The Trump administration has been consulting with the former government attorney who wrote the legal justification for the submarine, about how the president could try to rule by decree.
John Yoo told Axios that he had been speaking to White House officials about his opinion that a recent Supreme Court ruling on immigration would allow Trump to issue executive orders that violate federal law.
In a Fox News Sunday interview, Trump stated that he would try to use that interpretation to try to impose decrees on healthcare, immigration and “various other plans” over the next month.
Constitutional academics and human rights activists have also pointed to the deployment of federal paramilitary 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. .
“This is how it begins,” Laurence Tribe, a professor of constitutional law at Harvard, wrote on Twitter. “The dictatorial hunger for power is insatiable. If there ever was a time for peaceful civil disobedience, that time is upon us. ”
Yoo became famous for a legal memo that he wrote in August 2002, when he was an assistant to the deputy attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
He stated: “Necessity or legitimate defense may justify interrogation methods that could violate ‘the criminal prohibition against torture’.”
Yoo’s memoranda were used to justify the submarine and other forms of torture against terrorism suspects in CIA “black sites” around the world.
In a book titled Defender in Chief, to be published next week, Yoo argues that Trump is restoring the powers of the presidency envisioned by the drafters of the United States Constitution.
In a June article in National Review, he wrote that a supreme court decision that blocked Trump’s attempt to repeal Barack Obama’s deferred action program for childhood arrivals, known as Dhaka and established by executive order, meant that Trump could do the same to achieve his goal. policy objectives
Dhaka suspended deportations of undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children. As an example of what Trump could accomplish in the same way, Yoo suggested that the president could declare a national right to carry firearms openly, in conflict with many state laws.
“I could declare that I would not enforce federal firearm laws,” Yoo wrote, “and that a new ‘Trump permit’ would release any holder of state and local gun control restrictions.
“Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it during the presidency. And furthermore, even if the courts declared the permit illegal, his successor would have to continue applying the program for one or two more years. ”
Yoo’s article was later seen on Trump’s desk in the Oval Office.
Constitutional scholars have rejected Yoo’s arguments because they ignore the limits of the president’s executive powers imposed by the founders, who were determined to prevent the rise of a tyrant.
The tribe called Yoo’s interpretation of Dhaka’s decision “indefensible.”
He added: “I am afraid this lawless administration will take full advantage of the fact that the judicial wheels are moving slowly and that it will be difficult to keep up with the many ways that Trump, assisted and prompted by Bill Barr as attorney general and Chad Wolf As the Acting Head of Homeland Security can usurp the powers of Congress and reduce fundamental rights in the immigration space in particular, but also in matters of public health and security. “
Alka Pradhan, a defense attorney in the September 11 terrorism cases against prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, said: “John Yoo’s alleged reasoning has always been based on ‘What can the President?’ instead of ‘What is the purpose and letter of the law?’
“That is not legal reasoning, it is inherently tyrannical and undemocratic.”
Yoo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pradhan and other defense attorneys at the pre-trial hearings at the Guantanamo Bay military court have argued that the use of torture against his clients, made possible by Yoo’s 2002 note, invalidated much of the case against him. .
“The fact that John Yoo is employed and free to comment on legal matters is an example of the culture of impunity in the United States,” he said.
“Our failure to hold him (and other torturers) accountable after the Bush administration allowed him to continue to rot the legal checks and balances around the presidency today.”
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