the second question is no which has 4th amendment implications. Still not dealing with the government’s contention that they didn’t commit a 4th amendment violation because of the consent agreement.

The government asked for 48 additional hours and the judge gave 2 so we’ll see the filing by noon today. They were basic questions: do you have data still from each of the warrants and did you segregate responsive data for each warrant. Warrants are still not public nor is he consent agreement.