‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too,’ Judge Raymond Dearie told Trump’s legal team during their first hearing in his Brooklyn courtroom.
Dearie is tasked with reviewing a trove of government documents including information marked classified that FBI agents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
He was pressing Trump’s legal team about whether they had evidence to back up Trump’s claim that he had declassified material.
His swat came as he questioned Trump’s lawyers as they and Justice Department attorneys try work through how to sort through boxes of government material that were held at Trump’s private club in West Palm Beach, Florida after Trump left office.
Some legal experts have said Trump could be in legal jeopardy even if he had declassified all the material that has been uncovered, since the government is investigating possession and handling of national security information, which could apply even if it weren’t classified.
Trump lawyer Jim Trusty at one point said the lawyers were ‘not in a position’ to say whether Trump had declassified the documents until they could review them.
‘You did bring a lawsuit,’ Dearie scolded him.
The judge had earlier pushed for Trump’s team to reveal information about whether the president declassified the documents as he claims he did – and got pushback from Trump’s lawyers on paper.
Former President Trump’s legal team, including Christopher M. Kise (back centre), Jim Trusty (centre right), Lindsey Halligan, Evan Corcoran (2nd right) arrive at United States Courthouse, Brooklyn, New York for their first meeting with the ‘special master.’ Dearie scolded Trusty at one point, saying: ‘You did bring a lawsuit’
A letter from Trump’s team to Dearie – one of two names they forwarded to a Florida judge who ruled in their favor on getting a special master – reveals that Judge Dearie asked them to ‘disclose specific information regarding declassification to the Court and to the Government.’
That is a place Trump’s legal team does not want to go at this point. Trump’s team of lawyers has declined in court filings to make the claim that Trump declassified that material, although Trump has said publicly that he did.
In its filings, including one made Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers continue to refer only to ‘classified records’ using quotation marks – suggesting they might not, indeed, be saying so, without stating so explicitly.
Lawyers are prohibited from making false claims in their filings and could be subject to sanctions if they do.
In a stunning statement, the team argued against the Judge’s request, saying they don’t want to be forced to ‘fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being evident in the District Court’s order.’
‘You can’t have your cake and eat it too,’ senior Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee, told Trump’s legal team during their first hearing in his Brooklyn courtroom
Raymond Dearie, a veteran New York judge, has been appointed as special master to oversee the Mar-a-Lago investigation. The Trump Team listed him as among two recommendations for the post. According to a report, they believed he was a skeptic of the FBI
That raises at least the possibility that they may want to use the declassification argument as a criminal defense should Trump be charged with improper possession of national security information after he left office.
It also raises the possibility that Trump’s decision to get a special master – a move the government vigorously opposed saying it could harm national security interests by delaying an investigation – could backfire.
The Trump team also pushed back on the timeline, ‘respectfully’ suggesting that the ‘deadlines be extended,’ in a process that will go at least through November as Dearie sorts through some 11,000 documents to determine which ones Trump’s team is able to keep away from investigators.
It was the first signal of how Dearie, a Reagan appointee who has been on the bench for decades, would act. Lawyers from both sides were set to face off inside the Brooklyn judge’s courtroom Tuesday.
Dearie will be looking for documents subject to attorney-client privilege or executive privilege, after Judge Cannon rejected the government’s argument that a former president couldn’t make such a claim.
Former President Trump’s legal team, including M. Evan Corcoran (left), Lindsey Halligan, in a legal filing resisted the judge’s push for information about classification
Documents seized during the search of Trump’s estate on August 8 are pictured on August 30. Trump’s lawyers have declined to say in legal filings whether Trump had ordered them declassified while he was in office and had the authority
Dearie signed off on the government surveillance warrant for former Trump associate Carter Page, in a move Trump’s team believed might make him a skeptic of the FBI, Axios reported
Trump’s lawyers have not said explicitly he ordered the documents classified. They put the terms ‘classified’ in quotes in legal filings
Protesters greeted Trump’s lawyers with signs, including one that said ‘nuclear secrets,’ in reference to the high-level classified material the government said was seized from Mar-a-Lago
It comes after Axios reported two days ago that Dearie’s role in the FBI surveillance of former Trump associate Carter Page – Dearie signed off on the warrant – had made him a ‘deep skeptic’ of the FBI.
Trump has long fumed about the surveillance at the start of the Russia probe, and called it part of a ‘witch hunt’ against him.
Dearie served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for seven years. But the report did not cite any statements in the public record where Dearie was critical of the FBI.
Trump railed against the agency after a team of FBI agents swooped down on Mar-a-Lago August 8, when Trump was not present.
National Archives officials determined there were 150 documents marked classified in the first 15 boxes of material returned by Trump in January.
Justice Department officials retrieved more documents in June, and following the FBI raid it obtained about 100 more, for a total of about 300 documents marked classified.
The government on Monday provided Judge Dearie with a proposed agenda for their first meeting, as well as some of the mechanics of how the special master will review documents – even as the government appeals Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that gave the special master authority to sort through boxes of documents seized at Mar-a-Lago in the FBI’s August 8 raid.
The government would provide seized documents to a vendor, who would scan them into a single file under the observation of the FBI.