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The Department of Justice has agreed to accept one of former President Donald Trump’s nominees for a special master to review documents sized from his home by the FBI last month.
The former president and the DOJ had each submitted two candidates for a third-party to review documents Trump claims are protected by attorney-client privilege.
U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will now decide whether to approve senior Judge Raymond Dearie of New York to act as a neutral third party to review the materials.
The Washington Post reported:
Dearie still serves as a judge in Brooklyn federal court, albeit on senior status, which means he can, if he chooses, take a reduced caseload. In the 1980s, Dearie was the U.S Attorney in Brooklyn — a time when the office’s workload was dominated by the pursuit of mobsters, gang leaders, and financial fraudsters.
He was nominated to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan and became one of the most highly-regarded jurists in the Eastern District of New York.
Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master on Sept. 6.
Interestingly, Dearie and Trump are connected through former Trump aide Carter Page.
In 2017, the judge signed off on a FISA warrant that extended the FBI’s legal ability to spy on Page over alleged ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives.
Applications for the warrants were wrought with “factual misstatements and omissions,” a report from the DOJ’s inspector general later stated.
Neither Trump nor his attorneys disclosed why they chose Dearie as a candidate. Trump’s other nominee was a former campaign attorney with the law firm Jones Day.
The former president has argued documents deemed classified by the DOJ were declassified by him.
Legal experts and many former Trump White House officials have dismissed his claims he was able to declassify documents simply by declaring they were no longer classified.
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