Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master appointed to review the ‘classified’ documents taken from Mar-a-Lago blasted Trump’s lawyers at the preliminary conference, Tuesday.
Judge Dearie was one of the FISA judges who signed the warrant to spy on Carter Page without cause.
Judge Dearie repeatedly asked Trump’s lawyers for proof that President Trump declassified the documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago, saying, “You can’t have your cake and eat it,” according to Politico.
Trump has said that the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago were declassified under a “standing order” while he was President.
From Politico:
NEW YORK — The senior federal judge tasked with reviewing the materials seized by the FBI from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate sharply questioned the former president’s attorneys Tuesday during their first hearing in his courtroom.
Judge Raymond Dearie repeatedly challenged Trump’s lawyers for refusing to back up the former president’s claim that he declassified the highly sensitive national security-related records discovered in his residence.
“My view of it is: you can’t have your cake and eat it,” said Dearie, the “special master” picked by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to vet Trump’s effort to reclaim the materials taken by federal investigators.
Trump has argued that the 11,000 documents taken from Mar-a-Lago were rightfully in his possession, including about 100 bearing classification markings that suggest they contain some of the nation’s most closely guarded intelligence.
But Dearie bristled at the effort by Trump’s lawyers to resist his request for proof that Trump actually attempted to declassify any of the 100 documents that the Justice Department recovered from his estate. Without evidence from Trump, Dearie said his only basis to judge the classification level of the records was the fact that they all bear markings designating them as highly sensitive national security secrets — including some that indicate they contain intelligence derived from human sources and foreign intercepts.
In a new filing, Trump’s lawyers argued that the DOJ has never proven that the documents it claims are classified are actually classified.
“The District Court denied the Government’s stay request, noting it was not inclined to hastily adopt the Government’s contention that the approximately 100 purportedly “classified” documents were, in fact, classified, and that President Trump could not possibly have a possessory interest in any of them,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
Click here to read the new filing.
