Special master in Trump case appears skeptical of declassification claims

Judge Raymond Dearie tells ex-president's lawyers you can't have your cake and eat it' over reluctance to declare documents' status

The independent arbiter tasked with inspecting documents seized in an FBI search of Donald Trump's Florida home said on Tuesday he intends to push briskly through the review process and appeared skeptical of Trump lawyers' reluctance to say whether they 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 Department of Justice in their first meeting since his appointment last week as a so-called special master.