Gitmo lawyers: Conflicts of interest at the Justice Department

The Washington Times ^ | June 22, 2009 | Editorial

[Abakumov]

Executive Order 13493 on Jan. 22 appointed Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. co-chairman of the Special Task Force on Detainee Disposition, the interagency group charged with determining the status of persons captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations. But according to Justice Department regulations, Mr. Holder is required to recuse himself from certain detainee matters because his law firm represented the detainees.

[hoosiermama]

FYI

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

It’s gonna get worse, just wait and see.

[airedale]

Want to bet he doesn’t until forced to and then if you did an investigation you’ll find his fingerprints all through the work done mostly through surrogates taking direction from him and providing info to him. Almost willing to bet that info will be fed to his former law firm by some people near him. Not quite willing to bet but close.

[Nachum]

The list, ping

[livius]

The law firms that worked aggressively on the part of detainees avoided public censure because George W. Bush administration policies made America so safe it was easy to cast the detainees in the role of victims rather than killers. Contributing factors were Guantanamo's remoteness and isolation and the failure of the Bush team to make these anonymous, numbered, orange-jump-suited men into recognizable public enemies by highlighting their violent biographies. This created a vacuum that the defense lawyers were willing to fill with tales of innocent victims of circumstance swept up in events beyond their control.

Interesting observations. I think this is very true; for most Americans, they were out of sight, out of mind, and it was easy for public opinion to be manipulated by left-wing lawyers.

Bambi obviously didn't expect the resistance he encountered when he tried to move the prisoners into people's home neighborhoods. Of course, now he's just moving them into sympathetic places (such as Bermuda with its left-wing, black nationalist PM) with easy access to the US, but because they're not right next door, people have forgotten about them again.