Legal News

Bush Crew, Including John Yoo, to be Defended by Obama Lawyers

By Dan Slater

Jose Padilla v. John Yoo was one of the more controversial suits filed in 2008. Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber whom the government detained as an enemy combatant and held in isolation for three and a half years, sought to hold Yoo (pictured, left), a key architect of the Bush administration’s terrorism policies, accountable for the suffering unleashed by his ‘Torture Memos.’ ”

The suit asks for damages in the amount of $1 and a judgment declaring that the government’s treatment of Padilla was unlawful and violated the Constitution. The suit was filed by Jonathan Freiman (pictured, right), who co-founded the National Litigation Project at Yale Law.

Now it looks like the suit could make for strange bedfellows. Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports that President Obama’s incoming crew of lawyers has been tasked with the somewhat awkward job of defending Yoo. Next week, DOJ lawyers are set to ask a San Francisco federal judge to throw out the suit.

Why awkward? Well, for starters, as Politico notes, Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel, Dawn Johnsen, wrote an article in Slate last year calling one of Yoo’s memos “plainly flawed” and his defense of it “irresponsibly and dangerously false.”

And, in more news of liberals defending conservatives, on Thursday, Politico reports, DOJ lawyers are slated to be in Charleston, S.C., to ask a federal magistrate there to dismiss another suit charging about a dozen current and former government officials — including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and former AG John Ashcroft — with violating Padilla’s rights in connection with his detention.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on January 28, 2009 (boomark / email).