Holder & DOJ Terrorist Advocates

Too many "lawyers" in the Dept. of Justice have been involved in representing or advocating for Guantanamo detainees. Atty General Eric Holder (and obviously, Obama) are trying to hide this from the American People.

Sen. Grassley is on the case:

What’s Holder Hiding? [Robert Costa]

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) is warring with Attorney General Eric Holder over potential conflicts of interest in the Department of Justice over the handling of terrorist detainees. In a recent letter to Grassley, Holder admitted that nine Obama Justice Department appointees represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the department. Holder acknowledged only two by name — principal deputy solicitor general Neal Katyal, a former attorney for Osama bin Laden’s driver, and Jennifer Daskal, a former detainee advocate at Human Rights Watch.

In an interview with National Review Online, Grassley fumed. Holder’s letter, he said, which was sent in response to a request Grassley made last November, leaves much unanswered. “The country has the right to know what the predilections of people in the Justice Department are toward terrorism, especially if they’re giving constitutional rights to terrorists,” he says. “They’re going to regret hiding names. I don’t know why they’re hiding, unless they have something to hide.”

“To me, this is a case of our own public servants or political appointees having an agenda of their own instead of being concerned with the national security of the United States,” Grassley says. “This letter creates a lot of suspicion about conflicts of interest, and it’s out of character for an administration that promised transparency. If I was in the majority, this would demand a hearing or an investigation.” He adds that all attorneys who have been involved with terrorist detainee cases before joining the department should reveal themselves, or be revealed by Holder, and recuse themselves from any case involving terrorists and national security.

Calling Holder’s response simultaneously “obnoxious” and “ludicrous,” Grassley concludes that “without the names and details, we have a reason to question what’s really going on here.”


Byron York: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Holder-admits-nine-Obama-Dept-of-Justice-officials-worked-for-terrorist-detainees-offers-no-details-84799487.html


Holder admits nine Obama Dept. of Justice officials worked for terrorist detainees, offers no details

By: Byron YorkChief Political Correspondent02/19/10 3:52 PM EST
Attorney General Eric Holder says nine Obama appointees in the Justice Department have represented or advocated for terrorist detainees before joining the Justice Department. But he does not reveal any names beyond the two officials whose work has already been publicly reported. And all the lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.
Holder's admission comes in the form of an answer to a question posed last November by Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. Noting that one Obama appointee, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, formerly represented Osama bin Laden's driver, and another appointee, Jennifer Daskal, previously advocated for detainees at Human Rights Watch, Grassley asked Holder to give the Senate Judiciary Committee "the names of political appointees in your department who represent detainees or who work for organizations advocating on their behalf…the cases or projects that these appointees work with respect to detainee prior to joining the Justice Department…and the cases or projects relating to detainees that have worked on since joining the Justice Department."

In his response, Holder has given Grassley almost nothing. He says nine Obama political appointees at the Justice Department have advocated on behalf of detainees, but did not identify any of the nine other than the two, Katyal and Daskal, whose names Grassley already knew. "To the best of our knowledge,"
Holder writes,

during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees, and four others either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.
Holder says other Obama appointees, like Holder himself, came from law firms which represented detainees but did no work on behalf of the terrorist prisoners. But other than Katyal and Daskal, Holder does not reveal any names of any Obama appointees, nor does he mention the cases they worked on.
And what are they recused from, anyway? Very little. Holder writes that Katyal has not worked on any Guantanamo detainee matters but has participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan and in litigation involving [Ali Saleh Kahlah] al-Marri, who was detained on U.S. soil." As for Daskal, "she has generally worked on policy issues related to detainees," Holder writes. "Her detainee-related work has been fully consistent with advice she received from career department officials regarding her obligations."

As for everyone else, Holder lists no names and no cases, but in a paragraph filled with modifiers, he makes it clear that all the lawyers who had advocated for detainees are free to work on general detainee matters.

The senior Department officials referenced above, like other political appointees who are similarly situated, have recused from particular matters regarding specific detainees in which their former firms represent the detainee or another party and from decisions relating specifically to the dispositions of particular detainees represented by their former firms. These recusals pertain to decisions relating to particularmatters involving specific parties who
are or have been represented by their former law firms within the relevant time period. However, as noted above, these senior officials have been authorized to participate in policy and legal decisions regarding detainee matters, in particular matters regarding specific detainees whom their prior employer did not represent, and in decisions relating to the disposition of such detainees. [emphasis added]

Finally, it is possible that there are more than nine political appointees who worked for detainees. Holder tells Grassley that he did not survey the Justice Department as a whole but instead canvassed several large offices within the organization.

Bottom line: Holder revealed no names beyond the two already publicly known. He revealed no cases from which Justice political appointees recused themselves. The letter, which will likely be interpreted on Capitol Hill as a thumb-your-nose statement, is sure to anger Republican senators more than satisfy them.