‘I Need Some Beef’: Special Master Demands Trump Give Meatier Reason as to Why Mar-a-Lago Docs Should Be Kept from DOJ
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The special master appointed to pour over documents seized from former President Donald Trump’s home has asked his attorneys to explain why some of them should be shielded from the DOJ.
Judge Raymond Dearie complained Tuesday about a lack of communication from attorneys for both Trump and the DOJ about which documents are and are not privileged as asserted by the former president.
According to multiple reports, Dearie asked Trump’s team for something meatier than vague invocations of executive privilege about some of them.
The New York Times reported:
In a phone conference, the special master, Judge Raymond J. Dearie of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, complained that the log of an initial batch of documents over which Mr. Trump is seeking to claim privilege lacked sufficient information to determine whether the arguments were valid.
Judge Dearie encouraged Mr. Trump’s lawyers to give him a better sense of why they believed the documents could be lawfully shielded from the Justice Department’s inquiry into whether Mr. Trump unlawfully kept classified records at his estate and obstructed the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.
Dearie said looking through the documents was “perplexing,” and he made a request.
“What’s the expression — ‘Where’s the beef?’ I need some beef,” Dearie said.
According to CNN, the comments were made during a 30-minute phone conference with lawyers for both Trump and the DOJ.
“I don’t want to be dealing with nonsense objections, nonsense assertions, especially when I have one month to deal with who knows how many assertions,” Dearie also said.
The New York-based judge was appointed as special master last month by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. Dearie has until December to decide which documents the DOJ can use in its criminal investigation, and make a recommendation to Cannon.
