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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS

SAN ANGELO DIVISION

Luke Chrisman,

Plaintiff,

v.

LLOYD J. AUSTIN, III,

United States Secretary of Defense, et al.,

Defendants.

No. 6:22-cv-0049-H

DECLARATION OF CHRISTOPHER WIEST

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1746, the undersigned, Christopher Wiest, Esq., makes the 

following declaration, under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America,

that the facts contained herein are true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief and that 

such facts are made based on my personal knowledge:

1. My name is Christopher Wiest. I am, and have been, one of the Counsel for 

Plaintiffs in the above captioned matter.

2. We have never held a Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(f) conference in the above captioned 

matter.

3. We received an email from Defendants, which contained discovery requests, on 

January 26, 2024.

4. The requested discovery is not authorized under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(d).

5. Culling through five years of engagement letters and invoices for each and every 

client and each and every matter is no small task as it would involve, for engagement agreements,

retrieval of closed files from storage, and for both engagement agreements and invoices, scanning 

and redacting privileged materials, and the like, and would require hundreds of additional attorney 

hours per law firm to achieve, for marginal, if any, benefit. Just to ballpark the undertaking, my 

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firm, which consists of myself and, for approximately the past six months, an associate, which is 

the smallest of the firms involved, has issued approximately 525 invoices to clients since 2019, all 

of which would have to be printed, reviewed for privilege, and then produced. I only have 

engagement agreements readily producible for open files; engagement agreements on closed files 

are in storage. I undertook to pull an invoice for one client, for one month, in 2019, to print it, to 

review it for privilege, and to redact privileged materials, and that exercise took approximately 25

minutes to do. I did the same for a single engagement agreement from 2021 for a file that is still 

opened (and so we are not talking about offsite storage retrieval, which would involve more time 

and expense), and it took another 20 minutes to do that. By way of math, I estimate it would take 

approximately 300 attorney hours for my firm alone, to accomplish everything the Defendants 

have asked for, and that is just for my firm. As an aside, the total hours I have billed in this matter 

to date are less than the 300 hours I estimate that it would take to comply with Defendants’

discovery requests. My co-counsel have larger law firms, with more invoices, and more clients. 

So, for them, a higher number of hours are likely involved. In short, Defendants seek to overly 

burden Plaintiff and his counsel with a massive undertaking.

6. The disclosure of each and every client and invoice, for the past five years, to the 

federal government, for the counsel on this case, raises particular concerns when one considers 

that the undersigned counsel represent persons who usually are challenging governmental action, 

and Defendants insist that we essentially turn over our entire client lists (to include organizational 

clients that challenge government action) which raises particularly acute First Amendment 

concerns. See NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958); Americans for 

Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 141 S.Ct. 2373 (2021). Furthermore, some of Plaintiffs’ Counsel 

(specifically myself, Mr. Siri, Ms. Brehm, and Mr. Bruns) represent members of Congress, 

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including in litigation, and yet the disclosure of invoices, represents particularly sensitive issues 

when it comes to disclosure to the executive branch.

7. This discovery also calls for the disclosure of non-public representational matters, 

including matters that have not yet been filed, and non-public clients, which raises significant 

privilege concerns.

8. In the same way, the requested discovery gives rise to trade secret issues, as nonpublic client and lists are generally protected as trade secrets, but ostensibly Defendants seek the 

disclose of same.

9. The remaining Plaintiff would not be privy to virtually any of this information,

demonstrating all the more the improper nature of this effort.

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §1746, I declare under penalties of perjury under the laws of the 

United States of America that the foregoing Declaration is true and correct to the best of my 

knowledge and belief and that such facts are made based on my personal knowledge.

Executed on ____________________. _______________________________

Christopher Wiest

2/2/2024

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