The actual pleadings filed by Manafort's lawyers were PDF documents that appeared to contain redactions because parts of the documents displayed blacked-out passages (i.e., rectangular black boxes).īelow are two redaction failures in the Manafort filing. The redaction failures revealed that (1) Manafort and Kilimnik had a meeting in Madrid, (2) Manafort shared Trump presidential campaign polling data with Kilimnik about the 2016 campaign, and (3) Manafort and his former Russian business partner discussed a Ukraine peace plan.
In this instance, the redaction failures revealed new details about Manafort's ties to his former Russian business partner, Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the FBI said had active ties to Russian intelligence. The pleadings were filed to explain why certain statements made by Manafort were due to inadvertence or faulty memory, and not lies as alleged by the Office of Special Counsel. The pleadings were filed by Manafort's lawyers in response to an allegation that Manafort violated his plea agreement by lying to federal investigators. The redaction failures disclosed information to the public that was previously confidential or unknown. The redaction failure episode that caused me to write another column on this subject occurred earlier this year when numerous news outlets reported that lawyers for former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort failed to properly redact pleadings they filed in federal court. I wrote about this problem in technology columns published in 20. There are many resources to provide those lessons, including a huge number of online sites. The purpose of this column is to remind our profession of the embarrassment that can occur when anyone submits a "redacted" document to the public that does not protect the confidential information the attempted redaction intended to keep secret.
I do not intend this column as an instructional piece on redaction competence. Although redaction is a simple concept, it has taken on new significance and become a digital-age nemesis, where readers can access what you thought you deleted or obscured.
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