Who is Judge Raymond Dearie?

District Court Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master who is looking over the documents seized by the FBI in the Mar-a-Lago raid has asked for an assistant, a Thursday court filing revealed. 

While Dearie himself is not asking to be compensated for his role as the special master in the case, he has asked that the potential assistant, James Orenstein, a former New York magistrate judge be “compensated at an hourly rate of $500.”

The FBI raided Trump’s residence, Mar-a-Lago on August 8 to execute a search warrant where they seized 11,000 documents. Judge Dearie has until November 30 to sort through the files. 

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Who is Judge Raymond Dearie?

Born Raymond Joseph Dearie on June 4, 1944 in Rockville Centre in New York, he is an American lawyer who is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. He has also served as a judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court from 2012 to 2019. 

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Dearie attended Fairfield University and graduated with a bachelor of arts in 1966. He went on to study law at the St. John’s University School of Law, graduating in 1969 with his Juris Doctor degree. 

He went on to work in private practice for Shearman & Sterling that very year. In 1971 he was made the Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. He served in the Appeals Division from 1971 to 1974, before moving on to become the Chief of General Crimes Section from 1974 to 1976, he held a few more important positions there while still working in private practice.

He was appointed by Ronald Reagan as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1982 to 1986. He was appointed by the US Senate in 1986 to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Dearie chose senior judge status in 2011, having served since 2007 as the Chief Judge.