Trump Org Pinky Swears They're Not Trying To Blow Off Document Production And Run Out The Clock On NYAG Inquiry

They would never!

donald trump

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The trench war between the Trump Organization and the New York Attorney General’s office continues apace. In dueling nastygrams filed last week, and flagged by the Daily Beast, the two sides accused each other of acting in bad faith regarding document production in the AG’s long-running investigation of the former president’s business.

At issue is the Trump Org’s compliance with a September 2, 2021 Stipulation whereby it agreed to hire an e-discovery firm to coordinate document production in response to the OAG’s subpoenas. The Trump Org selected HaystackID, which is due to complete its work by April 15, 2022.

On March 9, attorney Austin Thompson from the OAG wrote to counsel for the Trump Org complaining that the monthly reports from HaystackID are insufficient to assess whether the company is complying with the production requests, particularly whether it’s curing errors in its failure to produce the metadata of electronic communications and make a thorough search of the company’s digital and paper archives.

The OAG also seems justifiably concerned that the pace of production will drag this out past the agreed timeline, even as the clock is ticking on the tolling agreement which was supposed to allow the OAG time to investigate the company and deliberate on any charging decision, but which will expire at the end of April.

Even if Haystack maintains its current pace of roughly 20 custodians a month, it will not complete the interviews for the identified custodians—just one of its tasks—until sometime in April. Because Haystack has not quantified the “other possible custodians” it states that it has identified, it is unclear how long those additional interviews will extend that process. Most importantly, it is unclear from Haystack’s reporting what the results of the interviews have been to date and when, in Haystack’s view, collection, processing, and review resulting from these interviews might be complete. That work—the real goal of all of Haystack’s interviews—could take considerable time.

On March 14, the company responded in its signature Trump-y style.

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“We see no need to dignify the OAG’s self-serving statements with a seriatim response now,” attorney Lawrence Rosen huffed, describing the demand for a more granular update on HaystackID’s production as “quite clearly a pretext for the OAG to control Haystack and micromanage the pre-agreed review process that must be performed free from interference from either the OAG or TTO.”

“The OAG continues to falsely create the appearance of impropriety and/or inadequacy in connection with TTO’s efforts to comply with the OAG’s six subpoenas,” Rosen insisted indignantly. “The record demonstrates otherwise, however, as TTO has been working tirelessly and at great expense to address the ever widening and never ending demands made by the OAG and its ‘scorched earth’ policy for the collection of that information.”

How very dare the OAG suggest that the Trump Organization is systematically dragging its feet on document production in a naked attempt to run out the clock!

As it turns out, they do dare. And in a letter to Justice Arthur Engoron, who has been supervising this case for two years now, the OAG is requesting a conference next week to address the company’s potential lack of compliance.

“We believe that more active involvement by the Court and regular compliance conferences could cut through future back-and-forth discussion,” the OAG writes, referring twice to the impending tolling deadline and requesting “that the Court issue any additional orders necessary to ensure that the subpoena response is complete in advance of the April 30, 2022 expiration of the tolling agreement. ”

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Not that Donald Trump and his eponymous company would ever act in bad faith to drag out production beyond the statute of limitation or in hopes of getting a higher court to intercede. But, you know, just in case, maybe the court will need to start thinking about modifying that tolling deadline in case April 15 rolls around and HaystackID produces a Post-it Note that says, “No responsive documents found KThxBye.”


Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.