Special master presses Donald Trump’s lawyers on seized files: ‘Can’t have your cake and eat it’
- The ex-president’s team resisted saying whether the documents had been declassified, a position that did not appear to satisfy judge Raymond Dearie
- The special master, who is in charge of inspecting the files, says he intends to push quickly through the process
The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of former US president Donald Trump’s Florida home said Tuesday he intends to push briskly though the review process and appeared sceptical of the Trump team’s reluctance to say whether it believed the records had been declassified.
“We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Justice Department in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master.
The purpose of the meeting was to sort out next steps in a review process expected to slow by weeks, if not months, the criminal investigation into the retention of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House.
As special master, Dearie will be responsible for sifting through the thousands of documents recovered during the August 8 FBI search and segregating those protected by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
Though Trump’s lawyers had requested the appointment of a special master to ensure an independent review of the documents, one of the former president’s lawyers, James Trusty, made clear they were concerned that Dearie’s proposed deadlines were too ambitious.