US Justice Department approves Trump arbiter nominee
September 13, 2022
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) consented on Monday to accept one of the Donald Trump's picks as the special master to oversee the documents recovered from Trump's home in Florida last month.
Last week, Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon agreed to his request to name an independent reviewer to overlook the hundreds of classified documents recovered from his Mar-a-Lago resort in an FBI raid on August 8.
The Trump team has recommended Raymond Dearie, the former chief judge of the federal court in the Eastern District of New York, as a neutral arbiter.
On Friday, both the Trump team and the DOJ submitted two names for the position to Judge Cannon.
The DOJ concession could help speed the selection process after Trump rejected both retired judges nominated for special master by the government on Monday.
The DOJ rejected the other Trump nominee citing a lack of federal judicial experience and engagement in relevant areas of law.
There is no immediate clarity if Judge Cannon would name Dearie or someone else.
DOJ investigation stymied
The Justice Department is probing whether Trump violated federal laws in bringing classified documents back to Mar-a-Lago after he left the White House.
It contends that top-secret documents were concealed during the FBI raid.
Trump has called the raid at his Florida property "one of the most egregious assaults on democracy in the history of our country."
He denies all wrongdoing.
The arbiter would be tasked with screening the recovered documents and determining if any would be covered by claims of either executive privilege or attorney-client privilege.
The Justice Department disputes Trump's rights to hold onto the presidential documents.
Meanwhile, the DOJ's investigation has also come to a crawl as Cannon prohibited the department from examining the documents for investigative purposes for now.
The Justice Department has asked the judge to lift the legal hold, saying it would appeal the ruling in a federal appeals court.
ss/aw (AP, AFP)