Friday, February 19, 2010
It’s Official: John Yoo Is Let Off the Hook
Politics / People / Law Enforcement & Crime Robert Gammon — Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 4:01 PM
In a long-awaited report released this afternoon, the Obama Justice Department concluded that UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo exercised “poor judgment” when he authorized torture and warrantless wiretapping while working for the Bush administration. The newly released report was redrafted after it previously concluded that Yoo had engaged in “professional misconduct” and that he should be referred to the Pennsylvania bar, where he got his law license, for disciplinary proceedings. If the previous conclusion had been allowed to stand, then Yoo may have lost his law license, and ultimately, his tenured professorship at Berkeley.
In fact, a finding of “professional misconduct,” a legal term of art, may have been sufficient enough for UC Berkeley to terminate Yoo. Under university regulations, tenured professors can be fired for engaging in “professional misconduct.” The original report from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Yoo and his boss, federal judge Jay Bybee, failed to provide “thorough, candid, and objective” analysis in legal memos they supplied to President Bush, concerning the torture of terror suspects.
But in a 69-page subsequent report that overruled the original finding, career DOJ prosecutor David Margolis concluded that he did not agree with the "professional misconduct" finding, and instead substituted a lesser conclusion of "poor judgment," which will not result in a referral to the Pennsylvania bar.
Comments (2)
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Talk about a political witchhunt! John Yoo, an outstanding lawyer, was simply doing his job in giving legal advice to Pres. Bush. It's outrageous that this ever became the subject of an investigation. It's obvious that the Left cares more about the rights of terrorists than the right of the President to receive unfettered legal advice from his counsel.
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That's great, John Yoo exercised "poor judgment" in determining that entire civilian villages may be exterminated legally on executive orders and that the Geneva Convention rules on treatment of prisoners of war may be ignored. I guess Pol Pot, Stalin, and Hitler were similarly guilty of "poor judgment". Fortunately for us John Yoo lacked the power of dictatorship those fine fellows enjoyed. What a crock. Just another example of the wealthy and powerful protecting their own.
