(January 19, 2023, 1:10 PM EST) -- CHARLESTON, S.C. — The U.S. government has filed a brief in South Carolina federal court in the multidistrict litigation for the firefighting agent known as aqueous film forming foam (AFFF), opposing a motion by the defendants’ co-lead counsel to compel the production of documents that were withheld based on the deliberative process privilege. The government maintains that the burden of producing the documents outweighs the benefit and is not proportional to the needs of the case....