UPDATE — Floating Razor Wire Case: The US Moves To Force Disclosure Of Texas’s “Expert Testimony” Notes — Since They Were Shared With Non-Party/Witnesses…

MAGA Gov. Greg Abbott continues to ignore federal court orders to produce the documents and showings he expects the state of Texas officials to rely upon — at the upcoming USDC trial before Senior Judge Ezra, over whether he has violated the Rivers and Harbors Act, in installing concertina wire floating barriers (which have already killed two asylum seekers, to a certainty) on the Rio Grande, in Mexican waters, near Eagles Pass, Texas.

Over the weekend, the US attorneys learned that he’s been sharing supposed “work product” exempt documents with non-parties — and people the state plans to call as fact witnesses — at the trial, in defense of the violations. Hilarious.

That blew all his work product privileges — and the US will now shortly see the documents, unredacted, thus:

…The Magistrate Judge ordered Defendants, the State of Texas and Governor Greg Abbott (“Texas”), to produce copies of the two documents in question — consisting of a “proposed expert-report outline” containing key facts and assumptions given to Texas’s expert witnesses and an email transmitting that document—to the United States by July 29, 2024, with redactions removing information purportedly protected by the work product doctrine. Id. at 2. This motion for reconsideration is based on newly discovered information within those documents that was not available to the United States at the time the Magistrate Judge resolved the Motion to Compel.

In reviewing the redacted documents produced by Texas (attached as Exhibits A and B), the United States discovered that Texas also sent these supposedly privileged trial preparation documents to Rodney Scott, who is not a testifying expert witness, an attorney for Texas, or an employee of Texas, but rather an unaffiliated fact witness that Texas has represented it will call at trial. The Magistrate Judge, who reviewed these documents in camera but had not seen Texas’s initial disclosures or witness list, could not have been aware of this fact.

Because Texas’s transmission of the documents to this non-client fact witness defeats any claim of work product privilege, the United States respectfully requests that the Court:

(1) vacate the portion of its July 25, 2024 Order partially denying the United States’ Motion to Compel;

(2) grant the United States’ Motion to Compel in full; and (3) order Texas to produce unredacted versions of both documents….

Now you know.

What an incompetent (and malign) Rube Goldberg machine, the entirety of Texas State (GOP) government is.