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Case number 23-5180.

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David Rudumetkin, appellant, versus United States of America.

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Mr. Roberts, amicus curiae, per the appellant.

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Mr. Dreier, per the appellate.

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Good morning, Mr. Roberts.

[00:00:15] Speaker 04:
Good morning, and may it please the court.

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Chuck Roberts is amicus in support of appellant.

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I'm happy to get to the procedural reincorporation issue in the case, but the crux of this appeal is FOIA Exemption 5, as the court knows.

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In 2016, Congress decided to combat what it viewed as agency overuse of that exemption, and particularly the deliberative process privilege at issue here, by heightening the agency's burden to justify withholdings.

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This Court's decisions in Reporters Committee, Machado, Emua, and Leopold explain that agencies now must concretely demonstrate foreseeable harm from release of withholdings and specifically consider

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whether it is possible to segregate and release as harmless any portion of those exempt withholdings.

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The record here falls short on both fronts.

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Much like the generic declaration in reporter's committee with respect to foreseeable harm, and much like the incomplete declaration in Leopold with respect to segregability, the declarations here simply do not enable the court to conclude that the agency correctly understood and applied the FOIA Improvement Act's heightened burden.

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Faketer and remand on either ground is therefore appropriate.

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So even if you're correct that the declarations were to

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I guess, generic.

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A reporter's committee says that more scanty declarations could be acceptable if the foreseeability of the harm is manifest.

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Why doesn't that apply here?

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If that were true in reporters committee across the board, then the four categories that reporters committee vacated and remand remanded summary judgment on would not have been entitled to bigger and remand.

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So the record here is not nearly as detailed either with respect to the foreseeable harm from release, which is the generic issue that you're on a reference, but also

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as to the sort of content, nature, context, all these other aspects of the documents here, particularly the ones that are not addressed in detail in the declarations, which we lay out in our brief.

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I mean, we're talking about sort of a sensitive personnel decision and the selection of a judicial officer.

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And I guess one can imagine that you might be chilled from

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saying negative things about someone who's about to become a judge.

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If you know that your comments might become known to that person at some point in time, it just seems to me that it's this is not sort of some of the other types of agency decisions that are made like policy decisions or things of that nature.

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It just seems to me this is a little bit more sensitive.

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And so I'm wondering why that manifest harm standard from Reporters Committee might not apply in this context.

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Yeah, the first line response to that, I guess, is, as Your Honor mentioned, you're imagining those harms.

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If those harms are so straightforward or so simple, then the agency here very well could have put them into the record.

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But what we have in the record here, including the Vaughn index describing many of these documents,

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aren't necessarily the sensitive sort of materials that you're on are posited.

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What we have are lists of criteria, for example, that are under consideration.

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Maybe factual information or biographical information.

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Those aren't necessarily the same sort of sensitive.

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Assume for the moment we're just talking about the recommendations, and even easier, the recommendations from the JAG to the Secretary.

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What, in your view, I agree there's not a ton here,

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But what specifically more needed to be?

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Can you give me a sentence or two that would have solved the problem that is missing?

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Yeah, I would say sort of the easiest way to answer that question is actually to put side by side the declaration here with the declarations in Emua and Machado.

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And you'll see that those go on for pages about much less information than here, even much less than the disparate recommendations here.

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Because we have recommendations by JAG officers.

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We have recommendations by OGC attorneys within OGC.

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And it's not exactly clear what role those play.

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And a lot of those pages are sort of explaining the context.

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And when it comes down to it, in those declarations, they sort of seem to make the same arguably generic statement here about what the harm is.

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They just say, these are recommendations.

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And if you disclose them, the quality of the recommendations will be harmed.

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And so the decision will be.

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There's less of the context around here, but that basic statement is in these declarations, isn't it?

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It is and it isn't.

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So there is the use of wood, cause foreseeable harm within, especially the first declaration.

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But then when the agency gets a second chance, it actually starts hypothesizing what harm could follow from release of these documents.

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And this court's decision in Machado, as explained and sort of reinforced in later decisions, makes clear that could doesn't cut it.

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So that's another thing that I would say the court needs to say the agency needs to change in its declarations.

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imagining or hypothesizing what foreseeable harm might flow from release of these documents, but specifically within the context of these decisions, what harms would flow and the conditional.

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For example, we ought to say you need to put in writing that.

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Jags would fear being explicit because they're going to be practicing before this judge.

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So even though we might say.

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But it seems to me, frankly, the debate in this case is about, is that so self-evident they don't need to say it?

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Or is there some reason they actually have to add that sentence to the declaration?

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Well, there's much more in this case than just the bottom line recommendation by the JAG officers.

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There's many other categories of documents.

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But even as to just the bottom line recommendation, what's withheld here are substantially all of pages of recommendations.

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And so it's not just the sentence I recommend or don't recommend this person.

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It's the entire document that contains that recommendation.

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And that's where the segregability analysis comes in and says, we don't have a basis here to conclude that the agency went through and segregated potentially harmless exempt information.

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It seems to me that the government defines the categories as

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the substance of the actual nominations and accompanying advice and recommendations or information within emails and internal memorandum provided by the general counsel and other attorneys advising the secretary regarding designation.

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Those categories, it seems, could fall into sort of a manifest foreseeable harm standard in this particular context.

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But to me, it's a separate issue whether the actual documents fall within these categories.

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So I think that there's a sort of two-step process we need to go through in determining this.

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And I'm not hearing yet anything, a strong argument from you about why, generally speaking, this context of personnel decisions, judicial selection, et cetera, might show manifest harm to the interests of this exemption.

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There is a separate question about where these particular documents actually fall within that.

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But on a more general level, these categories and this interest, there does seem to be a connection and a manifest foreseeable harm potentially.

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Well, I would just say that, first of all, the categories are inconsistent across the government declarations.

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We laid that out in our brief.

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And the district court just understood the entire record of 64 withholdings here to be the actual recommendations, which simply can't be the case because there's more withheld than just the bottom line recommendations.

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As to the specific context of the recommendations or not recommendations for a judicial selection, one could imagine

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much information going into those recommendations or not recommendations that might be sensitive, that might not be sensitive.

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That burden is on the agency to put that forward, to put that into a declaration.

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It's not this court's burden to imagine what that context or that purpose might be.

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I think the comparison maybe to Reporters Committee and the particularly sensitive context of two of the categories of documents there

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Um, might help the court in thinking through the manifest question that your honors getting out and those two were sort of ongoing covert FBI operations that were being discussed in the documents there and that in combination with the agency declarations.

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and the assertions of foreseeable harm in those declarations allowed the court to say in the context of ongoing covert FBI operations, particular national security sensitivities, we understand that the foreseeable harm here is clear on this record than I think what we have here.

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I'm happy to address segregability of

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I just had one question on that.

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So it seems there's certainly a technical reading of Leopold.

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They at least have to claim that they conducted a segregability analysis with foreseeable harm in mind.

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I take it that's your basic position.

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I wonder if, in this particular case, what they've done is they did do a segregability analysis and released essentially everything that's not an opinion.

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And then they have a foreseeable harm

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justification for the opinions.

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So it seems like if we remanded for them to do a segregability analysis with foreseeable harm in mind, they would just sort of say, we already did that.

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Or our justification already explains that everything we're withholding is already the type of thing that causes a foreseeable harm.

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I think that's possible, but it's equally if not more possible that another result might attain on remand.

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So Machado involved sort of a situation where the court sort of looked at very one type of information, one data field in these blitz forms, and said these few sentences, the agency has said that it has conducted a segregability analysis and a foreseeable harm analysis.

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Together, we recognize that that means that they probably don't need to add that sentence about segregability with respect to harmlessness.

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What we have here is substantially all of 64 pages withheld.

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And there may be a lot of opinions in there.

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There may be just an opinion and then a lot of facts and analysis going into that opinion.

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We don't know because they're withheld.

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And so it's much harder to sort of gap fill for the agency here than it was in Machado.

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And that's sort of where Leopold comes in.

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Leopold was all or substantially all of a document withheld

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The court simply wasn't able to tell that the agency had gone in and done the segregability analysis with respect to the exempt information.

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And you should take the agency's declarations at their word here that they only did the segregability analysis as to exempt versus non-exempt information, within exempt information with respect to harmlessness.

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You've got to remember, though, one of the principal justifications of Exemption 5 is you're trying to protect

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open communications and full and candid advice.

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And so it's hard to pick sentence here and there because when someone is giving advice, you're thinking about how to frame certain sentences all in context.

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And to give any of that away is to chill it in the future.

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Well, if you're gonna give all of a part of what I'm saying,

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In my advice memo this time, I'll never give it to you again.

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I'm not going to explain it.

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That's exactly what we're trying to protect against.

[00:11:46] Speaker 04:
I agree that that's the rationale for Exemption 5, but the process point in the FOIA Improvement Act is for the agency to show its work in doing that analysis.

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It's for the agency to... Well, how do you show it other than showing it and you don't want to show it?

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Well, with respect to segregability as to harmlessness, it's for the agency to say in the record that we conducted this segregability analysis as to harmlessness.

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And that's what they said in the MUA declaration.

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That's what they said and what they didn't say in the Leopold Declaration.

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And sort of that's the dividing line is the agency needs to show its work.

[00:12:20] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

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We'll give you a moment for the panel.

[00:12:32] Speaker 03:
Good morning, may it please the court.

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Douglas Stryer on behalf of the United States.

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I want to pick up on the manifest point.

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And I'd go back to the Supreme Court's decision in Klamath Water, which pointed out that the deliberative process privilege rests on the obvious realization that officials will not communicate candidly among themselves if each remark is a potential item of discovery and front page news.

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We are here talking about a FOIA request concerning the nomination and selection

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of an individual to be a chief judge.

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So the agency's declarations that we're dealing with here, it's primarily four paragraphs.

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And I recognize, as your honors pointed out, that there's not a whole lot there.

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And I fully recognize that's the case.

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However, we submit that between paragraphs eight and nine of the first declaration and paragraphs 10 and 11 of the second, the government has shown that it foresees that further disclosure would cause harm.

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And specifically in paragraph 11 of the second declaration on A126, the government stated, quote, the material redacted from the responsible documents was withheld

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because it is reasonably foreseeable that disclosure of this information would harm the full and free discussion of the nomination within the agency.

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So that's talking about disclosure at the level of information, its contents, its context specific, talking about the full and free discussion of the nomination within the agency.

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and it is using would language, not could language.

[00:14:12] Speaker 01:
Council, I appreciate that argument.

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It certainly has some force.

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But if you step back, and especially if you start from the premise of reading that language from Klamath, then all you ever need to say in an Exemption 5 case is this is pre-decisional, it's deliberative, disclosing it would cause harm.

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And maybe you have to say this information instead of any information of this type.

[00:14:36] Speaker 01:
but you know congress must have thought it was doing something when it enacted the improvement act and uh it evidently was specifically concerned about exemption five with holdings wouldn't we basically be nullifying the statute so i i i don't think that's that's quite the case so in reporters reporters committee has already set out that the government can't do just that

[00:15:01] Speaker 03:
The government does need to say more than just repeat a legal conclusion.

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But the government can't go that far beyond what is the interest at issue, because then we're not talking about a harm that the interest is designed to protect.

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And so then we get into a separate issue with making sure the harm is correlated to the exemption.

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So we have to use the language.

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And here, I have to go back to there is a presumption of regularity with government declarations.

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And there is a presumption that the government is faithfully fulfilling its task.

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And I think that while it would be insufficient to just repeat a formulaic legal conclusion, I don't think that's what we've done here.

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And I'd point out paragraph eight of the- I just made it more explicit that we are talking about

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a personnel decision, we're choosing a chief judge, the people here are gonna have to work with this person.

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There's just none of that kind of details spelled out.

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And then we're left to say, well, is that manifest the obvious?

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And you never made a manifest argument in your brief.

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I mean, we did include the obvious realization language from Klamath.

[00:16:15] Speaker 02:
I do think we've- Well, you described what the case has said, but you never actually affirmatively argued that it was manifest from this context.

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I mean, we do in our brief focus a lot on what the FOCUS FOIA request is.

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And so I agree with your honor that I don't think we use the particular phrasing.

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I think the substance is there.

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I mean, we researched this.

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I think you can rely on whether it's manifest even if you don't raise it.

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I don't think that that's something that you can forfeit because if it's manifest, it's manifest.

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But it just seems

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to me that the declarations are pretty perfunctory and then the briefing doesn't really make the strongest arguments.

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You're making our job harder.

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That's all I'm saying.

[00:17:02] Speaker 03:
I apologize, Your Honor.

[00:17:04] Speaker 03:
I'd go back to, so in paragraph eight of the first declaration, the agency does say that release of this information, and that's referring to the substance of the actual nominations and accompanying advice and recommendations.

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So release of this information

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would cause harm to the secretary's decision-making process as it would hamper the unfettered and candid advice of those making recommendations to the secretary if that advice is no longer kept confidential.

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And there's similar attestation in the following paragraph regarding the communications from the general counsel's office.

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So in both cases, we are giving more of a hook, more context concerning

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the FOIA request.

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But at the end of the day, we are talking about a request for the materials pertaining to the nomination and selection of an individual to be chief judge.

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And if the government didn't say enough in its declarations, the court would remand, and we would likely end up back in the same position with a declaration that would provide the additional materials you would say that are required.

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But we submit that that two-step process isn't necessary here.

[00:18:16] Speaker 00:
Just saying, in any case, the context matters.

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Once you state the context, that's going to speak volumes.

[00:18:22] Speaker 00:
Yes, Your Honor.

[00:18:22] Speaker 00:
Because you're setting it up.

[00:18:23] Speaker 00:
It's going to be more obvious, clearly obvious in certain kinds of cases, once you said this involves a request with respect to.

[00:18:33] Speaker 00:
It is a personnel matter.

[00:18:34] Speaker 00:
That's obvious, because you put it in context.

[00:18:36] Speaker 00:
That's your argument, right?

[00:18:38] Speaker 03:
Correct, Your Honor.

[00:18:39] Speaker 00:
So adding lots of words over and above that, it's not hurtful, I guess, but it's not really helpful.

[00:18:46] Speaker 03:
I mean, we could be like the first case you heard this morning and have an appendix that has more than 2,000 pages.

[00:18:51] Speaker 03:
But I don't think we need that here.

[00:18:53] Speaker 03:
I think that the declarations we have are fulfilling the government's burden of attesting that there is harm from further disclosure.

[00:19:02] Speaker 03:
And it's using wood language.

[00:19:05] Speaker 01:
So I think arguably it makes a lot of sense for recommendations from the JAG.

[00:19:12] Speaker 01:
That's not the only category of documents.

[00:19:16] Speaker 01:
For example, it looks like there's a lot of internal discussion in the GC's office.

[00:19:20] Speaker 01:
Why isn't there some value in requiring the government to say these emails, you know, were material to the

[00:19:30] Speaker 01:
you know, formulating the advice for the secretary.

[00:19:34] Speaker 01:
That is the kind of thing that was done in pages, in not a thousand pages, but maybe two, more than one sentence in the Machado case and the Amua case.

[00:19:44] Speaker 01:
And, you know, one view in these FOIA cases is that the government wins once it puts down an explanation.

[00:19:51] Speaker 01:
So there, we ought to at least require them to put down an explanation.

[00:19:55] Speaker 03:
And I understand that, Your Honor.

[00:19:56] Speaker 03:
So for that, I'd refer to paragraph nine of the first declaration.

[00:20:00] Speaker 03:
which states that, and it's talking about those attorney-client communications, the recommendations, the emails within the office of the general counsel, and it says, public disclosure of the attorney-client communications would seriously disrupt open communication between the secretary and his attorneys, as well as deprive government decision makers of the full and candid advice of their counsel.

[00:20:24] Speaker 03:
Indeed, disclosure of this type of deliberative memorandum would hamper

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the day-to-day workings of the department as senior attorneys would no longer feel free to convey their recommendations in formal written correspondence.

[00:20:38] Speaker 03:
So that paragraph- There's two sentences.

[00:20:42] Speaker 01:
And I'm not... I think this is...

[00:20:45] Speaker 01:
There are strong arguments on both sides, but those two sentences are, I don't know, any way to describe them other than generic.

[00:20:52] Speaker 01:
You've just inserted these attorneys for employees and this information for deliberative information.

[00:20:59] Speaker 01:
Maybe that's all that's required, but it looks a lot like the explanation that was rejected in the order scheme, doesn't it?

[00:21:07] Speaker 03:
Well, keep in mind, for a reporter's committee, two of the categories were found to be sufficient.

[00:21:13] Speaker 03:
And using the same generic language that was insufficient for the other four categories.

[00:21:18] Speaker 02:
They relied on that manifest.

[00:21:21] Speaker 03:
Correct, Your Honor.

[00:21:22] Speaker 03:
Yeah.

[00:21:24] Speaker 02:
So it seems, though, that even if you're correct, that based on the context, it's manifest that there's harm.

[00:21:30] Speaker 02:
The specific documents don't necessarily fall within the exception that you're

[00:21:37] Speaker 02:
trying to advocate for, like document five, internal OGC notes regarding action memo to Secretary of Defense regarding designation.

[00:21:49] Speaker 02:
I mean, it's just unclear that that actually would contain sensitive information because we don't know if it's about an actual recommendation or the process of designation or we don't know what that is.

[00:22:00] Speaker 02:
Same with document six and 15, advice regarding designation.

[00:22:05] Speaker 02:
Document 21, it just seems that

[00:22:07] Speaker 02:
Even if you're correct about there is foreseeable harm based on this manifest harm from the record, it's actually the specific documents, it's not clear to me that they fall within the categories that you're trying to protect, which is recommendations, sensitive things about personnel issue.

[00:22:31] Speaker 02:
Wouldn't we have to remain at least for that purpose?

[00:22:34] Speaker 03:
So Your Honor, I'd refer then to paragraph nine of the Second Harrington Declaration, which does provide additional information.

[00:22:40] Speaker 03:
So for instance, paragraph nine E, which is pages 124 on to 125, talks about document five, which Your Honor began with.

[00:22:49] Speaker 03:
And it says document five is an internal Department of Defense Office of General Counsel routing cover sheet for document six, which contains analysis and recommendations from other

[00:23:00] Speaker 03:
It's page 124 onto 125.

[00:23:03] Speaker 03:
It's paragraph nine E as an echo of the second Harrington declaration.

[00:23:09] Speaker 03:
So it says it's an internal DOD OGC routing cover sheet for document six, which contains analysis and recommendations from other general counsel attorneys.

[00:23:21] Speaker 02:
So just a cover sheet and then the following attached document contains the analysis.

[00:23:27] Speaker 02:
Why is the cover sheet?

[00:23:29] Speaker 03:
So it's a routing sheet.

[00:23:32] Speaker 03:
And so in the following paragraph, paragraph 9F, it gives, because I think I would use routing sheet maybe a little differently, but I'm not in the services.

[00:23:43] Speaker 03:
A routing sheet is a document used to memorialize the staff review of a document.

[00:23:48] Speaker 03:
This document contains concurrence or non-concurrence information, as well as recommendations from the services and various members of the secretary's staff.

[00:23:57] Speaker 03:
Oh, I'd submit that paragraph nine does provide additional information about the documents beyond what's in the bond index.

[00:24:04] Speaker 03:
Um, and I know, uh, the, the district judge's first opinion did fault the government's bond index for being a little too conclusory.

[00:24:12] Speaker 03:
And so that's why in that second Harrington declaration, I mean, your honor also pointed out document 21 that's paragraph nine G is in golf.

[00:24:21] Speaker 03:
Um, and it says document 21 is an information memo.

[00:24:24] Speaker 03:
included in the recommendation from the General Counsel to the Secretary, which provided analysis of the requirements and considerations for appointing a new Chief Judge.

[00:24:35] Speaker 03:
The analysis of the requirements is unique to each candidate.

[00:24:37] Speaker 03:
So the Vaughn Index isn't the sole source of description of these documents.

[00:24:43] Speaker 03:
There is more, and it is in paragraph nine, which has a series of different subparagraphs.

[00:24:48] Speaker 00:
Why are 23 and 16, and 24, why are they excluded?

[00:24:55] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry, Aaron, I didn't hear.

[00:24:56] Speaker 00:
Selection criteria.

[00:25:01] Speaker 03:
Okay, so that's paragraph 9C as in Charlie.

[00:25:06] Speaker 00:
Document 23.

[00:25:07] Speaker 00:
Why is that excluded?

[00:25:11] Speaker 03:
So this is request for input from the general counsel to the service branch JAG seeking recommendation.

[00:25:17] Speaker 03:
The document contains selection.

[00:25:19] Speaker 00:
Starting with respect to the selection criteria.

[00:25:23] Speaker 00:
And 16 is a draft of 23.

[00:25:27] Speaker 00:
And then 24 as well, includes the departing chief judge's recommendation on the selection criteria.

[00:25:35] Speaker 00:
Why is all that excluded?

[00:25:37] Speaker 03:
Well, so this is all pre-decisional.

[00:25:39] Speaker 03:
It's all deliberative, the final decisions with the secretary.

[00:25:43] Speaker 03:
And this material goes into the ultimate decision as to who to select to be the chief judge.

[00:25:51] Speaker 00:
Yeah, I understand.

[00:25:52] Speaker 00:
But why, why is that somehow fit an exemption that is all it's like a job post selection criteria.

[00:26:00] Speaker 03:
I am Shane.

[00:26:01] Speaker 02:
So a 124 it says these documents include the outgoing chief trial judges recommendation biographical information for all candidates.

[00:26:09] Speaker 02:
I guess there's a recommendation, but it's probably might be segregable.

[00:26:12] Speaker 03:
So on the question of whether this is under FOIA Exemption 5's deliberative process privilege at all, what I have to go back to is that issue has been fully forfeited on appeal.

[00:26:23] Speaker 03:
So the material withheld, it's uncontested on appeal that this is pre-decisional and deliberative.

[00:26:31] Speaker 03:
As far as the

[00:26:35] Speaker 03:
merits of that um documents document 16 was in the second category of emails and internal dod memorandum provided by the general counsel and other ogc attorneys advising the secretary regarding the designation of colonel walkins saying the selection criteria question to the extent that that's who we're talking about it's uncontested and therefore you don't have to really answer that your answer so you have to answer foreseeable harm

[00:27:01] Speaker 03:
Correct.

[00:27:03] Speaker 03:
We have to be able to identify the harm that the government foresees from further disclosure of this material.

[00:27:09] Speaker 03:
23.

[00:27:14] Speaker 03:
So for document 23, this was listed in the first category, so substance of the actual nominations and accompanying advice and recommendations.

[00:27:24] Speaker 03:
And document 23, the request for input from general counsel to the servants branch JAG seeking recommendations.

[00:27:33] Speaker 03:
So this is all material that is going into the ultimate decision as to the selection of the chief judge.

[00:27:43] Speaker 03:
And I fully recognize your honor that there could be more here.

[00:27:46] Speaker 03:
There can always be more in a FOIA case.

[00:27:49] Speaker 03:
But what we have on those documents are in

[00:27:53] Speaker 03:
those two paragraphs of the respective Harrington declarations.

[00:27:59] Speaker 00:
Okay.

[00:28:05] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:28:06] Speaker 03:
I respectfully ask the court to affirm.

[00:28:08] Speaker 03:
Thank you.

[00:28:20] Speaker 04:
Just a few quick points on rebuttal.

[00:28:22] Speaker 04:
I don't have to answer any questions.

[00:28:23] Speaker 04:
But the fundamental question before the court is whether the agency correctly understood and applied the governing legal principle, the test from the FOIA Improvement Act.

[00:28:33] Speaker 04:
And this court's cases interpreting the FOIA Improvement Act require concreteness to avoid perfunctory, imaginative, speculative language.

[00:28:43] Speaker 04:
And it's just unclear on this record whether the agency understood and applied that governing test.

[00:28:49] Speaker 04:
In fact, it seems like the agency is continuing, sort of was continuing at this stage, business as usual, sort of the check the box foreseeable harm.

[00:28:58] Speaker 04:
I can sort of put in the generic rationale, and that'll be good enough to get past summary judgment in a FOIA case.

[00:29:06] Speaker 04:
Congress, as Judge Garcia mentioned, must have been trying to do something with the FOIA Improvement Act.

[00:29:11] Speaker 04:
And if this court were to affirm across the board,

[00:29:14] Speaker 04:
or even to affirm justice to the recommendations that are addressed in the declarations here, I think the court should be concerned that it would be causing confusion amongst the precedents that we cite, the key cases here, Reporters Committee, Machado, AMUA, sort of what falls on which side of the line, when does the district court to get involved in gap filling,

[00:29:36] Speaker 04:
or to imagining or to saying this is manifest or not manifest, whether or not the government makes that argument in front of the court.

[00:29:43] Speaker 04:
It's just much simpler here to say this looks a lot like the relics of the Pre-Foy Improvement Act's declarations that Congress wanted to change.

[00:29:51] Speaker 04:
Therefore, go back and try again.

[00:29:52] Speaker 04:
If it's an easy exercise, as my friend suggests, then it's an easy exercise, but Congress was targeted at the process, the agency going through the exercise and showing the work of its exercise, reviewing these documents and making sure that FOIA's strong presumption of disclosure is upheld with respect to the deliberative process privilege in particular.

[00:30:14] Speaker 04:
If there are any questions about the procedural reincorporation issue, I'm happy to address that.

[00:30:18] Speaker 04:
Otherwise, I would respectfully ask Speaker and Remand on both issues.

[00:30:22] Speaker 02:
Thank you.

[00:30:23] Speaker 02:
Mr. Roberts, you accepted the court's appointments and we're grateful for your assistance.

[00:30:29] Speaker 02:
It's submitted.