Opinion ID: 186000
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Specification Five

Text: 82 In specification five, the district court found the Secretary committed a fraud on the court by making false and misleading representations regarding computer security of IIM trust data. Id. at 100. The Department made representations on that subject under Secretary Norton in April and May 2001. The district court's findings as to those statements do not support its conclusion that Secretary Norton committed a fraud on the court. 83 The April representations appeared in the Department's Opposition to the Plaintiffs' Motion for Special Master Investigation; in particular, the court identified the statement that the Department had made security a top priority and ha[d] taken numerous steps to improve the security of the Reston facility since the Special Master's visit, id. at 106, and the Department's outline of its completed and planned security improvements. Id. at 106-07. The district court also took issue with the Department's May 2001 Opposition to the Plaintiffs' Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction, insofar as the defendants argued the plaintiffs' position [was] wholly without merit. Id. at 107. 84 The district court apparently found these statements to be false based upon the Report on IT Security prepared by a special master (not Kieffer), and upon the Department's failure to dispute any of the underlying facts set out in that report. See id. at 108. In the report, the special master had concluded the Department has known about pervasive IT security deficiencies for more than a decade, id., and found the Department has not taken necessary actions to correct its numerous and longstanding IT security deficiencies, id. at 109, which the special master chronicled at length. 85 We see no finding of fact in the Report on IT Security, or in any opinion of the district court, that directly contradicts the statements in the Department's April Opposition, which the court identified as part of a fraud on the court. Absent a direct contradiction, the facts of this case do not support the implicit inference that Secretary Norton has acted with an intent to deceive or defraud the court. United States v. Buck, 281 F.3d 1336, 1342 (10th Cir.2002). With respect to the statement in the Department's May Opposition, we think it inconceivable that a departmental secretary may be held to have committed a fraud on the court because an attorney representing her Department argued in an adversarial proceeding that an adversary's motion critical of the Department was without merit. 86 We therefore conclude the district court erred as a matter of law in holding Secretary Norton in criminal contempt on specification five.