Trump’s Justice Department admitted it screwed up and made privileged info public: analyst
In a court filing Thursday morning, the Justice Department confessed that it accidently uploaded a letter in which the DOJ was giving legal advice to the Department of Transportation. The letter should have been addressed to the judge presiding over the MTA v. Duffy case.
Data engineer Émilia Decaudin pasted the screen captures of the letter on X after they went live on Wednesday.
Lawfare’s Anna Bower noted that in a filing Wednesday, it “certainly looks like the Justice Department intended to file a letter to Judge Liman in MTA v. Duffy, but….it accidentally filed a letter containing its legal advice to the Department of Transportation instead.”
According to the memo posted, on Wednesday, the DOJ said, “For the reasons below, it is unlikely that Judge Liman or further courts of review will accept the argument that the CBDTP was not a statutorily authorized ‘value pricing’ pilot under the Value Pricing Pilot Program (‘VPPP’).”
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On Thursday, Bower posted an update with the new filing, saying, “The Justice Department filed a letter acknowledging that it inadvertently uploaded an attorney-client privileged document to the public docket last night. DOJ seeks to have the document permanently sealed or removed, and asks judge to hold that AC privilege was not waived.”
She noted that in response, “counsel for some of the plaintiff-intervenors, Riders Alliance and Sierra Club, don’t sound totally on board with the permanent sealing request. They note that the erroneously filed letter has been widely disseminated.” The lawyers requested an “opportunity for discussion and consideration of how to proceed.”
The lawsuit against Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority over the federal termination of a New York City toll program.