§ 140A.052.Civil Investigative Demand

The authorizing provision, and its trigger is deliberately low.

If the attorney general has reason to believe that a person may be in possession, custody, or control of documentary material or other evidence, or may have any information relevant to a civil racketeering investigation, they may before beginning a civil proceeding issue and serve a written demand.

Read the trigger closely: reason to believe the person may have any relevant information. That is not probable cause, and it does not require suspicion that the recipient did anything wrong.

A demand can therefore go to a witness — a bank, a landlord, a hotel — as readily as to a target.

"Before beginning a civil proceeding" is the point of the whole subchapter. Ordinary discovery requires a lawsuit, and a lawsuit requires a case the state can already plead. This gives compulsory process first, so the investigation can establish whether there is a case at all.

Four things may be demanded: production of documentary material for inspection and copying; written answers to written interrogatories; oral testimony; or any combination of them.

Those are the tools of civil discovery, made available before filing. The sections that follow attach the conditions — what the demand must say, how it is served, how it is resisted, and how each of the three is carried out.