Two days ago Wordsmith put up a post about the al-Qaeda 7. Seven lawyers brought on board the DOJ who had previously represented al-Qaeda.
It’s now 7+1…..and that +1 is a doozy:
The Justice Department has admitted that Eric Holder failed to tell Congress during his confirmation process that he had contributed to a legal brief which argued that the President lacks authority to hold Jose Padilla, a U.S citizen declared an “enemy combatant,” indefinitely without charge. The Justice Department has also acknowledged what is obvious — that “the brief should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process.”
DOJ contends that the failure to disclose was not intentional. It says that “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed.”
Some Senators will view this claim with skepticism. The Padilla case was, after all, an extremely high profile matter. Moreover, as Andy McCarthy notes, Holder wrote a letter to Senator McConnell a few months ago discussing the Padilla case at length and in a manner similar to the arguments in the brief he had worked on. This event should have reminded Holder of his involvement with that brief and should have prompted him to correct his erroneous statement during the confirmation process.
“Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?”
In that brief filed to the court Holder even acknowledged that his position may cause terrorists to stop providing intelligence but after the Christmas bomber his tune had changed:
I am equally confident that the decision to address Mr. Abdulmutallab’s actions through our criminal justice system has not, and will not, compromise our ability to obtain information needed to detect and prevent future attacks.
~~~Neither advising Abdulmutallab of his Miranda rights nor granting him access to counsel prevents us from obtaining intelligence from him.
Complete and utter nonsense, but here we are with an Attorney General who covered up the fact that he filed a brief for a very well known and public case.
After President Obama nominated Holder to be Attorney General, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Holder a 47-page questionnaire, including a request for any briefs he had filed with the Supreme Court “in connection with your practice.”
In response, Holder said he participated in a total of five such briefs, none of which dealt with terrorism-related issues. He did not include the Padilla brief, and he signed a statement saying the information he provided was accurate and complete “to the best of my knowledge.”
Jonah Goldberg on the al-Qaeda 7 and the hypocrisy of the left:
Then there’s the twofold issue of these lawyers working for DOJ and the administration keeping their identities a secret. How is this not a legitimate issue? I don’t get it. As USA Today concedes, lawyers who defended al-Qaeda suspects need to recuse themselves from these matters. Everyone concedes that there are conflict of interest issues here. Are we to suddenly believe that Congress has no right to inquire about such things? Tell that to environmentalists who want lawyers for “polluters” kept out of the EPA. Seriously, has no one listened to Henry Waxman for the last 30 years? Do Obama’s countless promises to be “transparent” have no validity when it comes to these lawyers? Why on earth would that be the case?
And yet, to listen to Holder’s defenders, the people who ask these questions are being denounced as demagogues and (Joe) McCarthyites. This is coming from the same crowd that wanted to criminally prosecute Bush’s lawyers? Spare me.
Is this really a standard the Left wants to establish? That policymaking lawyers inside the Justice Department will hence forth have a cloak of invisibility about their previous activities? That’s going to be tough news for any number of left-wing activist groups come the next Republican administration.
So, we have 8 lawyers in the DOJ who have represented the enemy of this country, and one of them is the highest ranking attorney in the land…..and on top of that he covered up this fact.
Outrage from the MSM commencing in 3…2…1
Yeaaaahhhh.
If we can’t get outrage on this can we get at least get some indignation about the DOJ shutting down legitimate investigations?
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