Veteran New York Judge Appointed Arbitrator in Trump Investigation at Mar-a-Lago

A federal judge on Thursday appointed a veteran New York legal scholar to serve as an independent arbitrator in the criminal investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, refusing to allow the Justice Department to resume the use of highly sensitive information from records seized in an FBI search last month.

District Judge Aileen Cannon authorized newly appointed special arbitrator Raymond Dearie to review the full tranche of records taken in the search for Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 and set a November deadline for his work. Meanwhile, she continued to prevent the department from using approximately 100 seized documents marked as classified for its investigation.

The sharply worded order by the Trump-appointed Cannon is almost certain to slow the pace of the investigation and set the stage for a challenge in a federal appeals court.

The department had given Cannon until Thursday to suspend his order to pause investigators’ review of classified records while the special master completes his work. The department said it would ask the Atlanta-based US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to intervene if she didn’t by then.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment on Thursday’s ruling.

Cannon, who last week agreed to the Trump team’s request for a special arbitrator over objections from the Justice Department, made clear in her order Thursday that she was not prepared to blindly accept the characterizations of the documents by Trump. of the government, saying that “impartial procedure does not require unquestionable confidence in the determinations of the Department of Justice.”

She dismissed the department’s position that Trump could not have any proprietary interest in the documents and said she was open to the possibility that the former president could make valid claims of privilege to at least some of the records. She pointed to ongoing disagreements between the two sides over the “proper designation of seized materials” and the “legal implications that flow from those designations.”

“The Court does not find it appropriate to accept the Government’s findings on these important and disputed issues without further review by a neutral third party in an expeditious and orderly manner,” he wrote.

[Con información de The Associated Press]

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