It's the obvious and sensible order for the judge to issue, but these days it doesn't really make much difference. A large corporate conglomerate, conducting internal investigations involving a mass tragedy that they will face massive litigation concerning, already has highly skilled in-house corporate counsel, as well as outside counsel, who are well-aware that it would be highly illegal and improper to destroy such records.

Therefore, whenever anyone in cases of this magnitude are ever engaged in the undertaking of destroying such records, it is usually done with great subterfuge, and in a most clandestine fashion, handled significantly more cleverly than the Watergate scandal.

In other words, such entities conduct the conspiracy to destroy the records in such a covert fashion because they indeed know it is illegal to destroy them. So the judges order will, as a practical matter, have no effect. Whenever there is ever a conspiracy in any case to violate the law, issuing an order that one is not to violate the law has no real deterrent effect on people who already know they are clearly violating the law.

That all said, it wasn't that many decades ago where these issues were more nuanced, and from a criminal perspective corporations did not necessarily have to retain internal investigations, or cooperate with exchanging such records. It was often dealt with chiefly as a civil discovery dispute, along with the presumption that any internal investigation records destroyed would have been adverse to the position of the corporation. Most corporations don't destroy records which tend to clear them of liability.

At any rate, internal investigations of this sort can be little more than a farce. The fact that there have been multiple reports of changing time-lines, often which contradict the METRO time lines offered by the sheriff, indicates an early attempt to deflect liability and culpability, IMO.

So, all internal investigations of this sort are at best highly suspect, and at worst farcical, because the entity is essentially investigating itself to answer the core question of whether they should eventually pay out tens of millions of dollars.

So, if there is a mechanism for the corporation to be assigned an outside, independent investigator, that could be a very good, public PR move for them. I don't know what entity, the AG or whoever, would process such appointment, but it could be a shrewd move.

Even if they believe an outside, independent investigation will reflect flaws in the security procedures, and suggest some level of liability,
it would still be much better for damage control and PR purposes than if they insist on continuing to investigate the matter themselves.

It already looks bad for them from a media and PR perspective if a judge is issuing orders that they are not to destroy records. Most people just read the headlines, or listen to the sound bites, and will erroneously assume that the order was issued because records are already being destroyed.

I don't understand why a preservation letter wouldn't have accomplished the same thing. Seems like grandstanding. Trying to make Mandalay Bay look shitty with press coverage like this.