I find this story personally infuriating but entirely unsurprising. I had previously written about Eric Holder and his Covington & Burling buddies taking over Justice – the same pack of lawyers who represented Gitmo detainees.
It gets worse. ABC is reporting in detail about the high-ranking political appointees at Justice and Republican reaction:
The Justice Department has acknowledged that at least ten political appointees at the agency previously worked on behalf of detainees in terror cases, including six lawyers who worked as legal counsel for detainees and four who worked for advocacy organizations.
The most prominent is perhaps Assistant Attorney General Tony West, who previously represented “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh.
Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal represented Afghan Guantanamo Bay detainee Salim Hamdan in a case that was an enormous setback for the Bush administration’s early plan for military commissions.
Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich acknowledged, in a letter earlier this month to Senator Chuck Grassley, that several appointees have defended detainees. But the letter did not list the names of the political appointees or answer questions about what work they are doing on detainee issues for the Department.
So, they’ve recruited Johnny Walker Yellow’s lawyer – of all the lawyers they’ve could have recruited. So far, however, Holder is stonewalling on providing the names. Needless to say, this is not going down well.
In the blistering letter to Attorney General Eric Holder sent today, the Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are demanding to know the names and titles of all political appointees who represented detainees and a list of all who are working on detainee-related issues and/or policy issues.
This going to be very interesting indeed.
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