Former President Donald Trump has been dealt a major blow by the special master in the Mar-a-Lago raid case.
Judge Raymond Dearie, who was picked by Judge Aileen Cannon to be the special master last week, told the former president he must provide evidence of declassification or else he will have to assume the records seized by the FBI are indeed classified.
Trump’s lawyers told the special master they are hesitant to make public the specifics on what Trump may have declassified because that topic might end up being one of their legal defense strategies against a possible future indictment brought by the Justice Department.
“How am I going to verify the classification? … What business is it of the court?” Dearie asked during the Tuesday hearing. The judge suggested that the DOJ had given “prima facie evidence” that the records were classified and said that “as far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it.” He went on to press Trump’s lawyers on why that shouldn’t be the end of it.
A cacophony of voices on the public line made it impossible to listen in on the hearing, but Josh Gerstein from Politico and Adam Klasfield of Law & Crime were present inside the Brooklyn federal courthouse.
