By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Rep. Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, on Thursday accused Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican committee chair, of an “election year witch hunt” in going after the Attorney General and the Justice Department during a Congressional probe into the flawed Operation Fast and…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain (R-Az) wrote Thursday in a Op-Ed piece in the Washington Post that he opposed torture, and said it just isn’t true that waterboarding lead authorities to the trusted courier of the Osama bin Laden. “Much of this debate is a definitional one: whether any or all…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The Daily Kos website writes that ex-Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey “has a new gig in which to ply his talents: making it easier for corporations to bribe foreign governments.” The site writes that the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FPCA) was designed to prevent U.S.-based multinational corporations from bribing foreign governments. The…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Former U.S. Atty. Michael Mukasey, who came to the Justice Department at the tail end of the Bush administration, is asking the White House to commute the sentence of convicted spy Jonathan Pollard to time served, the Jerusalem Post reported. In a letter to President Obama, Mukasey, a former…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced Tuesday that it won’t file criminal charges over the destruction by CIA workers of 92 videotapes showing harsh interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects. “In January 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Assistant United States Attorney John Durham to investigate the destruction by CIA personnel of…
Michael Mukasey is a former N.Y. federal judge who served as the U.S. Attorney General from November 2007 to January 2009. By Michael B. Mukasey The Washington Post It seems to me unlikely that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will be known to future generations of lawyers for generating any groundbreaking legal principle or issue. But when…
By Michael B. Mukasey The Washington Post Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who by his own account came to this country most recently in 2001 to help organize a second wave of attacks after the Sept. 11 atrocities, received a jail sentence on Oct. 29 that could free him within six years. This again prompts the…
It’s not unusual for current administrations to undo some of the last minute rulings of the previous regime. Here’s one that will certainly be applauded by civil rights and immigration rights organizations. The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times WASHINGTON –Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. today vacated a ruling issued in the waning days of…
