Obama Justice Dept. Will Defend Yoo

By JOSH GERSTEIN | Politico

The Obama Administration has decided to press on with the Justice Department’s defense of a civil lawsuit brought against John Yoo, a former department lawyer attorney whose controversial legal opinions have been roundly criticized by many members of Obama’s legal team.

At a court hearing Friday morning in San Francisco, government lawyers said that despite the change in administration, there has been no change in Yoo’s government-run legal defense against a suit brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a Navy brig after being designated as an enemy combatant.

“This administration has made no secret that we disagree with many of the previous administration’s legal policies on national security issues,” a Justice Department spokesman, Matt Miller, said after the court session. “Nevertheless, we generally defend employees or former employees of the department in litigation filed in connection with their official duties.”

As POLITICO first reported, Judge Jeffrey White issued written questions Thursday asking whether the position taken by Yoo’s defense had been “fully vetted” by the Obama administration.

A Justice Department official, who asked not to be named, said the judge was advised that Obama appointees signed off on the legal strategy. “The positions taken in the briefs have been fully vetted within the administration,” the official said …

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Court Rejects Franken’s Bid to be Seated in Senate

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected Democrat Al Franken’s petition for an election certificate that would put him in the U.S. Senate without waiting for a lawsuit to be resolved.

Franken is ahead of Republican Norm Coleman by 225 votes. Coleman’s ongoing lawsuit argues some uncounted absentee ballots were wrongly rejected.

Franken sued to force Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie to sign an election certificate. Franken argued that federal law required it.

But the state Supreme Court disagreed. In their ruling Friday, the justices said states aren’t required to issue such certificates by the date that Congress convenes …

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Rove, Miers to Testify in Prosecutor Firings

By NEDRA PICKLER | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Former top Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers agreed Wednesday to testify before Congress under oath about the firings of U.S. attorneys, a controversy involving allegations of political interference that grew into a constitutional standoff between two branches of government.

The Bush White House had fought attempts to force Rove and Miers to testify, and the agreement — steered by aides to President Barack Obama — ended that dispute. Both the White House and lawmakers, especially now that Democrat Obama has replaced Republican George W. Bush — were leery of having a judge settle the question about the limits of executive privilege, for fear of losing.

The agreement calls for Rove and Miers, Bush’s top political adviser and White House counsel, to be interviewed by the House Judiciary Committee in closed depositions “under the penalty for perjury,” said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich. The committee says it also might call the two for public testimony.

The arrangement ends a lawsuit over whether former White House aides could be forced to testify about matters on which they advised the president. Bush had ordered Rove and Miers not to testify in the U.S. attorneys investigation, and the Judiciary Committee sued a year ago.

Last July, U.S. District Judge John Bates rejected Bush’s contention that senior White House advisers were immune from the committee’s subpoenas, siding with Congress’ power to investigate the executive branch. The Bush administration had appealed the decision.

Until this dispute, Congress had never gone to court to demand the testimony of White House aides. Bates had suggested that the two sides settle to avoid a ruling that would be binding of future presidents and members of Congress …

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AP Newsbreak: CIA Destroyed 92 Interrogation Tapes

By DEVLIN BARRETT | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations, far more than has previously been acknowledged.

The revelation Monday comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.

The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of the Bush administration’s terror interrogation programs following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety two videotapes were destroyed.”

ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.

“The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court’s order,” Singh said in a statement …

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Related News: CIA Destroyed 12 Harsh Interrogation Tapes

Court Rejects Obama Bid to Stop Wiretapping Suit

By DEVLIN BARRETT | Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration has lost its argument that a potential threat to national security is a good enough reason to stop a lawsuit challenging the government’s warrantless wiretapping program.

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Friday rejected the Justice Department’s request for an emergency stay. The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, cited the so-called state secrets privilege as its defense. The government claimed national security would be compromised if a lawsuit brought by the U.S. chapter of an Islamic charity was allowed to proceed.

The case was brought by the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a defunct charity with a chapter in Oregon.

The decision by the three-judge appeals panel is a setback for the new Obama administration as it adopts some of the same positions on national security and secrecy as the Bush administration …

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Obama’s DOJ Quietly Sought Dismissal of Missing White House Emails Lawsuit

By Jason Leopold | Online Journal Contributing Writer

One day after he was sworn in as president of the United States and in the same week signing executive orders ushering in a new era of government transparency, Barack Obama’s Justice Department quietly filed a motion in federal court to dismiss a long-running lawsuit that sought to force the Bush administration to recover as many as 15 million missing White House emails.

In a legal briefs filed Jan. 21, the Justice Department admitted that a secretive restoration process implemented during George W. Bush’s last months in office was still incomplete, and that a bulk of the emails sent between 2003 and 2005 were deleted from servers in the Executive Office of the president and unrecoverable. The missing emails cover a time frame that included the lead up to the Iraq war, a lawsuit involving the identities of individuals and corporations who advised Dick Cheney on energy policy and the leak by White House officials of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

But despite it all, the newly minted Obama administration said in court papers that the issue revolving around the missing emails is “moot” because some steps, however incomplete, had been taken by the Bush White House to preserve and restore missing emails, even though the work has been conducted under the cover of secrecy by an unknown outside contractor hired by Bush administration officials.

Now, one month after the Justice Department filed its motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the plaintiffs in the case, watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive, the historical project that operates out of George Washington University, have filed their responses to the Justice Department with a district court judge. CREW and the National Security Archive sued the Bush administration two years ago alleging the White House violated the Presidential Records Act and Federal Records Act by not properly archiving emails from 2003 to 2005.

CREW said the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit “is yet another gambit in a series of actions designed to avoid transparency and accountability by obscuring the fact the Bush White House did nothing for years about a serious email problem that left a gaping hole in our nation’s history.” …

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