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Liz Cheney

April 15, 2010
AG Holder Blasts Attacks on DOJ Attorneys Who Once Defended Military Detainees
During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Attorney General Eric Holder "offered a passionate and sharp denunciation ... of the attacks leveled by Liz Cheney and others accusing his department of aiding al Qaeda sympathizers," The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports.
For several months Sen. Charles Grassley has loudly called for Holder to release more information about Department of Justice attorneys who, before entering government service, had provided legal representation to military detainees. Grassley's effort was backed by former Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz, when a group she helps lead released a scathing YouTube video tagging the DOJ attorneys the "Al Qaeda Seven." At yesterday's oversight hearing, Grassley again sought to wrench more information from Holder about the attorneys.

But Holder pushed back. "There has been an attempt to take the names of the people who represent Guantanamo detainees and to drag their reputations through the mud," Holder said. "There were reprehensible ads in essence to question their patriotism. Their names are out there now. I'm simply not going to be a part of that effort. I would not allow good, decent lawyers who have followed the best traditions of American jurisprudence ... I will not allow their reputations to be besmirched. I will not be a part of that."

Stein reported that Holder's defense was applauded by Committee member Sen. Richard Durbin, who said, "I think you are standing up for a very fundamental principle and rule of law here that goes back to John Adams."

Cheney's YouTube ad ignited a backlash, with prominent Republicans weighing in against the attacks. Former Independent Counsel Kenneth Start blasted the attacks on the DOJ attorneys as "shameful. For more on the matter, see ACSblog posts here.

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Tags:
Executive power, Habeas corpus, Criminal Justice, Al Qaeda 7, Department of Justice, DOJ, Keep America Safe, Liz Cheney, Sen. Grassley
March 29, 2010
Justice Department: 403 Domestic Convictions for Terrorism, Post-9/11
The Justice Department is firing back at opponents of domestic trials for terrorism-related crimes with a comprehensive list of successful prosecutions dating back to President George W. Bush's administration.

Greg Sargent broke the story at The Plum Line:

Now, in its most comprehensive pushback to date, the Justice Department has produced a detailed accounting of hundreds of such prosecutions in chart form. It was sent over by a source and can be viewed right here.

Former Bush flack Dana Perino recently said the claim of hundreds of prosecutions is "as false as it gets." And GOP Senator Jeff Sessions dismissed it as "unsubstantiated."

At TAPPED, Adam Serwer surveys the list's contents:

The names are shifted into two categories: Category I, which includes "violations of federal statutes that are directly related to international terrorism and that are utilized regularly in international terrorism matters," and Category II, which includes "defendants charged with violating a variety of other statutes where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism." There are 403 names on the list, dating back to 2001.
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Tags:
Executive power, Other courts, Separation of Powers and Federalism, Adam Serwer, Domestic Trials, Greg Sargent, Justice Department, Keep American Safe, Liz Cheney, Terrorism Prosecutions
March 17, 2010
Defense Continues to Mount for DOJ Attorneys Maligned as “Al Qaeda Seven”
Attacks leveled by conservatives against Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys who provided legal representation to military detainees before joining the government continue to reverberate with lawyers, including many with ACS affiliations, have countered the tactics in newspaper op-ed pages across the country. The attacks triggered by Sen. Charles Grassley's criticism of the DOJ attorneys have been fueled by Liz Cheney's group called Keep America Safe.
In a Chicago Tribune column published today, Seattle attorney Harry H. Schneider Jr. and Chicago attorney Thomas P. Sullivan lambasted Cheney's Keep America Safe group for producing an inflammatory YouTube video tagging the DOJ the "Department of Jihad," and the attorneys the "Al Qaeda Seven."

Schneider and Sullivan write:

It is hard to imagine a more reckless charge. Well, on second thought, we can think of one. Her video is reminiscent of similar tactics used during one of the darker episodes in American history, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy charged that those who insisted on due process for anyone he accused must be a Communist sympathizer or a closet enemy of the U.S.

The two defend the DOJ attorneys' previous work on behalf of military detainees, writing:

Our constitutional system requires that we afford due process to defendants even in times of genuine threat to our nation and attacks on our people. The courts depend on the willingness of lawyers to represent those accused of crimes, although their clients may be feared or hated. We have long since accepted that a lawyer who is acting as counsel for a person accused of a crime does not make the lawyer a criminal.

In an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe, Sabin Willet, an attorney with Bingham McCutchen, who has represented military detainees, wrote, "Some Americans will see the rule of law as a threat, and lawyers as the enemy. Small men with loud voices will exploit their fears on cable television. Petty politicians will mine them for votes."

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Tags:
Separation of Powers and Federalism, Department of Justice, DOJ, Keep America Safe, Liz Cheney, Sen. Grassley
March 11, 2010
Attacks on DOJ Attorneys Continue to Unnerve Some on the Right
Pushback continues over conservatives' attacks on Department of Justice attorneys who represented military detainees accused of terrorism before entering government service. The New York Times "Room for Debate Blog" includes comment from across the political spectrum supportive and critical of the attacks. In a post dubbed "Aiding the Enemy," National Review Legal Affairs Editor Andrew C. McCarthy took aim at lawyers who represented detainees accused of terrorism, writing, "Members of any other profession or institution would be indicted for coming to the enemy's aid during wartime. Lawyers not only demand immunity from the ordinary duties of citizenship, but they insist that you admire them, or, at the very least, regard them as above criticism for volunteering their services to those trying to kill Americans."
McCarthy's post triggered a sharp rebuke from George Washington University law school professor Orin Kerr, a former recipient of a prestigious Federalist Society award. On the conservative legal theory blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, Kerr blasted McCarthy's arguments as "ridiculous."

Taking on McCarthy's "basic argument that lawyers who represented detainees ‘aided the enemy in wartime,' and should normally be guilty of treason," Kerr wrote:

If that's true, isn't the federal judiciary, and aren't the Justices of the Supreme Court, also guilty of treason? In fact, aren't the judges the kingpins of this treasonous plot to "hurt the war effort"? After all, lawyers only make arguments to judges. It doesn't actually help detainees to make argument courts reject. It's up to the judges to rule one way or the other. If the lawyers are aiding the enemy, they're only minor players: It's the judges, and especially the Justices, who are the real guilty parties, as they're the ones that actually help the detainees by ruling in their favor. Does McCarthy think the Justices of the Supreme Court are guilty of aiding the enemy, and that (if we treat them like everybody else) they should be "indicted for coming to the enemy's aid during wartime"?

As noted by The New York Times, the controversy, which has been fueled by Sen. Charles Grassley's demands that Attorney General Eric Holder (above, left) release names and information of DOJ attorneys who have represented detained terrorism suspects, and Liz Cheney's group Keep American Safe, which produced an inflammatory YouTube video referring to the DOJ attorneys as the "Al Qaeda Seven," has revealed a split among conservatives.

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Tags:
Legal services, Rights of detainees, Separation of powers, Criminal Justice, Department of Justice, Eric Holder, Keep America Safe, Liz Cheney
March 8, 2010
Backlash Builds Over Conservative Attacks on DOJ Lawyers
A backlash continues to build over attacks launched by Sen. Grassley and a conservative organization on Department of Justice attorneys who represented Guantanamo Bay detainees. Politico, Slate and The Blog of Legal Times all have stories on the dust-up over the YouTube video produced by a group affiliated with Liz Cheney (pictured) and Bill Kristol, Keep America Safe, which questions the loyalty of the DOJ attorneys, dubbing them "The Al Qaeda Seven." As noted last week on ACSblog, a growing chorus of conservatives is questioning the organization's tactics. Now "leading conservative lawyers and policy experts, [and] former Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr," have issued a statement blasting the attacks on the DOJ lawyers as "shameful." Politico has the entire statement here. (Also signing the letter was Charles "Cully" Stimson, a senior Pentagon official who resigned his post in 2007 after he sharply criticized U.S. law firms that had represented military detainees.)
In an article for Slate, Dahlia Lithwick says the methods used by Cheney and Kristol are beyond being over-the-top. Their attacks, especially Liz Cheney's, are part of the "ever-expanding war on the Bill of Rights." Lithwick maintains that the DOJ attorneys who represented the Guantanamo Bay detainees were doing so on justified grounds.

She writes:

They were defending the U.S. Constitution - the great whomping chunks of the Bill of Rights that Cheney and her friends are so eager to write out of existence. They did it because - as Spencer Ackerman points out - the Military Commissions Act of 2006 expressly provided that detainees get defense lawyers. And they did it, as Jay Bookman notes, for the same reason John Adams agreed to represent British soldiers charged with killing civilians during the Boston Massacre in 1770. Because long before Liz Cheney was born and long after she's gone, the Bill of Rights requires serious people to take it seriously.

Attorneys at leading national law firms are also joining the fray, as the Legal Times blog reports. Brian Brooks, managing partner of O'Melveny & Myers' Washington Office tells the Legal Times, "From the perspective of our firm, providing representation for unpopular causes is a long and noble tradition in the law, and that kind of criticism is not going to affect our firm's commitment to that cause. If the private bar doesn't step up and show that kind of courage, then I think our whole system of justice is in question."

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Tags:
Criminal Justice, Bill Kristol, Department of Justice, Guantanamo Bay, Keep American Safe, Liz Cheney

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