Special Master Appointed in Mar-a-Lago Search

Judge Raymond Dearie has been appointed to the position.

Judge Raymond Dearie has been appointed to the position.

After blocking the FBI’s effort to search and review documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, Judge Aileen Cannon has acquiesced to the former President’s wishes and appointed a special master to oversee the review process. The special master for the review will be Judge Raymond Dearie, 78, a former chief judge of the federal court in the Eastern District of New York. Dearie was one of the candidates originally recommended by Trump that the US Department of Justice did not object to.

Those who have worked with Dearie in the past have described him as a “fair” and “compassionate” judge. “If you asked both prosecutors and lawyers, they would say the same thing, that he is just so fair,” federal prosecutor and former senior member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team Andrew Weissmann told NPR. “It’s unusual to have a judge where both sides just have enormous praise for somebody.”

“Judge Dearie is a judge who, though unfailingly fair, would never tolerate the kinds of arguments that Trump’s lawyers tend to put forward,” added Daniel R. Alonso, partner at Buckley LLP and a former assistant US attorney in the Eastern District of New York.

During the review process, Dearie will be required to submit regular interim reports, as well as issue recommendations “as appropriate.” A hard deadline of November 30 has been set for this process.