PUBLISH
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT

________________ _________________ ROCKY MOUNTAIN WILD, INC., Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. UNITED STATES FOREST SERVICE; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Defendants - Appellees. No. 21-1169

________________ _________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (D.C. No. 1:18-CV-03065-MEH)

________________ _________________ Travis E. Stills, Energy and Conservation Law, Durango, Colorado, (Matthew Sandler, Rocky Mountain Wild, Denver, Co lorado, with him on the brie fs) for Plaintiff-Appellant. Marissa R. Miller, Assistant United States Attorney (Cole Fine gan, United States Attorney, with her on th e brief), Denver, Colorado, for Defendants-Appellees.

________________ _________________ Before TYMKOVICH , EID , and CARSON , Circuit Judges.

________________ _________________ CARSON , Circuit Judge.

________________ _________________ The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) makes government records accessible to the public, including organiza tions like Plaintiff Rocky Mountain Wild. But this access is not limitless. The statute instru cts government agencies to use reasonable— FILED United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit 

### December 30, 2022 Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 12 not the utmost—efforts to produce respons ive records upon request. Beyond that, FOIA also exempts nine categories of records from public disclosure. Plaintiff requested and received vol uminous records under FOIA, but now asserts Defendants United States Forest Service (“USFS”) and United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) abus ed these statutory limitations to hide information about projects that harm the e nvironment. The district court rejected Plaintiff’s speculative theo ry and found USFS’s efforts to comply with Plaintiff’s FOIA request reasonable. 1 Our jurisdiction arises und er 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We affirm.
I. For years the parties have litigated the propriety of a proposed development in the Wolf Creek Ski Area—which the USFS ma nages. The proposed development is a plan for highway access known as “the Vi llage at Wolf Creek Access Project.” Plaintiff challenges this plan because of alleged environmental risks to the surrounding national forest. The highway-acce ss litigation continues, but relevant here is a 2018 FOIA request Plaintiff submitted asking Defendant for “all agency records regarding the proposed Village at Wolf Creek Access Project.” Plaintiff’s request caused an enormous undertaking by Defendant. The request sought “all agency records” about the pr oject. The breadth of the request first

1 Although Plaintiff sued both the Forest Service and the Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service plays the most prominent role in this dispute. So for efficiency, we use “Defendant” or “USFS” to refer to the Forest Service. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 23 required Defendant to determine the rele vant period during which its employees would have created responsive documents so it could direct those employees to search their files within th at timeframe. Then Defendant also narrowed the request’s scope to include only documents Defenda nt had not already given Plaintiff, documents Defendant had not made public, and documents not statutorily exempt from disclosure. Defendant next had to find employees w ho might possess responsive records. Defendant determined that twenty-seven employees were substantially involved in the Village at Wolf Creek Access Project during the re levant timeframe and likely possessed responsive records. All but two of those employees worked in Colorado. Defendant allowed the employ ees to search their own f iles using custom search terms, reasoning that each employee would know the be st search terms to find responsive documents. The employees repor ted how they searched their files and listed their individual search terms. Be tween the twenty-sev en employees, they searched their files with more than two dozen diffe rent search terms, including variations of similar terms. Some of the twenty-sev en employees handed off the search to their administrati ve assistants but still spec ified the search terms their administrative assistants us ed. Those who searched look ed in different locations, such as physical hard-copy files, external and internal computer hard drives, and emails, including attachments, within their archiv e system. Finally, most employees searched twice for documents, and all the selected employees s earched for responsive records after March 1, 2019, to make sure none showed up at th e last minute. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 34 After collecting documents from the twen ty-seven employees, a team of five Forest Service officials wo rked full-time for months to review the produced documents. 2 The team organized documents in to three groups: (1) nonresponsive, which they removed; (2) responsive but ei ther produced before from a past FOIA request, outside the window Defendant calculated, or exempt under FOIA, which they also removed but listed the exempt documents in an index; and (3) responsive and not previously produced, outside the timeframe, or exempt under FOIA, which they gave to Plaintiff. As the team co mpiled disclosable responsive documents, it sent groups of them to Plaintif f in “rolling productions.” Over the course of a year, Defenda nt organized twenty-seven rolling productions to Plaintiff after identifying 14 0,637 responsive pages in 14,740 records. Defendant tried to produce th ese documents in a way Plai ntiff preferred, such as reproducing documents as i ndividual PDF files and repr oducing those documents a third time as searchable PDFs once Plainti ff objected to the non-searchable format. At Plaintiff’s insistence, De fendant also created an al most 800-page “Vaughn index” to inventory the thousands of agency reco rds FOIA exempted from disclosure (7,757 in total). See Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 8 20, 827 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (establishing that an agency can list ex empt documents in an index to allow a court to consider the agency’s justifications for exempting them more easily). Defendant even hired an outside contractor to help prepare the Vaughn index becau se so many privilege issues

2 Other Forest Service employees helped part-time. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 45 came into play and Defendant wanted to make sure it had properly withheld or redacted documents. Defendant submitte d declarations deta iling its months-long search effort. While Defendant gathered responsive documents to include in the rolling productions, Plaintiff sued Defendant in fe deral court for allege dly missing statutory deadlines, conducting an inad equate search, and improperl y withholding or redacting documents. During the litigation, Defe ndant started producing documents to Plaintiff. In one produc tion, Defendant mistakenly included two documents not properly redacted and asked Plaintiff to re turn or destroy the documents and provided Plaintiff with properly redacted replacements . But Plaintiff refused. So Defendant moved the district court to order Plaintiff to return or destroy the documents. The court granted Defendant’s mo tion, directing Plaintiff to remove the documents from any online locations (another organizati on had posted the documents on its Facebook page) and return or destroy them. Later, the parties each moved for summa ry judgment. Defendant argued that its declarations describe how its empl oyees reasonably searched for responsive documents and prove that the agency reasonably applied FO IA exemptions to redact parts of or withhold entire reco rds. Plaintiff countered th at Defendant had not proven it conducted a FOIA-compliant search or me t the standard to ex empt documents in whole or in part from production. The di strict court granted Defendant’s summaryjudgment motion. It found that Defendant reasonably searched fo r records to comply with the FOIA request and adequately justif ied why it redacted or withheld certain Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 56 records. Plaintiff appeals the summary-judgment decision a nd the order to return the improperly redacted documents.
II. We review a grant of summa ry judgment in FOIA cases de novo if the district court’s decision “had an adequa te factual basis.” Jordan v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 668 F.3d 1188, 1192 (10th Cir. 2011) (quoting Audubon Soc’y v. U.S. Forest Serv., 104 F.3d 1201, 1203 (10th Cir. 1997). The gove rnment can develop an adequate factual basis by providing a Vaughn index, which an agency typically puts together to allow the court to review the agen cy’s nondisclosures. See A nderson v. Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., 907 F.2d 936, 94 2 (10th Cir. 1990). The ag ency bears the burden of justifying its nondisclosures. Friends of Animals, 15 F. 4th 1254, 1260 (10th Cir. 2021) (citing Herrick v. Garvey, 298 F.3d 1184, 1190 (10th Cir. 2002). A court should grant summary judgment wh en “the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any ma terial fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). A mere scintilla of evidence supporting the nonmovant’s position will not create a genuine issue of material f act; the fact issue must make it so that a reasonable jury could find for the nonmovant. Herrick, 298 F.3d at 1190. Because the di strict court granted summary judgment in Defendant’s favor, “we review the record and all reasonable inferences . . . drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to [P laintiff].” See Trentadue v. Integrity Comm., 501 F.3d 1215, 1226 (10th Cir. 2007) [“Trentadue I”]. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 67 III. Plaintiff challenges the district cour t’s decision on four grounds. First, Plaintiff claims the court a pplied the standard of revi ew incorrectly by improperly deferring to Defendant’s decl arations. Second, Plain tiff argues that the court wrongly found that Defendant conducted a reasonable sear ch for records. Third, Plaintiff asserts that the cour t erred in determining that Defendant validly withheld or redacted documents under certa in FOIA exemptions. And last, Plaintiff appeals the district court’s order allowi ng Defendant to claw back inadvertent disclosures USFS made during one of its rolling pr oductions to Plaintiff. Congress enacted FOIA to facilitate pub lic access to federa l agency records and information. Friends of Animals, 15 F.4th at 1260 (citing NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214, 221 (1978)). The statute favors disclosure. NLRB, 437 U.S. at 220. But it also exempts nine categories of records from disclosure for confidentiality and privacy reasons. Id. at 220–21; 5 U.S.C. § 552(b). With this statutory framework in mind, we address Plaintiff’s assertions. 3

3 We also grant Plaintiff’s motion to fi le a supplemental appendix. Plaintiff failed to include all the relevant docket entr ies when it first file d its appendix like the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure and our local rules require. See Lincoln v. BNSF Ry. Co., 900 F.3d 1166, 1189 (10th Ci r. 2018) (citing Fed. R. App. P. 30 (a)(1); 10th Cir. R. 10.3(A)). While an appellant who produces an inadequate appendix “does so at his peri l,” Dikeman v. Nat’l Educat ors, Inc., 81 F.3d 949, 955 (10th Cir. 1996) (citation om itted), we see no reason not to allow the supplement because it results in no pr ejudice to either party. See infra at 23–24. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 78 A. “In any FOIA action challenging an agen cy decision to withhold records, the district court reviews de nov o the agency’s decision not to disclose.” See Herrick, 298 F.3d at 1189. Although Pl aintiff recognizes that the district court stated the correct standard, Plaintiff as serts that the cour t improperly deferred to Defendant’s declarations and failed to conduct a true de novo review. Plaintiff claims the district court applied a “bad faith standard to sh ield litigation declarat ions from scrutiny.” This standard, according to Pl aintiff, required Plaintiff to show the agency’s bad faith to disprove the declarations’ contents instead of the cour t analyzing the declarations’ veracity. The district court applied no such sta ndard. Rather, it applied a good-faith presumption to the declarations as our prec edent directs. See Trentadue v. F.B.I., 572 F.3d 794, 808 (10th Cir. 2009) [“Trentadue II”] (quoting SafeCard Servs., Inc. v. SEC, 926 F.2d 1197, 1200 (D.C. Cir. 1991)). This presumption “essentially requires us to credit the agency’s sworn statements ” absent contrary ev idence. Stevens v. U.S. Dep’t of State, 20 F.4th 337, 342–43 (7th Cir. 2021). In Trentadue II, we adopted the D.C. Circuit’s rule that c ourts should give agency declarations a presumption of good faith that a FOIA pl aintiff cannot rebut by merely speculating about the possibility of other documents somewhere. 572 F.3d at 808. The district court correctly presumed , then, that Defendant submitted its declarations in good faith because “decla rations and affidavits are the widely accepted, even preferable, me ans for an agency to resp ond to concerns about the Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 89 adequacy of a FOIA search.” Id. at 807. And although the court discussed bad faith, it did so only to address Plaintiff’s numer ous accusations of De fendant’s supposed bad faith. The court rejected those accu sations because Plaint iff could not cite supporting caselaw or provide examples of Defendant’s bad faith. Simply put, as Plaintiff recognizes, without contrary ev idence or proof of inconsistencies, Defendant’s detailed declarations comply with FOIA. See id. at 807 (quoting Rugiero v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 2 57 F.3d 534, 547 (6th Cir. 2001)). Thus, Plaintiff needed to present sp ecific, nonspeculative, countervailing evidence or evidence of inconsistencies to rebut th e good-faith presumption. As discussed more below, Plaintiff failed to do so. Meanwhile, the district court appropriately discussed why it applied the presumption of good fa ith to Defendant’s declarations and then explained why it reje cted each of Plaintiff’s arguments about supposed countervailing evidence of Defend ant’s bad faith. The district court even considered the sufficiency of the agency’s declarations even though Plaintiff did not challenge their sufficiency. We thus reject Plaintiff’s ar gument that the court failed to conduct de novo review merely because it presumed Defendant presented its declarations in good faith.
B. Next, Plaintiff argues that the distri ct court erred by c oncluding Defendant engaged in reasonable search ef forts. We agree with the di strict court that Defendant put forth reasonable efforts to comply with Plaintiff’s FOIA request. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 910 FOIA does not specify how hard an agen cy must look for requested records. Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 797. But we have joined other circuits that have adopted the “reasonableness rule.” Id. (listing circu its). The rule require s agencies to show that they reasonably tried to produce re sponsive records. Id. (citing 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(C)). Their search must be “r easonable in scope and intensity” and need not turn up “every nonexempt requested docume nt regardless of th e cost of locating it.” Id. That is why we focus on the agency ’s search process, not the outcome. Id. To that end, the “issue is not whether any further documen ts might conceivably exist but rather whether the governme nt’s search for responsive documents was adequate.” Id. (alteration in original) (quoting Weisberg v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 705 F.2d 1344, 1351 (D.C. Cir. 1983)). The reasonablene ss inquiry focuses on the probability that the search will discover responsive documen ts, the availability of other search methods, and the feasibility of those alte rnative methods. See id. at 798 (quoting Davis v. Dep’t of Just., 460 F.3d 92, 105 (D .C. Cir. 2006)). We also consider the case’s circumstances when an alyzing the search. Id. at 797 (citing Weisberg, 705 F.2d at 1351). Plaintiff accuses the agency of not us ing effective search terms, excluding employees likely to have responsive r ecords, avoiding searching the agency’s Washington D.C. offices, and ignoring devices likely to ha ve responsive records. Plaintiff insists that the district cour t “uncritically accep t[ed]” Defendant’s declarations to find the sear ch reasonable despite these al leged failures. But courts generally resolve FOIA cases on summary judgment based on affidavits or Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1011 declarations. See World Publ’g Co. v. U. S. Dep’t of Just., 672 F.3d 825, 832 (10th Cir. 2012) (first citing Trentadue II, 572 F. 3d at 807–08; then Wood v. F.B.I., 432 F.3d 78, 85 (2d Cir. 2005)). Not to mention, we prefer that agen cies use declarations or affidavits to ease concerns about a FOIA search’s adequ acy. Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 807. And we apply a presumption of good faith to an agen cy’s affidavits or declarations, which Plaintiff cannot rebut by merely speculating about the existence of other documents. Id. at 808 (c iting SafeCard, 926 F.2d at 1200). Indeed, we routinely rely on declarations to make sure an ag ency fulfilled its FOIA duties. For example, in Trentadue II, we thought that the F.B.I.’s searches were “very thorough.” 572 F.3d at 807. The F.B.I. attested in declarations that it had searched its indices, manually searched two files, and indexe d the entire principal file about the event at issue. Id. The only task the F.B.I. did not do would have required manually searching through one million pages of the princi pal file, which would take “thousands of hours of work”—an effo rt we described as “unreasonably burdensome.” Id. Because the F.B.I.’s declarations “provide[d] an internally consistent and uncontradicted record” of its sear ch efforts, we de termined that the plaintiff could not justify th e additional discovery he reque sted. Id. at 808. Thus, like the plaintiff in Trentadue II, Plaint iff must come forward with “countervailing evidence or apparent inconsis tency of proof” to rebut th e good-faith presumption for Defendant’s detailed declarations. See id . at 807 (quoting Rugier o, 257 F.3d at 547). Otherwise, the court has no reason not to be lieve the agency’s sw orn statements. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1112 Plaintiff asserts that the agency did not use effectiv e search terms, excluded from its search employees likely to have responsive records, av oided searching the agency’s Washington D.C. offices, and i gnored devices likely to have responsive records. These failures, Plai ntiff complains, caused the ag ency’s search to violate its duties under FOIA. We disagree. The agency allowed its employees to come up with their own search terms while looking for documents about the proj ect. In Plaintiff’s view, this led to inconsistent search results that likely left out respons ive records. The Seventh Circuit recently rej ected a similar attack on a Stat e Department document search. See Stevens, 20 F.4th at 343. There, a FOIA plaintiff objected to the State Department allowing its officers to decide what to search base d on their familiarity with the Department’s way of keeping record s. Id. The court determined that the Department sufficiently de tailed its account of sear ch methods and found the methods reasonable. Id. at 343–44; see also Inter-Coop. Exch. v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 36 F.4th 905, 911 (9th Cir. 2022) (r ecognizing the discretion that agencies enjoy in crafting search terms designed to identify responsive r ecords because they know best how they keep their own files and what vocabulary they use for certain projects). We reach the same conc lusion here. Defendant’s decision to allow its employees to customize the terms they empl oyed to search their own records is not inherently unreasonable, especially give n that Defendant lis ted the terms each employee used. And that list included mo re than two dozen search terms with Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1213 different variations of similar terms. Cf. Inter-Coop. Exch., 36 F.4th at 911–12 (finding an agency’s choice to use just tw o search terms insuffi cient because those terms could not have foun d responsive records to bot h requests the plaintiff submitted, did not adequately reflect the breadth of the re quests, and did not include variant terms). Although Defendant did no t use precisely the terms Plaintiff would have used to look for the same informati on, Plaintiff presents no reasoned authority demonstrating the unreasonableness of Defe ndant’s search terms. We therefore reject Plaintiff’s argument to the extent that it rest s on Defendant’s allegedly unreasonable search terms. Plaintiff further alleges that Defendant purposefully excluded other employees likely to have responsive records. Acco rding to Plaintiff, the district court improperly deferred to Defendant’s iden tification of which employees may have responsive records. Defendant attested in its declarations that it chose employees based on who created documents about the project or whether relevant documents were routed through those employees. Plain tiff argues that the district court ignored the possibility that Defendant may have omitted other employees, but Plaintiff does not identify who Defendant overlooked. Plaintiff asserts that any person listed on the Vaughn index should have searched their files as well. Plaintiff directs us to three individuals who allegedly possess responsive documents but did not search for them. The first two people Plaintiff names no longer work for the agen cy, but the employees who took over their positions did search their records to comply with the FOIA request. So that leaves Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1314 one person—the District Ra nger on the Divide District of the Rio Grande National Forest—who Plaintiff identifies as possi bly possessing responsive records that Defendant could have included in its search. Defendant di d not ask this employee to search her files because she has worked so little on the pr oject that Defendant did not expect her to have responsi ve records. Plus, Defendant says, any responsive records she may possess would come up in othe r employees’ searches who were more substantially involve d in the project. Plaintiff insists that leaving out any employees who potentially have responsive documents frustrates “a FOIA search designed to find all agency records.” But Plaintiff misunderstands the standard—a FOIA sear ch need not locate every conceivable responsive record no matter the cost. See Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 797. Plaintiff identifies only persons whose file s contain documents duplicative of those searched for by other employees. Defendant ’s choice to exclude those persons was not unreasonable. Plaintiff also objects to th e employees who recruited th eir assistants to search their records for them. Plai ntiff reasons that if each employee supposedly knew their own records well enough to come up with th eir own search terms, then they should have searched the files th emselves. But Plaintiff of fers no evidence that the employees’ assistants did not know the be st way to find responsive records. Nor does Plaintiff claim that the as sistants used deficient search terms. Instead, Plaintiff implicitly speculates that the employees th emselves would have used different terms if they had personally searched their files. Plaintiff’s lack of evidence showing the Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1415 inadequacy of having an as sistant search files for re sponsive documents dooms its argument. Plaintiff also appears to object—on a numerical basis—to Defendant’s decision to involve twenty-seven (and not more) employees to co nduct the search. These conclusory assertions do not rebut the good-faith presumption we apply to Defendant’s declarations e xplaining why it did not include more employees in the search. See Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 808. Next, Plaintiff contends that the agency might have found additional responsive records in its Washington, D. C. offices had it only required more employees to search their documents. Bu t Defendant’s declarat ions explain that although it considered employees across offi ces, most employees it identified as likely to have responsive r ecords worked in Colorado b ecause the project involves federal land in that state. Plaintiff responds by pointing out that Defendant’s Vaughn index proves that the D.C. o ffices contain responsive reco rds. True enough. But even if there are responsive documents in Washington D.C., there is no evidence in the record before us that they are not duplicative or otherwise exempt from production. And even if there are more documents in Washington D.C., their mere existence does not mean that Defe ndant’s search was unreasonable. Finally, Plaintiff objects to Defendant’s choice of which devices to search and where to search on those devices. Plaint iff apparently expected the employees to describe where they searched, whether th ey searched the entirety of each document or device, and how they made sure they searched every possible responsive document Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1516 they possessed. This goes far beyond the reasonableness standard; FOIA searches need only be “reasonable in scope and intensity.” See Tr entadue II, 572 F.3d at 797. The record in this case demonstrates a he rculean effort by Defendant to comply with Plaintiff’s requests. Defe ndant deployed a team of employees who worked full-time for months locating and reviewing respons ive records; produced 14,740 documents totaling 140,637 pages from the personal files of twenty-sev en identified custodians; and hired an electronic discovery specialist to provide Plaintiff an 800-page Vaughn index containing nearly 8,000 in dividual entries. To hold that such an effort was unreasonable could result in such a burden on agencies that they could not both comply with FOIA and co mplete the core functions of their jobs. As part of its final point , Plaintiff objects to the em ployees not searching their work cellphones, which Plain tiff says might contain res ponsive text messages, notes, or records in other email accounts. Th is complaint misses the mark for a few reasons. For one, not every Forest Servic e employee uses a work cellphone. And those that do have a work ce llphone sync the phone’s ema il account with their work computer’s email account, meaning a ny computer search would have caught responsive emails on employees’ phones. Fo r another, Plaintif f does not pinpoint any responsive documents that the phones possess. Rather, Plaintiff speculates that the phones contain “potentially responsive” records. This speculation fails in the face of Defendant’s declarat ions explaining that Defendant entrusted its employees to decide where to search becau se they know best where responsive records might be located, and that they did not search th eir cellphones because they did not expect Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1617 their phones to have any res ponsive records that a comput er search would not have already found. Because Plaintiff does not rebut this explanation with concrete evidence to the contrary, we presume Defenda nt trusted its employees in good faith. See Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 808. And without countervailing evidence suggesting that employees worked on the project usi ng personal text messaging or other email accounts, we similarly presume the employees chose not to search their text messages and personal email accounts in good faith. Id. at 808. So considering all the places the employees did search, their good-faith decision to not include personal text messages and email accounts in their search does not render Defendant’s search unreasonable, either. Ultimately, Plaintiff’s arguments rely on speculation. While Plaintiff remains unsatisfied, it offered no evidence to show what additional documents other employees or offices possibly possessed. At the same time, Defendant’s declarations describe a thorough investig ation for employees who might have responsive records, detailed lists of how each employee searched their own r ecords, and explanations of how the team who received those records se parated them out to respond to the FOIA request. Based on Defendant’s declarations and Plaintiff’s failure to rebut them, we agree with the district court that Defendant performed an ad equate search. Again, we focus not on whether “any further documents might conceivably exist,” but whether the government adequately searched for responsive documents. Trentadue II, 572 F.3d at 797. At bottom, Plaintiff failed to produce evidence su fficient to create a Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1718 genuine issue for trial on whether the agen cy reasonably tried to produce responsive documents, making summary judgmen t on this issue proper.
C. Plaintiff also challenges the district court’s determination that Defendant properly withheld or redacted documents under certain FOIA exemptions. Plaintiff first protests Defendant’s deci sion to hire an outside cont ractor to help prepare the Vaughn index. But Plaintiff did not dispute Defendant’s outside contractor below, forfeiting the issue. See Richison v. Er nest Grp., 634 F.3d 1123, 1128 (10th Cir. 2011) (explaining that “if the theory simply wa sn’t raised before th e district court, we usually hold it forfeited”); Appellant’s App. Vol. I at 208–54. And Plaintiff does not argue on appeal that the distri ct court committed plain error. We thus do not consider the issue because Pl aintiff waived it by not arguing for plain-error review after forfeiting it. See Richison, 634 F.3d at 1128, 1131 (citing McKi ssick v. Yuen, 618 F.3d 1177, 1189 (10th Cir. 2010) (clarifying that a party waives plain-error review of

a forfeited argument by failing to explain how the forfeited argument survives plainerror review)). Plaintiff waived the issu e about Defendant prepari ng an insufficient Vaughn index as well. Unlike Plaintiff’s outside -contractor argument, which it forfeited at the district court, Plaintiff di d contest the index entries belo w. But to preserve issues for appeal, a party must draft arguments that go beyond general claims of error, Garrett v. Selby Connor Maddux & Janer, 425 F.3d 836, 841 (10th Cir. 2005), and include the “contentions and reasons for them, with citations to the authorities and Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1819 parts of the record on which the appellant relies .” Fed. R. App. P. 28(a)(8)(a) (emphasis added). Despite this standard, Plai ntiff argues only generally th at Defendant created an insufficient Vaughn index. Plaintiff does not name even one specific entry where Defendant failed to include the necessary information to justify applying a FOIA exemption. Still, Pl aintiff argues it suffic iently briefed the is sue by objecting below to groups of entries that lacked informa tion and then citing t hose objections in its appellate briefs. These objec tions also do not identify i ndividual entries; Plaintiff merely groups allegedly defici ent entries into categories with hundreds of entries in each. But “[j]udges are not like pigs, hunting for truffles buried in briefs.” Gross v. Burggraf Const. Co., 53 F.3d 1531, 1546 (10th Cir. 1995) (quoting United States v. Dunkel, 927 F.2d 955, 956 (7th Cir. 1991)). “[A]ppellants, rather than courts of appeals, [must] ferret out and articulate th e record evidence cons idered material to each legal theory advanced on appeal.” Conto v. Conc ord Hosp., Inc., 265 F.3d 79, 81–82 (1st Cir. 2001). So without a specif ic reference to the purportedly insufficient entries, we will not scour th e record to determine whethe r evidence exists that might require the case to go to a ju ry. Gross, 53 F.3d at 1546 (quoting Thomas v. Wichita Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 968 F.2d 10 22, 1025 (10th Cir. 1992)). Plaintiff claims Defendant ’s Vaughn index contains 4,110 deficient entries. Plaintiff apparently invites us to comb through the entire index to see if we agree. We decline the invitation. If Plaintiff wa nted to challenge the index’s sufficiency, Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 1920 Plaintiff needed to specifically reference the problem atic entries and explain what makes them insufficient. 4 Its failure to do so means Plai ntiff waived this issue. See Garrett, 425 F.3d at 841 (quoting Utahns for Be tter Transp. v. U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 305 F.3d 1152, 1175 (10th Cir. 2002) (noting that a party wa ives issues inadequately briefed). Plaintiff also quarrels with the district court’s ex emption analysis. FOIA requires agencies to hand over any request ed agency records unless an exemption listed in 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) pr events their disclosure. Prison Legal News v. Exec. Off. for U.S. Att’ys, 628 F.3d 1243, 1251 ( 10th Cir. 2011) (citing U.S. Dep’t of Just. v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. 136, 150–51 (1989)). So as we consider Defendant’s justifications for invoking exem ptions, we keep in mind that we must construe FOIA broadly and apply any exemp tions narrowly. Trentadue I, 501 F.3d at 1226. Indeed, “the required balance is not an even one. Because FOIA’s core purpose is to shed light on the government’s perfor mance of its duties,” we br oadly construe the statute to favor disclosure. Friends of Animals, 15 F.4th at 1267. So we start with a “presumption of disclosure.” Id. At th e same time, “we recognize that the FOIA exemptions serve important interests.” Id. at 1261 (citing John Doe Agency v. John Doe Corp., 493 U.S. 146, 152 (1989)).

4 Plaintiff did not specify which entr ies are allegedly deficient in the proceedings below, either. The district court randomly spot-checked some entries and found them “reasonably clear , specific, and detailed.” Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2021 Although Defendant invoke d many FOIA exemptions , Plaintiff challenges only Exemption 5’s application on appeal. This exemption “excuses disclosure of ‘inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agen cy.’” Trentadue I, 501 F.3d at 1226 (quoting 5 U.S.C. § 552(b )(5)). Put differently, Exemption 5 protects documents a privilege would cove r in a civil proceeding involving an agency. Id.; see also F.T.C. v. Grolier Inc., 462 U.S. 19, 26–27 (1983) (“Exemption 5 incorporates the privileges which the Government enjoys under the relevant statutory and case law in the pretrial di scovery context.”) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Renegotiation Bd. v. Grumman Ai rcraft Eng’g Corp., 421 U.S. 168, 184 (1975)). A court can look to, among other things, detailed affidavits for the factual basis necessary to decide whether the ag ency sufficiently justified withholding or redacting records. See Anderson, 907 F.2d at 942. As long as the affidavits reasonably specify how the docum ents fall within th e exemption, the agency satisfies its burden under FOIA. Hull v. I.R.S., U. S. Dep’t of Treasury, 656 F.3d 1174, 1177 (10th Cir. 2011) (quoting Qu iñon v. F.B.I., 86 F.3d 1222 , 1227 (D.C. Cir. 1996)). But affidavits that “merely parrot” the statute’s language or supply conclusions without explanation do not suffice. Ande rson, 907 F.2d at 942 (quoting Carter v. U.S. Dep’t of Com., 830 F.2d 3 88, 393 (D.C. Cir. 1987)). Plaintiff challenges Defenda nt’s invocation of Exempt ion 5 on two grounds. First, Plaintiff argues Defenda nt never specified the harm it would suffer if it had to Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2122 disclose each exempt entry like FOIA requires. Second, it asserts that Defendant did not prove the attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctr ine applied to each entry in the index under this exemption. Plaintiff also waived its second theory, but for a diffe rent reason than the first two waived issues. Plaintiff did not incl ude all the relevant docket entries in its appendix like the Federal Rule s of Appellate Procedure a nd our local rules require. See Lincoln v. BNSF Ry. Co., 900 F.3d 1166, 1189 (10th Cir. 2018) (first citing Fed. R. App. P. 30 (a)(1); then 10th Cir. R. 10.3( A)). So it tried to add a third volume to its appendix when filing its re ply brief. This third vo lume contained one document: Plaintiff’s reply to the cros s-motion for summary judgment in the district court. Plaintiff needed this reply to disprove De fendant’s allegation th at Plaintiff waived any challenge to the elements of the attorney-c lient privilege or the work-product doctrine by not mentioning this issue below or arguing for plain-error review in its opening brief. Turns out, Plaintiff did brief th is issue below, but ju st in a reply. So the district court did not cons ider the issue, likely because Plaintiff rais ed it for the first time in a reply. See Appellant’s App. Vol. II at 364 (“Plaintiff does not specifically challenge the withholdings under any particular theory of exemption; in other words, Plaintiff does not argue that Defendant has failed to demonstrate a particular element of the at torney-client privilege, for ex ample.”). After all, reply briefs “do not provide the moving party with a new opportunity to present yet another issue for the court’s consideration.” Ho me Design Servs., Inc. v. B & B Custom Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2223 Homes, LLC, 509 F. Supp. 2d 968, 971 (D . Colo. 2007) (quoting Pacific Gas and Elec. Co. v. U.S., 69 Fed. Cl. 784, 817 (Fed. Cl. 2006). So Plaintiff asks us to consider an issue (1) asserted once in a reply brief below (2) that the district court did not c onsider, yet (3) not challenged for plain error on appeal, let alone (4) in its original a ppendix. These failures “surely mark[ ] the end of the road for an argument for reversal not first presented to the district court.” Richison, 634 F.3d at 1131; see also Singl eton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 120 (1976) (“It is the general rule, of course, that a federal appellate court does not consider an issue not passed upon below.”). Plaintiff’s remaining argument—that De fendant insufficiently justified its exemptions by failing to prove harm for each entry in th e Vaughn index—fails, too. Congress amended FOIA in 2016 to allow an agency to withhold information only if the agency “reasonably forese es that disclosure would ha rm an interest protected by an exemption.” 5 U.S.C § 552(a)(8)(A)(i). The D.C. Circuit has interpreted this amendment to impose a duty on agencies to s how not only that an exemption applies, but also how disclosure would harm the in terest sought to be protected by that exemption, at least in the context of w ithholdings based on the deliberative-process privilege. See Reps. Comm. for Freedom of the Press v. F.B.I., 3 F.4th 350, 369–70 (D.C. Cir. 2021). Plaintiff insists that De fendant could not invoke Exemption 5 without also explaining how disclosure would harm the ag ency. We have yet to decide whether § 552(a)(8)(A)(i) requires agenci es to show not just that an exemption applies but Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2324 also how sharing the information would harm the interest protected by that exemption. But we need not do so here. Li ke the district court determined, even if that heightened burden app lies, Defendant made the re quired showing of harm. Defendant asserted that it applied Exemp tion 5 to withhold or redact documents covered by the attorney-c lient privilege, the work-product doctrine, and the confidential-information privilege. The reasons for protecting attorney comm unications are long-established. See Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524 U.S. 399, 403 (1998) (first citing Upjohn Co. v. United States, 449 U.S. 383, 389 (1981); then Hunt v. Blackburn, 128 U.S. 464, 470 (1888)) (“The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest recognized privileges for confidential communications.”); see also Hickman v. Taylor , 329 U.S. 495, 510 (1947) (recognizing the work product doctrin e). Defendant attest ed in declarations that documents withheld or redacted unde r Exemption 5 mainly involved attorneyclient communications. The declarations detail the kinds of documents involved, including drafts of legal docum ents, and explain why disclo sure of that information would harm Defendant. It should surprise no one that Defendant and Plaintiff, who have been litigating the Village at Wolf Creek Access Project for years, have privileged materials related to this disput e. And Defendant would suffer harm if Plaintiff got its hands on those documents. The attorney-client privilege and workproduct doctrine prevent that harm. For th is reason, Congress created Exemption 5. See Hunton v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 590 F. 3d 272, 278–79 (4th Cir. 2010) (explaining that Congress drafted Exemption 5 to preven t private parties from using the FOIA to Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2425 deprive the government of the work-product and attorney-client pr otections otherwise available to it in litigation). So Defendant’s declarations sufficiently show that the agency would suffer harm from disclosi ng documents protected by either the privilege or the doctrine. See, e.g., F.T.C., 462 U. S. at 23 (recognizing that “Congress had the attorney’s work-product privilege sp ecifically in mind when it adopted Exemption 5”) (quoting NLRB v. Sears Roebuck & Co., 421 U.S. 132, 154 (1975)). Thus, the district court prope rly determined that Defendant met its Exemption 5 burden.
D. Plaintiff lastly appeals the district court’s order that Plaintiff return or destroy two improperly redacted documents Defenda nt inadvertently disclosed. Plaintiff argues that the documents were no longer confidential or privileged because another organization posted them online and thus th e district court could not order their

return. 5 In support, Plaintiff cites Anderson, where we said that because text taken from journal publications “appear to be in the public domain, no me ritorious claim of confidentiality” can exist to assert a FOIA exemption. 907 F.2d at 952 (citing C.N.A. Fin. Corp. v. Donovan, 830 F.2d 1132 , 1154 (D.C. Cir. 1987 )). Plaintiff fails to explain, however, the similarity between a deliberate journal publication and the inadvertently disclosed confidential or privile ged information here. It is one thing to

5 Plaintiff actually argues that it posted the documents online, but the screenshot it submitted as proof shows another organizati on posting the FOIA production. In fact, that sa me page lists Plaintiff as a “related page,” proving the organization that posted the documen ts differs from Plaintiff. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2526 afford no confidentiality to a journal c ontaining information purposefully made public, but it is quite anothe r to afford no confidentiality to documents mistakenly disclosed and then made public after Plain tiff shared those docum ents with another organization to disseminate. Thus , Anderson does not apply. Plaintiff also relies on cases holding that an agency cannot tell a FOIA requester who it can share records with once the agen cy properly discloses the records. See Nat’l Archiv es & Recs. Admin. v. Favi sh, 541 U.S. 157, 174 (2004) (“[O]nce there is disclosure, the information belongs to the general public. There is no mechanism under FOIA for a protective or der allowing only the requester to see whether the information bears out his th eory, or for proscribing its general dissemination.”); Maricopa Au dubon Soc’y v. U.S. Forest Serv., 108 F.3d 1082, 1088 (9th Cir. 1997) (“FOIA does not permit sel ective disclosure of information only to certain parties . . . once the information is disclosed to Audubon, it must also be made available to all members of the public who request it.”). But for those cases to control, the agency must have properly divulged the documents. Here, Defendant accidentally turned over two documents without proper redactions that Plaintiff never had a right to possess under FOIA. So the i ssue is not one of who received them, but whether any member of the public had a right to receive them. At bottom, Plaintiff argues that the dist rict court could not authorize Defendant to claw back mistakenly disclosed docum ents because another organization posted them online. But the gove rnment waives the ability to exempt a document under FOIA only after it has already released th e same information to the public. See Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 2627 Herrick, 298 F.3d at 1193. Plaintiff does not claim that Defendant made the information public before th e inadvertent disclosure o ccurred. Plus, none of the cases we relied on in Herrick involved inadvertent disclosu res of exempt records. See id. (citing Pub. Citizen v. Dep’t of State, 11 F.3d 198, 201 (D.C. Cir. 1993) (information previously disclosed through congressional testimony); Davis v. U.S. Dep’t of Just., 968 F.2d 1276, 1279 (D .C. Cir. 1992) (information previously disclosed through tapes played during a tr ial); Afshar v. Dep’ t of State, 702 F.2d 1125, 1129–31 (D.C. Cir. 1983) (information not previously disclosed, but similar information that the govern ment never acknowledged had a llegedly been previously released to the public)). Wh at is more, Plaintiff cite s no authority barring courts from ordering the return or destruction of inadvertently disclose d records subject to FOIA exemptions. We agree w ith the district court that the public dissemination by a third party of inadvertently disclosed documents does not erase their exempt status and also affirm its claw-back order.
AFFIRMED. Appellate Case: 21-1169 Document: 010110791250 Date Filed: 12/30/2022 Page: 27