A federal judge in Florida denied a U.S. request to use documents with classified markings seized from former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in a criminal investigation and named U.S. District Court Judge Raymond J. Dearie as special master to review all 11,000 documents that were taken.
Both the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys had agreed that Dearie would be a suitable candidate, one of the rare moments of consensus in a case otherwise rife with politics and dispute.
The government had asked to keep using about 100 documents that it said featured classification labels in a probe of alleged mishandling of government records after the judge ordered that a special master be appointed and temporarily barred investigators from using the materials.