BLAG, the Act of Production Doctrine and the Schock Case

Recent filings in the criminal case against former congressman Aaron Schock (see my last post) brought to my attention that a number of pleadings in the Schock grand jury proceedings have been unsealed. Among these were two briefs filed by the House Counsel on behalf of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) as amicus curiae in support of Schock’s right to assert a Fifth Amendment act of production privilege in response to grand jury subpoenas for Schock’s congressional records.

The Act of Production Privilege and the Records of a Congressional Office

The grand jury subpoenas in question seek documents from Schock’s “congressional office.” As used here, a “congressional office,” also sometimes referred to as the member’s “personal office,” means the offices that each member of the House maintains in Washington, D.C. and the congressional district for the conduct of official business as a representative from that district.

As we have discussed before, the House has long taken the position, for reasons unrelated to the Fifth Amendment, that such documents are the personal property of the individual member, not the property of the House itself or the U.S. government. Thus, these records are not archived under House Rule VII (as are documents such as committee records, which belong to the House and are periodically sent to the National Archives for archiving and eventual release to the public). Instead, upon a member’s departure from the House, the member is expected to take custody of her congressional office records or to arrange for their disposal (e.g., by having them destroyed, put in storage or donated to a university or other institution). See Declaration of Farar P. Elliott, Chief of the Office of Art and Archives (7-24-15).

Here we should step back and explain the Fifth Amendment “act of production” privilege and its relationship to the House’s stance on who owns congressional documents. As Judge Myerscough explained in an opinion issued in the course of the Schock investigation:

A person may be compelled to produce documents even though the documents contain incriminating assertions of fact or belief because the creation of the documents was not compelled. United States v. Hubbell, 530 U.S. 27, 35 (2000); Fisher v. United States, 425 U.S. 391, 410 (1976) (“The taxpayer cannot avoid compliance with the subpoena merely by asserting that the item of evidence which he is required to produce contains incriminating writing, whether his own or that of someone else”). Nonetheless, “the act of producing documents in response to a subpoena may have a compelled testimonial aspect.” Hubbell, 530 U.S. at 36. That is, by producing the documents, the witness admits that the papers exist, that the papers were in his possession or control, and that the papers are authentic. Whether a particular act is testimonial and self-incriminating is largely a factual issue to be decided in each case.

The act-of-production privilege does not, however, apply to collective entities, such as corporations. Consequently, an individual cannot rely on the Fifth Amendment privilege to avoid producing a collective entity’s records that are in his possession in a representative capacity, even if the records may incriminate him personally.

Opinion of June 25, 2015 at 14-16 (some citations omitted).

Thus, if documents from a member’s congressional office belonged to a collective entity, such as the House itself, or the U.S. government, or the “Office of Congressman X or Congressional District Y,” the act of production privilege would not apply, and a member could be compelled to produce such documents in response to a subpoena.

On the other hand, the converse is not necessarily true. The government argued that documents which of their essential nature are public or official records are not subject to the act of production privilege even if the House treats them for some purposes as the member’s personal property. Moreover, it contended that the “collective entity” doctrine was applicable because a congressional office, while it differs from a government agency or private corporation with respect to the ownership of documents, is still more like these collective entities than it is like a “sole proprietorship” or the home or business of a private individual.

BLAG responded that the formal ownership of documents was dispositive for purposes of the Fifth Amendment analysis. Furthermore, to the extent that a “collective entity” analysis was appropriate, it maintained that the legal nature of a congressional office was like that of a sole proprietorship, as distinguished from a collective entity such as a government agency or corporation. Continue reading “BLAG, the Act of Production Doctrine and the Schock Case”