“We’re going to go with what I call a task force,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told Trump and Justice Department lawyers in their first meeting since his appointment last week as the so-called special master.
The purpose of the meeting was to sort out the next steps in a review process that is expected to slow down 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 in the FBI’s Aug. 8 search and separating those protected by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
Although Trump’s lawyers had requested the appointment of a special master to ensure an independent review of the documents, they resisted Diery’s request for more information about whether the seized records had been previously declassified – as Trump has claimed.  His lawyers have stood firm on that claim, even as they have argued that a president has absolute power to declassify information.  They said in a separate filing Tuesday that the Justice Department had not proven the records remained classified.
“In the case of someone who has been president of the United States, he has unlimited access along with unlimited declassification authority,” one of Trump’s lawyers, James Trusty, told the court on Tuesday.
But Dearie said that if Trump’s lawyers don’t actually claim that the records are declassified and the Justice Department makes a plausible case that they remain classified, then he would be inclined to consider them classified.
“As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “that’s the end of it.”
In a letter to Dearie on Monday night, the lawyers said the declassification issue could be part of Trump’s defense if he is indicted.  Trustee told the court on Tuesday that the Trump team should not be forced at this point to disclose a possible defense based on the idea that the records had been declassified.
He denied that lawyers were trying to engage in “playboy” behaviour, but instead believed it was a process that required “small steps”.  He said the right time for the conversation is whenever Trump pushes to claim back any seized property.
Dearie said he understood the position, but remarked, “I guess my point is you can’t have your cake and eat it.”
The resistance to the judge’s request was notable because it was Trump’s lawyers, not the Justice Department, who had sought the appointment of a special master and because the defiance included an acknowledgment that the investigation could build toward an indictment.
Despite the focus on whether the seized documents are classified or not, the three statutes listed by the Justice Department in a warrant as part of its investigation do not require mishandled information to be classified in order to prosecute.
The Trump team also questioned the feasibility of some of the deadlines for the master’s special review.  That work includes reviewing about 11,000 documents, including about 100 classified, obtained during the FBI’s investigation.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who granted the Trump team’s request for a special master, had set a Nov. 30 deadline for Dearie’s review and ordered him to prioritize inspecting classified records.  The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court to stay Cannon’s order requiring it to provide classified documents for its review.  That appeal is pending.
Dearie, a Ronald Reagan appointee whose name is on the atrium of his courthouse in Brooklyn, made clear during Tuesday’s meeting that he intended to meet the deadlines, saying there was “little time” to complete the tasks assigned to him. .
Julie Edelstein, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said she hoped the department could digitize the documents and deliver them to Trump’s lawyers by early next week.  He noted that the department had given the legal team a list of five government-approved vendors to scan, host and otherwise process the seized files.
After some haggling, Dearie instructed the Trusty’s lawyers to select a seller by Friday.
Earlier Tuesday, Trump’s legal team urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to leave Cannon’s order temporarily barring the Justice Department from using classified records in his criminal investigation while Dearie completes his review. .  The department said the order impeded its investigation into the presence of highly classified information at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s lawyers dismissed those concerns as overblown, saying investigators could do other work in the probe even without scrutinizing the seized records.
“Ultimately, any brief delay in the criminal investigation will not irreparably harm the government,” Trump’s lawyers wrote.  “The order does not preclude the government from conducting a criminal investigation, it merely delays the investigation for a short period of time while a neutral third party reviews the documents in question.”
Sisak reported from New York.