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Some of the documentation that has been offered is “completely and utterly useless,” she said, detailing PCO lawyer Paul Shuttle’s submission of an inch-thick pile of records that are already public, such as the government’s access-to-information manual. “How is that possibly responsive to the request?” Justice Heather Perkins McVey quipped.

Last month, Norman’s lawyers had identified five “priority” individuals whose records the government would need to produce ahead of March 25, when hearings for a abuse of process motion are set to begin. That’s when Henein was preparing to argue why the case should be thrown out of court.

The priority individuals are Butts, Trudeau himself, his chief of staff Katie Telford, his former issues manager Zita Astravas (now chief of staff to Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan) and top civil servant Michael Wernick.

Derek Rasmussen, a lawyer for the government, said he was making documents from those individuals available to the judge later on Wednesday to review. After a similar review, the Crown said documents from three other witnesses, not on the priority list, were ready to be provided to the defence.

But Henein said she was “concerned that there has been a lack of responsiveness to the court order and the subpoenas,” and that the defence counsel had been put in a “difficult position” of staring down court dates at the end of the month without having seen a single relevant document.