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Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 247 Filed 04/23/21 Page2of17 The Honorable Alison J. Nathan April 5, 2021 Page 2 of 17 she may not use Rule 17 to circumvent Rule 16. For this reason and the additional reasons explained below, the Court should deny the Defendant’s motion to authorize the Subpoena to BSF. 1. Requests 1-5: Communications About the Defendant and A. The Requests Are Not Specific. The Defendant has failed to meet her burden of demonstrating that Requests 1 through 5— for a broad range of communications between BSF and others about the Defendant and gy Wm — clear Nixon’s hurdles of relevancy, admissibility, and specificity. See United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 700 (1974). As to specificity, Maxwell first argues that Requests 1 through 5 are sufficiently specific because they “are specific as to date and limited by the identified individuals and subject matter.” Resp. Ltr. at 2. But the specificity hurdle requires more. “In order to avoid speculation that the moving party is using Rule 17(c) to circumvent normal discovery requirements, the party’s Rule 17(c) subpoena must be able to reasonably specify the information contained or believed to be contained in the documents sought rather than merely hope that something useful will turn up.” United States v. Mendinueta-Ibarro, 956 F. Supp. 2d 511, 513 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, “[r]equests for any and all communications, even if tied to specific documents and topics, are potentially ‘fishing expeditions’ for unspecified materials and insufficiently specific under United States v. Nixon.” United States v. Bergstein, No. 16-CR-746 (PKC), 2018 WL 9539775, at *1 (S.D.N.Y. Feb. 1, 2018). The Defendant’s broad requests for all of BSF’s communications with certain individuals and entities about general topics over a years-long time period do not meet the specificity requirement, just like numerous of the defendant’s requests in Avenatti failed the specificity requirement. For example, Judge Gardephe held that Mr. Avenatti’s “request for all audio recordings (and transcripts thereof) (1) involving [eight designated individuals]; (2) that contain a DOJ-OGR-00004002