The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home said Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of the Trump team’s reluctance to say whether it believed the records had been declassified. “We’re going to proceed with what I call responsible dispatch,” Raymond Dearie, a veteran Brooklyn judge, told lawyers for Trump and the Justice Department in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master. The purpose of the meeting was to sort out next steps in a review process expected to slow by 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 during the Aug. 8 FBI search and segregating those protected by claims of executive privilege or attorney-client privilege. Though Trump’s lawyers had requested the appointment of a special master to ensure an independent review of the documents, they have resisted Dearie’s request for more information about whether the seized records had been previously declassified — as Trump has maintained. His lawyers have consistently stopped short of that claim, even as they have asserted that a president has absolute authority to declassify information. They said in a separate filing Tuesday that the Justice Department had not proven that the records remained classified. “In the case of someone who has been president of the United States, they have unfettered access along with unfettered declassification authority,” one of Trump’s lawyers, James Trusty, said in court Tuesday. But Dearie said that if Trump’s lawyers will not actually assert that the records have been declassified, and the Justice Department instead presents an acceptable case that they remain classified, then he would be inclined to regard them as 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 might be part of Trump’s defense in the event of an indictment. Trusty said in court Tuesday that the Trump team should not be forced at this point to disclose a possible defense based on the idea the records had been declassified. He denied that the lawyers were trying to engage in “gamesman-like” behavior but instead believed it was a process that required “baby steps.” He said the right time for the discussion is whenever Trump presses forward with a claim to get any seized property back. Dearie said he understood the position but observed: “I guess my view of it is, you can’t have your cake and eat it” too. The resistance to the judge’s request was notable because it was Trump’s lawyers, not the Justice Department, who had requested the appointment of a special master and because the recalcitrance included an acknowledgment that the probe could be building toward an indictment. Despite the focus on whether the seized documents are classified or not, the three statutes the Justice Department listed on a warrant as part of its investigation do not require that the mishandled information be classified in order to initiate a prosecution. The Trump team has also questioned the feasibility of some of the deadlines for the […]

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