I feel so much safer now that I know B. Hussein Obama is filling key posts inside the Department of Justice with private firm lawyers who have been defending terrorists held at Gitmo, don’t you?
Oh, sure, the DOJ says these freaks will recuse themselves in instances involving Gitmo, but that’s not the problem. The problem is the fact that lawyers who felt defending child killing genocidal maniacs was time well spent. This is a a character issue. The depravity that led these lawyers to defend terrorists will inform every other action they take.
Some Justice Department Lawyers Have Gitmo Conflicts
More than a dozen new Justice Department lawyers have come from private firms representing Guantanamo Bay detainees, creating potential conflicts of interest as the agency begins its review of roughly 245 men imprisoned at the military detention center…
And the department will have to tread carefully as more lawyers join the leadership ranks. Several of Obama’s nominees for top department posts have ties to Guantanamo through their firms’ work, including:
• Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr’s David Ogden, who is nominated for deputy attorney general. His firm represents three detainees in habeas proceedings in federal court.
Three former Wilmer lawyers are already planted in the DAG office: chief of staff Stuart Delery, chief counsel Eric Columbus, and counsel Chad Golder. Wilmer lawyers played the lead role in detainees’ landmark victory in Boumediene v. Bush, which recognized their constitutional right to challenge their confinement under habeas corpus.
• Associate Attorney General nominee Thomas Perrelli, managing partner of Jenner & Block’s Washington, D.C., office. His firm represents six detainees in habeas cases. Former Jenner associate Brian Hauck is serving as counsel in the office, and Associate Deputy Attorney General Donald Verrilli left the firm last month. Jenner was co-lead counsel to José Padilla in Rumsfeld v. Padilla and filed amicus briefs in Rasul v. Bush and Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.
• Covington & Burling’s Lanny Breuer, the nominee to head the Criminal Division. He’s also conflicted out of matters related to the firm’s 16 Yemeni clients. Covington lawyers burned 3,022 hours on Guantánamo litigation in 2007, according to The American Lawyer’s annual pro bono survey, the latest figures publicly available. It was the firm’s largest pro bono project that year. Covington co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in Boumediene v. Bush, and was responsible for several detainee victories in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
• Morrison & Foerster’s Tony West, the nominee to head the Civil Division. His firm represents one detainee in a habeas case in U.S. district court.
