DOJ agrees on 78-year-old judge for Trump’s ‘special master’

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• The Department of Justice has agreed to one of former President Trump’s nominees for special master in their probe of misplaced White documents.
• The DOJ said that former NY District Judge Raymond Dearie, 78, was fit to play the role.
• US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will have the final word on who should fill the post

The Department of Justice has approved one of former President Donald Trump’s candidates to serve as special master to review the thousands of White House documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

The DOJ said in court filings that it would allow Raymond Dearie, 78, former Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, to act as a special master.

Trump and the DOJ agreed on Dearie after Trump’s team has rejected all of the DOJ’s picks.

Ronald Reagan-appointed Dearie served in the US District Court from 1986 to 2011. In 2012, he was appointed by Supreme Court Justice John Roberts to a 7-year term on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In his role as a judge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, Dearie was one of five Republican-appointed judges who signed off on FISA warrants to surveil a former Trump advisor, Carter Page, to investigate his ties to the Russian government. Two of the four approved warrants were later declared invalid after the Inspector General found a series of misstatements and omissions in the applications by the FBI to get the court warrants to eavesdrop on Page.

Last Thursday, the DOJ appealed a federal judge’s decision to appoint a special master to review specific classified files among the over 11,000 documents that Trump took with him from the White House. This prompted a ton of concerns for national security experts.

The parties had submitted their list of proposed candidates last week. It included three former judges and Paul Huck Jr., former counsel to the Governor of Florida. The DOJ said that it did not believe Huck had the necessary experience.

In earlier filings, Trump’s team asked a judge to deny the DOJ’s request for them to have access to classified records.

The chosen special master would likely need to have the highest national security clearance level in the US.

Ultimately, US District Court Judge Aileen Cannon will decide on who should fill the post, but her choice could be made easier with the DOJ and Trump agreeing on one of the candidates.

Source: Bloomberg