Chief Judge Boasberg on Politico’s Request for Grand Jury Records Related to FBI Director Kash Patel’s 2023 Appearance
A short excerpt from yesterday’s longish decision by Chief Judge James Boasberg (D.D.C.) in In re Application of Politico LLC for Access to Judicial Records Ancillary to Certain Grand Jury Proceedings Concerning Kashyap Patel:
In 2023, a grand jury in this district indicted then-former President Donald J. Trump and an associate for mishandling classified documents and impeding the ensuing investigation. In the course of its investigation leading up to the indictment, the grand jury subpoenaed Kashyap Patel, who now serves as Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As both the Government and Patel himself later revealed, he resisted the subpoena before this Court’s predecessor ordered him to testify—which he eventually did under a grant of immunity.
Earlier this year, the news organization Politico filed an Application seeking access to the court records generated by Patel’s unsuccessful efforts to contest the subpoena. The Government subsequently released redacted versions of these records, but Politico now seeks further unsealing. Contrary to Politico’s contentions, the Government has correctly articulated the categories of information related to Patel’s testimony that can—and cannot—be disclosed. Even by those terms, however, the Government’s proposed redactions appear to the Court to be overbroad. It will therefore order the Government to propose a new set of redactions that map onto the categories it acknowledges can be divulged or justify why the existing redactions are appropriately narrow….
In general, “the grand jury context presents an unusual setting where privacy and secrecy are the norm.” Witnesses “enter the grand jury room alone …. No judge presides and none is present.” Access to grand-jury
Article from Reason.com
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