(CNN) — The court-appointed independent expert expressed frustration Tuesday over the scant information he is receiving from the Justice Department and former President Donald Trump’s defense attorneys about disputes over the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago.
“Where’s the meat? I need some meat,” Judge Raymond Dearie, who is acting as third reviewer for the seized documents, said during a half-hour conference call with lawyers for both sides.
The discussion highlighted the potentially messy and time-consuming process of working through privacy claims in the unprecedented criminal investigation into Trump. The former president is arguing that at least some of the documents are his and should not be allowed to be used by Justice Department investigators.
Dearie is reviewing the documents to determine which ones the Justice Department can use in its criminal investigation. She will then forward her recommendations to District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
On Tuesday, Dearie singled out, for example, a letter already disputed as potentially private in the collection of documents taken from Trump’s Florida estate. The letter was apparently addressed to the Justice Department, but the copy found at Mar-a-Lago was unsigned. The Justice Department had not said whether the agency had received it.
Dearie asked why the two sides cannot determine between themselves whether the letter was sent, which would be a crucial fact in helping the judge decide whether it should be kept confidential.
“I don’t want to be dealing with pointless objections, pointless claims, especially when I have a month to deal with who knows how many claims,” said Dearie, of the Eastern District of New York.
Dearie’s debate on Tuesday and previous orders set a deadline for him to make decisions about the privacy of the documents in mid-December. The Justice Department is already working separately on a hundred records marked as classified that were seized at Mar-a-Lago and separated from Dearie’s work, and the agency is also challenging the special master’s process in federal appeals court. In its whole.
Dearie told the parties that he also looks forward to hearing from both sides on how he should treat documents that Trump wants to call personal, and thus potentially protect them from investigators, and also claim they are covered by executive privilege, which could make them government documents.
“Unless I’m wrong, and I’ve been wrong before, there’s some inconsistency there. Perhaps plaintiffs’ counsel will address it in a filing,” Dearie said.
Both parties will present Dearie with much of their additional privilege claims on the documents by November 12.
The parties have not yet indicated how many of the nearly 22,000 pages seized at Mar-a-Lago Trump are in dispute and will require the special master to make a call.