*1 Signed by Judge Beryl A. Howell on June 23, 2023.

Upon consideration of plaintiffs’ 44 Motion to Compel Discovery, For Atorneys’ Fees and Costs, and For Sanctions (“Pls.’ Motion”), defendant Rudolph W. Giuliani's 51 Response to Plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel (“Def.’s Opp'n”), plaintiffs’ 56 Reply in Support of Plaintiffs’ Motion, and the parties’ representations to the Court in the proceedings held on May 19, 2023 (“May 19 Hearing”) regarding plaintiffs’ Motion, GRANTING plaintiffs’ request for atorneys’ fees and costs in their 44 Motion, and DIRECTING defendant to pay for plaintiffs’ atorneys’ fees and costs for their 44 Motion by July 7, 2023, subject to a filing by plaintiffs, by June 30, 2023, detailing the costs and fees incurred in preparation for the Motion and the May 19 Hearing, for the reasons outlined below.

In nearly all respects, Plaintiffs’ requested relief has been granted. See [44-16] Pls.’ Proposed Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion (outlining plaintiffs’ requested relief); May 19, 2023 Minute Order (directing defendant to detail his preservation efforts and respond to plaintiffs’ RFPs 40 and 41); May 31, 2023 Minute Order (as amended by the June 16, 2023 Minute Order) (directing defendant to “produce all materials responsive to plaintiffs’ RFPs... within the date ranges agreed to by the parties...”); see also June 22, 2023 Minute Order (denying defendant's 61 Motion for Reconsideration of the May 19, 2023 Minute Order). Federal procedural rules require, upon the granting of a motion to compel, that “the court must... require the party or deponent whose conduct necessitated the motion, the party or atorney advising that conduct, or both to pay the movant's reasonable expenses incurred in making the motion, including atorney's fees.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(A); accord Parsi v. Daioleslam, 778 F.3d 116, 126 (D.C. Cir. 2015); see also DL v. District of Columbia, 251 F.R.D. 38, 49 (D.D.C. 2008) (observing that the language of Rule 37(a)(5)(A) “itself is mandatory, dictating that the Court must award expenses upon granting a motion to compel disclosure unless one of the specified bases for refusing to make such an award is found to exist”). The non-movant may be relieved of these costs only when the party was “ ‘substantially justified’ in its resistance to discovery, the prevailing party did not atempt to obtain discovery in good faith before moving to compel, or an expense award would be otherwise unjust.” Parsi, 778 F.3d at 126; see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(A)(i)-(iii). District courts are given broad discretion in deciding whether to impose Rule 37 sanctions and what sanctions to impose. Bonds v. District of Columbia, 93 F.3d 801, 807-08 (D.C. Cir. 1996). Additionally, the non-movant facing sanctions bears the burden to establish that the failure was substantially justified or harmless or the imposition of sanctions would be unjust. See Parsi, 778 F.3d at 128 n.13.

None of the enumerated exceptions to the mandatory imposition of costs set out in Rule 37(a)(5)(A) apply here. First, plaintiffs filed their Motion “only after ‘atempting in good faith to obtain the disclosure or discovery without court action,’ ” and after “participat[ing] in a discovery conference with the Court which provided Defendant additional opportunity to cure deficiencies[.]” Pls.’ Mot. at 27 (quoting Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(A)(i)). Second, defendant has not established that his “nondisclosure, response, or objection” has been “substantially justified.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(A)(ii). “The Supreme Court has stated that a party meets the ‘substantially justified’ standard when there is a ‘genuine dispute’ or if ‘reasonable people could differ’ as to the appropriateness of the motion.” Alexander v. FBI, 186 F.R.D. 144, 147 (D.D.C. 1999) (quoting Pierce v. Underwood, 487 U.S. 552, 565 (1988)). No reasonable person would disagree on the appropriateness of the motion. Given that, prior to the filing of plaintiffs’ motion to compel, defendant (1) arbitrarily limited his search of the TrustPoint server--which contained his responsive records from prior to April 2021--to solely email communications, (2) conducted only an imprecise “manual search” of his text messages, email accounts, and other messaging platforms for other responsive records after April 2021, see Def.’s Opp'n at 3-6, (3) delayed responding to plaintiff's discovery requests for nearly ten months, see Pls.’ Mot. at 27, and (4) has now produced an additional 4,000 pages in discovery, see 72 Jun. 16, 2023 Notice by Defendant Related to His 66 Request for Extension of Time to Comply with the May 31, 2023, Minute Order, plaintiffs were plainly justified in bringing their motion to compel. See DL, 251 F.R.D. at 49 (“[T]he District's patern of tardy and piecemeal disclosure, and the fact that approximately 6,000 pages of responsive documents were turned over after plaintiffs’ renewed motion to compel was filed, demonstrate that filing a motion to compel was the only adequate remedy available to plaintiffs.”); DR Distributors, LLC v. 21 Century Smoking, Inc., 513 F. Supp. 3d 839, 960 (N.D. Ill. 2021) (“Untimely disclosures and discovery responses and supplements to them are generally not substantially justified or harmless.”). Moreover, the fact that plaintiffs’ requested relief has been granted, see Minute Orders (dated May 19, May 31 and June 22, 2023), further confirms that their motion was “substantially justified.” See DL, 251 F.R.D. at 49 (“The Court's overwhelming decision for the plaintiffs on the merits of their motion is sufficient to show that the District's objections were not substantially justified.”). Finally, defendant has provided no reason why an award of expenses would be “unjust” here. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(a)(5)(A)(iii); Def.’s Opp'n at 7-8; see also Diehl v. Diehl, No. 3:14 CV 288, 2015 WL 1565580, at *5 (W.D.N.C. Apr. 8, 2015), aff'd, No. 3:14-CV-00288-MR-DLH, 2015 WL 13842740 (W.D.N.C. Oct. 13, 2015) (finding that awarding atorneys’ fees and costs to the moving party would not be unjust because the defendant had “not directed the Court to any circumstance or factor that would make the award of expenses unjust”). The only possible justification for defendant's discovery delays is that “he could no longer afford to pay TrustPoint One to keep the documents online” because the documents were archived and “[i]t would cost him over $320,000,” to become “current on his arrearage with [the] TrustPoint” server. Def.’s Opp'n at 5. Yet, as plaintiffs point out, see parties’ 42 Joint Status Report at 9; Pls.’ Mot. at 24, and not contested by defendant, see generally Def.’s Opp'n, the additional costs incurred from the archiving of the TrustPoint data was defendant's own doing: Had defendant searched and collected responsive records from the TrustPoint server promptly after plaintiffs first propounded their discovery requests on May 20, 2022, see [36-1] Aug. 5, 2022 Discovery Deficiency Leter from Plaintiffs at 1, he would not have faced those additional costs. Cf. Peskoff v. Faber, 251 F.R.D. 59, 62-63 (D.D.C. 2008) (explaining that the non-moving party's own failure to conduct “searches that might yield responsive information” and preserve electronically stored data required that party to bear the cost of an “expensive forensic examination” to recover potentially discoverable information). Awarding atorneys’ fees and costs to plaintiff would, therefore, not be unjust.

*2 Accordingly, plaintiffs’ request for atorneys’ fees and costs in their 44 Motion is GRANTED.