Tim Griffin, the former Karl Rove aide who played a starring role in the U.S. Attorneys firing scandal, is mulling a bid for the Republican nomination against Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D) next year. But at a Republican Party fundraiser in Bauxite, Ark., Griffin said:
Tim Griffin (USDOJ.gov)
Blanche Lincoln
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich) said he’s recommended to the Department of Justice that it select “two or three people outside the department who will have credibility, perhaps retired federal judges” to examine whether any ex-Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for authorizing the use of torture. Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Levin also said the outside panel could decide whether action be taken against Bush administration lawyers, for authorizing the use of torture.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, appeared on CNN to appeal for calm so her panel can move toward holding hearings on the interrogation techniques.
After taking a beating last week for flip-flopping around on the issue of potential prosecutions for Bush officials who authorized torture, Obama Administration officials fanned out on Sunday talk shows to insist they’ve always been perfectly clear: The “rule of law” means the decision is up to the Justice Department.
On “Meet the Press,” David Gregory asked White House press secretary Robert Gibbs: “Why the shifting positions?”
“Well, David, I don’t think the president has shifted his position,” Gibbs said. “I think what the president said on the Thursday in which the memos were released, all the way through this, he’s been consistent and clear: those that followed the legal advice, the four corners of the legal advice in good faith, those people should not and will not be prosecuted. But the president, as you know, David, doesn’t determine who knowingly breaks the law or not. That’s set up and devised by the Justice Department and other lawyers and legal entities to decide those questions.”
GREGORY: Does the president believe or suspect that Bush administration lawyers conspired to violate the anti-torture law?
GIBBS: Well, I, I think that’s a determination that the lawyers are going to make, and they’re going to have to take a look at them.
More Gibbs: “This president campaigned very vehemently on the notion that the rule of law and that legal decisions should be made not by political figures, but by justice figures.”
On CNN’s “State of the Union,” White House adviser Valerie Jarrett repeated the talking point. “What he [the president] has said is that anyone who followed the advice of the Justice Department and did any kind of acts that were within the confines of that advice, he doesn’t think we should prosecute. … The rest of it, he leaves up to the U.S. attorney general. That is who is supposed to make decisions about prosecution.”
The Washington-based law firm founded by U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2007 has scooped up four Bush administration U.S. Attorneys to staff offices in Austin, Dallas, St. Louis, and Boston. Johnny Sutton, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas, will head the Austin firm, along with new firm partner, John Ratcliffe, who was U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas from 2007 to 2008. The Texas firm will be called Ashcroft Sutton & Ratcliffe.
Ashcroft told the Austin Business Journal:
“This is a next-generation law firm … The law firm of the future has got to be nimble, agile and capable of focusing resources based on talent and expertise and be able to deploy them where they are needed.”
As we previously reported, the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, Catherine Hanaway, resigned April 17 to join the new firm. Also joining the firm is the former U.S. Attorney in Boston, Michael Sullivan, who resigned earlier this month. The firm will be known as Ashcroft Sullivan LLC in Massachusetts.
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So says Talking Points Memo. As we previously reported, Legal Times says the DOJ lawyers under investigation for their handling of the Ted Stevens corruption case have all retained name-brand lawyers to defend them.
Hmmm. Not sure I agree with this opinion from The Washington Post’s veteran political columnist, David Broder, who sees “populist anger” behind the push to investigate what he calls a “policy disagreement” over torture.
But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more — the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps — or, at least, careers and reputations.
Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability — and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.
By labeling those who advocate some kind of accounting as simple pitchfork-waving populists, Broder dismisses out of hand the many thoughtful arguments, grounded in a long history – from the American Revolution to the Nuremberg Trials and the Vietnam War — for why the U.S., as a matter of law and policy, does not practice torture.
Jay Bybee, now a judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Las Vegas, has expressed regret to colleagues about his tenure as head of the Office of Legal Counsel, The Washington Post reports.
Writes the Post:
Tuan Samahon, a former clerk who recalled Bybee’s remarks at the reunion dinner, said in an e-mail that the judge defended the legal reasoning behind the memos but not the policy decision. Bybee was disappointed by what was done to prisoners, saying that “the spirit of liberty has left the republic,” Samahon said.
….
“But he signed it,” said Chris Blakesley, a friend and fellow professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Boyd School of Law who was outraged by the [first known Bybee] memo, which was leaked in May 2004.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder swore in four of the Justice Department’s top leaders in the Great Hall at Main Justice Friday. The new Assistant Attorney Generals are Lanny Breuer (Criminal Division), David Kris (National Security Division), Tony West (Civil Division) and Christine Varney (Antitrust Division).
Holder swears in David Kris
The first to be sworn in was Kris, who was an Associate Deputy Attorney General for national security issues from 2000 to 2003. Referring to his work the past six years as deputy general counsel, chief compliance and ethics officer at Time Warner Inc., Kris said: “For me, the private sector represented a combination of less work, less stress, and more money than government.” (laughter). “But when I had the chance to return, I did not hesitate. I knew the other side of the bargain was work that was incredibly important.”
Lanny Breuer's swearing in
Next up was Breuer, who was a partner at Covington & Burling with Holder and has served in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and in the Clinton White House counsel’s office. Breuer talked about how his parents had immigrated to the United States, “fleeing Nazi tyranny,” and how his mother “had lost her entire family.” “But our home in Queens was an uplifting home – it was a home that had a great love and admiration for everything this country represents.”
West was a partner at Morrison & Foerster. From 1993 to 1994, he was a Special Assistant in the Clinton DOJ under Deputy Attorneys General Philip Heymann and Jamie Gorelick and Attorney General Janet Reno, working on the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill. “In these uncertain times, your task has become increasingly difficult,” he told Holder after his swearing in. “But I share your commitment, and together we will work to defend the safety of the American people.”
Varney came last. As Kris did, the former Hogan & Hartson partner joked about the loss of private sector pay, and she thanked her husband, Tom Graham, for all his support. As the DOJ’s top competition enforcer, she quoted the late U.S. Justice Thurgood Marshall: “Antitrust laws are the Magna Carta of free enterprise.”
A Muslim advocacy group filed an ethics complaint today against Eastern District of Virginia prosecutor Gordon Kromberg, in an apparent attempt to rachet up political pressure in advance of a judge’s ruling on a criminal contempt case against a Palestinian Islamic Jihad supporter.
The complaint from the Muslim Political Affairs Council asks that Kromberg be removed from that and any other cases involving Muslims or Muslim-Americans. Kromberg in the past has made controversial remarks about Muslims.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema canceled a scheduled court hearing today in Alexandria on the contempt charges against former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, who has refused to testify in a terrorism financing investigation in Virginia. Al-Arian has asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing the terms of a 2006 plea agreement exempt him from giving compelled grand jury testimony. In an order, Brinkema said the matter has already been “fully briefed” and that she will issue a written opinion “in the near future.” Her options now are to either dismiss the case or allow it to proceed to trial. Click here to see our previous coverage.
Supporters of Al-Arian held a rally in front of the Main Justice building this morning. A friend of the Al-Arian family, Tarek Al-Muhtasib, read from the complaint, addressed to new OPR head Mary Patrice Brown, asking her to “investigate discriminatory remarks” made by Kromberg, including a comment to a former Al-Arian defense attorney regarding Muslims: “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset.” (See paragraph seven of the affidavit here).
Sara Sloan of the anti-war Answer Coalition told the small crowd outside Main Justice that Al-Arian is a “man of principle.” She added: “He is not going to take part in these continued persecutions of innocent people, as he has been persecuted.”
But an angry Florida federal judge in 2006 called Al-Arian a “master maniuplator” and said the “evidence was clear in this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.” (Read the transcript here, starting on page 14). Al-Arian pleaded guilty to one count of assisting members of the anti-Israel suicide bombing group after a Tampa jury in 2005 acquitted him of eight of 17 terrorism support counts. The jury failed to reach unanimous agreement on the other counts.We’ve ask the DOJ for comment and will update you later if we get it. Meanwhile, here are some more photos from today’s rally:
The attorney general will be meeting with his European counterparts in London, Prague and Berlin, the Justice Department announced. The topics will be counterterrorism, transnational organized crime and national security issues.
In Prague Holder will attend the European Union Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial, overseen by European Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security Jacques Barrot. In London he will meet with Director General of British Security Service Jonathan Evans, British Attorney General Baroness Scotland, Scotland Yard chief Sir Paul Stephenson, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Secretary of State for Justice Jack Straw and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office;s Sir Peter Rickets.
This should be interesting. Manfred Nowak, an Austrian who is the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture, has said the U.S. has an obligation to investigate and possibly prosecute officials who set policies on torture. And Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzon wants to prosecute former Bush administration lawyers John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Jim Haynes and Pengaton official Doug Feith in Spain for the U.S.’s treatment of Spanish Gitmo detainees.
