Legal Commentary

Final OPR Report to Clear Yoo and Bybee on Torture Memos

By Jeralyn

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility report on whether the authors of the Bush era torture memos violated professional ethical standards is going to reverse course and absolve John Yoo and Jay Bybee of wrongdoing. Now, it will say they simply exercised poor judgment.

Newsweek broke the story. How the change came about: [More...]

Via the Washington Post:

A draft report prepared at the end of the Bush years recommended that Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge based in Nevada, be referred to state disciplinary authorities for sanctions that could have included the revocation of their licenses to practice law.

But then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey and Deputy Mark Filip blasted the analysis in the draft and sent it back to the ethics office for more work. Meanwhile, the five-year statute of limitations on Yoo's alleged conduct expired, raising doubts about whether a disciplinary referral would have had any bite. The draft report did not recommend Bradbury face sanctions, three sources told The Washington Post last year.

More from Truthout:

David Margolis, the 34-year career prosecutor at the DOJ charged with reviewing the final version of the report, was responsible for "softening" OPR's earlier finding of professional misconduct and instead determined that Yoo and Bybee "showed poor judgment" when they drafted an August 1, 2002 legal opinion authorizing the CIA to employ methods such as waterboarding against detainees during interrogations, according to Newsweek.

That means neither Yoo nor Bybee will be referred to state bar associations where they could have faced disciplinary action since poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct, according to OPR's post-investigation procedures. For Bybee, such a referral could have also led to an impeachment inquiry before Congress.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 30, 2010 (boomark / email).