When he says "On the surface it looks like you covered this up" he is putting Uber and their lawyers on notice that they had better convince him that they did not in fact cover it up or their world will be filled with hurt.
Update: See "Ethics in Discovery: Where the Rubber Meets the Road"[1] page 17
In an extreme example of discovery related misconduct experienced by the Commission, the defendant intentionally withheld relevant evidence through tampering with documents, lodging baseless objections to production, purposefully misleading the court and the parties, and delaying in responding to permissible discovery requests.
Sounds familiar... and Fry's got hit with some serious sanctions (trial sanctions, not the fines).
Ultimately, the Court struck the affirmative defense to the harassment claim, deemed improperly withheld documents presumptively admissible at trial, ordered a jury instruction that one of the justifications for firing a plaintiff was pretextual, permitted EEOC to argue adverse inference at trial, and imposed $100,000 in sanctions ($25,000 to each of three plaintiffs and $25,000 to the court). In addition, the Court appointed a special master to review and report to the court about defendant’s compliance with outstanding discovery requests.
[1] https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/events/labor_law...
Its not the first time they have mislead the court.
...
however: yadadada.
That's often how an on the surface statement is construed.
Wouldn't that pass more-or-less the same message? I don't see how the omission is significant, let alone "pretty misleading".
"it looks like" can be used in place of a more definitive statement. "on the surface it looks like" is almost never used that way.
It seems to me that what he is saying is, in the absence of some sort of convincing exculpatory evidence or argument that so far has not been presented, it looks like a cover-up. I don't think I agree with your analysis here.