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Tuesday, July 21st, 2020

Trump consults Bush torture lawyer on how to skirt law and rule by decree

Author:     Julian Borger
Source:     The Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Mon 20 Jul 2020 13.36 EDT
 Link: Trump consults Bush torture lawyer on how to skirt law and rule by decree
Stephan:   Just start with this: This is a report appearing in a British newspaper describing the current state of America. Makes you proud, right? No? Me neither. John Yoo, whose infamous memo was used to justify American torturing people of other nationalities has been pulled out of whatever cesspit, and Trump now wants to use him to justify creating a national storm trooper force.
John Yoo, who wrote an infamous memo used to justify waterboarding
Credit: Melissa Golden/Getty

The Trump administration has been consulting the former government lawyer who wrote the legal justification for waterboarding, on how the president might try to rule by decree.

John Yoo told Axios he has been talking to White House officials about his view that a recent supreme court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders that flout federal law.

In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump declared he would try to use that interpretation to try to force through decrees on healthcare, immigration and “various other plans” over the coming month.

Constitutional scholars and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of paramilitary federal forces against protesters in Portland as a sign that Trump is ready to use this broad interpretation of presidential powers as a means to suppress basic constitutional rights.Advertisement

“This is how it begins,” Laurence Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor, wrote on Twitter. “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If ever there was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us.”

Yoo became notorious for […]

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2 Comments

  1. Rev. Dean on Tuesday, July 21, 2020 at 10:35 am

    I believe any such action is against the constitution.

  2. cynthia papermaster on Wednesday, July 22, 2020 at 2:19 am

    Lawrence Tribe and all law professors should repudiate Yoo, make sure he’s disbarred and prosecuted for his complicity in torture– a crime under international and U.S. law.