Free Republic

'Fox News @ Night' panelists John Yoo and Joe Moreno discuss the next steps for former President Donald Trump after he was indicted by a New York grand jury.

Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday compared the leak of fellow Justice's Samuel Alito's draft opinion, which would overturn abortion protections under Roe v Wade, to 'infidelity.' Thomas, 73, said that at a conference that the leak would weaken the public's trust in the Supreme Court as an institution, calling the unauthorized disclosure of deliberations 'tremendously bad.' In his remarks, the conservative justice, who has long called for overturning Roe, hinted that a liberal clerk may have leaked Alito's draft opinion, and lamented that partisan rancor has grown more entrenched on the high court. Thomas pondered: 'I wonder how long we're...

As the Senate launches its second impeachment trial of Donald Trump next week, its members must confront the deep unfairness of the proceedings. The Senate rashly claimed jurisdiction over a former president, fumbled on the selection of a presiding judge, and ignored the constitutional — not political — standards that should prevail. Further, it has given Trump’s depleted legal team little time or means to present a full defense — the only guarantee that the American people will accept the verdict as fair. Trump’s lawyers will have to accept these unfair conditions, though might conceivably be able to appeal directly...

An analysis by two prominent law professors published before the election concluded that if Electoral College votes remain in dispute after they are counted in Congress, the vice president, as presiding officer of the joint session, could choose not to allow certain disputed votes. The scenario isn't entirely remote, with lawsuits challenging the results in six states and the possibility the U.S. Supreme Court could weigh in. John Yoo of California-Berkeley and Robert J. Delahunty of St. Thomas University wrote in an analysis published Oct. 19 by the Claremont Institute that Vice President Mike Pence can refuse to count some...

"His many personal and professional flaws, including his bankruptcies, sexual scandals, crude and cruel language, repelled me. I saw him as a populist, even a demagogue, who had not prepared for the heavy responsibilities of the presidency," he said in a new book, which was profiled by Paul Bedard in his Washington Secrets column. Yoo worried, at the time, that Trump would "test, evade, or even violate the Constitution." Bedard explains, "Over the course of 300 pages comparing Trump moves to the wishes of the Founding Fathers, Yoo discovered that despite constant criticism that Trump was destroying the Constitution, he...

National Security Council (NSC) official Alexander Vindman showed up to testify Tuesday as part of the Democrats’ closed-door impeachment inquiry into President Trump in full military uniform. This is despite not wearing one to work every day at the NSC, according to several sources. Although Vindman is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, he is serving an assignment at the NSC as the director for European Affairs. According to sources at the NSC, Vindman does not wear his uniform to work at the NSC, where the standard dress is business wear. One source said he donned the uniform “for...

Attorney General John Yoo told Fox News's Laura Ingraham Monday night. And the reason why is, by appointing a U.S. attorney, Attorney General Barr is essentially signaling that he thinks it's possible that criminal violations occurred in the start of the whole investigation into any kind of Trump-Russian collusion. As Judge Barr said, there is already an inspector general investigation that's going to come to a conclusion. That's what you would do if you were just interested in reforming the way the department does things, the way decisions were made. But you wouldn't go with a U.S. Attorney like Durham,...

Former Deputy Assistant US Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo joined Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle on Monday night. Earlier tonight Attorney General Bill Barr assigned top special prosecutor John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. John Durham, a US Attorney in Connecticut will examine the origins of Spygate according to a new report by The New York Times, citing two sources familiar with the matter. John Yoo told Laura Democrats should be very worried tonight.

University of California Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, the author of George W. Bush era “torture memos,” opined in the New York Times that President Donald Trump is taking executive authority too far with his response to congressional oversight. Yoo was quoted in the Times saying the across the board stonewall of congressional subpoenas to testify or supply information was “unusual” in that it is a “blanket refusal.” “It would be extraordinary if the president actually were to try to stop all congressional testimony on subpoenaed issues. That would actually be unprecedented if it were a complete ban,” Yoo said.

Washington seems to be barreling toward a constitutional crisis. Democrats are barraging President Trump with demands for witnesses and documents. Trump has answered by stonewalling, vowing to fight “all the subpoenas.” As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned, Trump seems to be goading the Democratic-controlled House toward impeachment, perhaps because it’s a battle he thinks he can win. Politicians on both sides are repairing to their tribal corners. Is there anyone who can serve as honest referees in this partisan standoff? One answer — don’t laugh — is lawyers. Specifically, Republican lawyers. Even as Republicans in Congress have fallen in line...

Former Deputy Attorney General John Yoo breaks down the Michael Cohen news. He is the most rational voice on this entire spectacle I have heard this morning. President Trump said that even if Cohen were telling the truth, ‘it doesn’t matter. Because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign. I was running my business.’ He said ‘I’m not worried at all’ about the implications of Cohen’s actions. (video at link -- watch it all the way to the end)

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) will hold a hearing Friday to examine a report that allowed two Bush administration officials to escape any formal punishment regarding their role in drafting the legal justification for the harsh interrogations of detainees. Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two former high-level Bush administration officials who drafted the legal basis for the Bush administration’s treatment of overseas terror suspects, escaped any formal punishment in a long-awaited Justice Department report released Friday evening. Leahy also called on federal appeals court judge Bybee to step down from the lifetime appointment over his role in the...

Despite calls from people who claim they will flee the county if Donald Trump is elected president, this new book is sort of a timeout from the partisan noise. As some already know, especially the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party, both sides are up to their necks concerning the expansion of government power. In short, Democrats federal expansion when it comes to social services and the welfare state; Republicans act in a similar manner when it comes to national security policy and the Pentagon. Both areas are fraught with danger concerning trampling American civil liberties and constitutional rights,...

To support his insane interpretation of the post-Civil War amendments as granting citizenship to the kids of illegal aliens, Fox News' Bill O'Reilly is now taking job applications for the nonexistent -- but dearly hoped-for -- Jeb! administration, live, during his show. (Apparently my debate with O'Reilly will be conducted in my column, Twitter feed and current bestselling book, Adios, America, against the highest-rated show on cable news.) Republicans have been out of the White House for seven long years, and GOP lawyers are getting impatient. So now they're popping up on Fox News' airwaves, competing to see who can...

In an angry editorial published in the Sunday edition of the New York Times, the newspaper's editorial board called on president Barack Obama to “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses.” The list of offenders “in a credible investigation” is a long one, including former vice president Dick Cheney; his chief of staff, David Addington; former CIA director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the lawyers for the Office of Legal Counsel who helped draft the documents clearing the way for “enhanced interrogation“ of prisoners and enemy combatants. In addition, the editors called for charges to be brought against Jose...

Taking a few minutes this morning to watch Congressman Trey Gowdy and the House Select Committee on ‪#‎Benghazi‬.

John Yoo (of Bush 43 administration fame) has penned a rather counterintuitive editorial this weekend on the future of outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder. In it, he begins by building a laundry list of complaints about some of the worst moments of Holder’s tenure as AG. (There’s really no need to repeat them here, as regular readers are already far too familiar with the subjects in question.) But after that, he switches to the subject of Holder’s failure to hold, in general terms, to his constitutional duties. But worst of all was not Holder’s political or prosecution choices, but his...

Some conservatives see a silver lining in the ObamaCare ruling. But it's exactly the big-government disaster it appears to be. Justice Roberts's opinion declared that the Constitution's Commerce Clause does not authorize Congress to regulate inactivity, which would have given the federal government a blank check to regulate any and all private conduct. The court also decided that Congress unconstitutionally coerced the states by threatening to cut off all Medicaid funds if they did not expand this program as far as President Obama wants. All this is a hollow hope. The outer limit on the Commerce Clause in Sebelius does...

Protesters will denounce torture, and the University of California’s continuing connection to torture, outside tomorrow's commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley Law (Boalt Hall). As in previous years’ graduation demonstrations, protesters including those costumed to represent prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and other sites where the U.S. currently manages a regimen of illegal rendition, detention, and torture, will gather outside the commencement before and during the ceremony. They will call for an end to, and accountability for, this illegal program wherever it has been operating. Berkeley Law professor John Yoo is on the list of Bush Regime officials who they say...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- An appeals court on Wednesday tossed out a convicted terrorist's lawsuit accusing a high-ranking Bush administration lawyer who wrote the so-called "torture memos" of authorizing illegally harsh treatment of "enemy combatants." Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo is protected from such lawsuits because the law defining torture and the treatment of enemy combatants was unsettled in the two years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when the memos were written, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The memos have been embroiled in national security politics for years after laying out a broad interpretation...