The agreed on choice for Donald Trump’s special master was Raymond Dearie, a pick from the former president that the Justice Department agreed to.
According to Axios, two sources with direct knowledge claimed the lawyers believed that Dearie’s involvement in the FBI’s surveillance of Carter Page made him a skeptic of the FBI. Dearie served for seven years on the FISA Court and has addressed classified information before.
Axios described their faith in the judge as more of a “hope or a theory” than with U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who has proven to be a dedicated Trump ally in her rulings. They’re betting on Dearie’s experience with Page and the overturning of two warrants due to misinformation. The anticipation is that the overturning of those warrants has made Dearie enough of an FBI foe that he’ll somehow support Trump’s side in the battle.
Dearie will look through more than 11,000 documents for anything that could be considered an attorney-client privilege or executive privilege. They are likely to be easy to sift through, as classified documents are typically marked as such. Executive privilege, however, is a different question. If Dearie declares that some documents fall under executive privilege, it’s unclear if that means they’ll return to the White House or the National Archives.
If Dearie has connections to the Page warrant, however, it’s unclear why Trump’s team would want him unless it was to have “dirt” to attack him over later. Trump has long alleged a conspiracy over the investigations into his 2016 campaign’s links to Russia. But if he was choosing Dearie as the judge, it’s unclear why he would then come back to attack him and allege something nefarious.
The review must be completed by Nov. 30, according to the court rules.
Read the full report from Axios.