Thread by @ZoeTillman

In the fight over unsealing Mueller grand jury materials, there's been a lot of references to McKeever, a recent DC Circuit opinion that took a narrow approach to the exceptions to grand jury secrecy. Today, a judge issued an opinion showing how McKeever can work against the govt

Here's the opinion from Chief Judge Beryl Howell: dcd.uscourts.gov/sites/dcd/file…

Most info about the case is redacted, but it involves a criminal investigation where the target is also involved in a civil case. The grand jury issued a subpoena for sealed filings in the civil case

In the civil case, there's a protective order that requires the plaintiffs to notify the target if any info is disclosed. But prosecutors don't want the target to know about the grand jury subpoena, and asked the court for an order barring the target from being notified

The judge today denied the government's request. She wrote that the McKeever decision cut both ways — the DC Circuit held that the list of exceptions to grand jury secrecy in the federal rules of crim procedure are "exhaustive," and this case didn't fall under those

The judge said the "exhaustive" list of exceptions to grand jury secrecy, as laid out in McKeever, had to go hand-in-hand with another part of the rule that listed who could be bound by secrecy in the first place

Howell: "Yet, counterintuitive as it seems, under McKeever's binding force, the government has lost the operational flexibility many courts have read Rule 6(e)(2) to permit."

Again, I have no idea what the underlying case is about. What's interesting is that this shows a narrow reading of the grand jury secrecy rules will make it harder to pry info out of a grand jury, in some cases, *and* make it harder for the govt to keep info secret, in others

In this case, the judge said she wouldn't issue an order preventing the target of a criminal probe from learning about a grand jury subpoena because a narrow reading of grand jury secrecy rules means they don't cover this sort of situation

One small correction: The court released this opinion today, but it's dated Aug. 6 (the judge gave the government a few days to propose redactions)