Murray Waas: Torture Memo Author Advocated Presidential Pardons, Jury Nullification

[babylonsister]

Murray Waas

Torture Memo Author Advocated Presidential Pardons, Jury Nullification

05/6/09 02:31 PM


A Bush administration attorney who approved harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects advocated in 2006 that President Bush set aside recommendations by his own Justice Department to bring prosecutions for such practices, that the President should consider pardoning anyone convicted of such offenses, and even that jurors hearing criminal cases about such matters engage in jury nullification.

That advice came from John Yoo, a former attorney with the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and author of memos that served as a legal rationale for the Bush administration's interrogation techniques. Yoo's recommendations constitute one of the most compelling pieces of a body of evidence that Yoo and other government attorneys improperly skewed legal advice to allow such practices, according to sources familiar with a still-confidential Justice Department report.

A Justice Department internal watchdog agency, the Office of Professional Responsibility, has concluded that Yoo and a second former Justice Department attorney, Jay Bybee, breached their professional legal ethics by skewing their legal advisory opinion to provide a legal rationale for allowing the harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to a senior Department attorney who has reviewed a draft of the report. President Obama has said that the use of some of the interrogation techniques constituted torture.

snip//

The new disclosures about Yoo's 2006 comments and recommendations in the OPR report are likely to fuel further demands for a House impeachment inquiry. Yesterday, on Amy Goodman's syndicated radio show, Democracy Now!, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wi.), when asked whether Bybee should be impeached, replied: "I don't believe he should be in the office he's in. I'd prefer to see him resign. I would not rule out impeachment. As a senator, my job is to review an impeachment by the House as a juror, just as I did in the case of President Clinton. So I'm not going to prejudge a situation. But on the face of it, I certainly would understand why any member of the House would say, `Wait a minute. Maybe we ought to consider articles of impeachment if he does not resign.' What he did here was truly against American law and against American values."

more...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/06/pressure-increases-on-tor_n_197764.html

[JVS]

1. Did Bush even do pardons on his way out?

[babylonsister]

2. He did a few minor ones iirc, and may have done some in private that won't

become known unless they're needed (think Rove?). I think I read that...

[bullimiami]

4. sorry but no f*#&ING way. if they prosecute and some bush 'secret pardons' pop up.

i say lock them all up and throw away the key.

[blogslut]

3. Not for any of these guys

Now, he's hiding out in Dallas, letting his enablers take the heat.

Gotta love them Repubs.

[babylonsister]

5. Not for these guys, which is why everyone is so anxious,

especially darth.