Deadline until the end of November
Judge appoints examiners to Trump records
09/16/2022 02:54 am
The raid in Mar-a-Lago was politically motivated, says ex-President Trump and successfully sued for the appointment of a special representative. He is supposed to view and evaluate the confiscated files. The Justice Department agrees with the proposed candidate from the Trump camp. Now he can start his work.
After the search of ex-US President Donald Trump’s private property, a neutral expert has been appointed to examine the confiscated documents. The New York lawyer Raymond Dearie should take on this role, a judge decided on Thursday evening (local time). Trump’s lawyers had proposed Dearie in the lawsuit over the appointment of a special representative. The Justice Department then agreed to the appointment, but rejected another candidate proposed by Trump’s team.
In early August, the FBI searched Trump’s Florida mansion. The FBI confiscated various classified documents, some of which had the highest level of secrecy. Since Trump kept the records at his private estate after his term in office, he may have broken the law. This is now being investigated.
Trump and his lawyers criticize the authorities’ actions as politically motivated. They demanded the appointment of a neutral auditor and filed a corresponding lawsuit. A court granted Trump’s request: The confiscated documents should therefore be checked by the special representative, and the authorities should stop viewing the documents until then.
The Justice Department had complained that the appointment of the special representative would delay the investigation. How long the review of the documents by the 78-year-old judge Dearie will take is unclear – but the judge has set a deadline of the end of November. The examiner should identify any confiscated personal belongings of the ex-president and make recommendations in the event of potential disputes between the two parties about the categorization of the documents.