What has happened since then regarding classified documents?

The past week or so has revealed stark divisions in how both sides envision the process playing out, as well as the precise role the special master should have.

An early hint surfaced when the Trump team resisted Dearie’s request for any evidence that the documents, as Trump has asserted, had been declassified. A lawyer for Trump, James Trusty, said that inquiry was “premature” and “a little beyond” what Cannon, had in mind at the time she appointed the special master. Dearie mused aloud that “my view of it is you can’t have your cake and eat it,” by ducking that question.

The following day, in a setback for the Trump team, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overruled an order from Cannon that had temporarily halted the Justice Department’s ability to use the classified documents taken from Mar-a-lago as part of its criminal investigation. Besides restoring the department’s access, the order also lifted Cannon’s mandate that investigators provide the special master with those records.

More conflict followed, this time related to the scanning and processing of non-classified government records taken from Mar-a-lago.

Government lawyers revealed in a letter Tuesday that none of the five document-review vendors it had recommended for the job was “willing to be engaged” by the Trump team. The Justice Department said it was confident that it would be able to secure the arrangements on its own while noting that it continued to expect the Trump team to pay.

But Trusty responded with his own letter Wednesday attributing the difficulty in securing a vendor to the sheer quantity of documents, which he said totaled roughly 200,000 pages. He said the department’s deadlines for the production of documents was overly “aggressive” — “It would be better to base deadlines on actual data and not wistful claims by the Government” — and scolded the department for what he said were its “antagonistic” comments.

“DOJ continues to mistake itself as having judicial authority. Its comments are not argument, but proclamations designed to steamroll judicial oversight and the Plaintiff’s constitutional rights,” Trusty wrote. court lifted Cannon’s hold on its ability to use those documents in evaluating whether Trump or anyone else should face criminal charges.

Dearie’s work as special master will continue alongside that probe but there’s little chance any action he takes at this point could substantially alter the outcome of the investigation or affect major decisions that lie ahead.

Even so, there’s a pending request from Dearie that has attracted significant attention — and any answer to it could prove illuminating.

He has given the Trump team until Oct. 7 — the first deadline had been Friday, but has now been pushed back — to raise any objections to the detailed property inventory of documents and items taken by the FBI.