![]() Bush administration, when it provided legal justifications for the CIA’s torture of terror suspects and the expansion of the national security state, which included spying on Americans’ electronic communications without a warrant.įormer President Obama relied on legal opinions from the office when he unilaterally ordered military action in Syria and Libya, as well as the 2011 assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. The OLC, typically staffed by about five political appointees and 20 career attorneys, received little public attention until the George W. “I would describe it as a deeply secretive office of lawyers in the Justice Department that has increasingly seen it as its job to justify executive branch overreach.” “It’s remarkable how often when you see there’s something that’s clearly wrong in the government’s operations, you can so frequently tie it back to an OLC decision that allows them to do it,” Brian said. “But if you think that the federal government is representing the interests of the American public and the rule of law, and that the president has an obligation to faithfully execute the law, OLC’s precedent and role doesn’t really advance that.”ĭanielle Brian, the executive director of the nonpartisan Project on Government Oversight, said the office should be reformed to make it more transparent and less likely to provide legal cover for controversial policies or actions. “If you think of the federal government like a private client, then they go to OLC like their private attorney - to make the best arguments in favor of what they want,” said Erica Newland, counsel at Protect Democracy and a former OLC attorney who has spoken out against the Trump DOJ since leaving in 2018 after joining as a career attorney in 2016. The judge’s accusation this week that the OLC was tasked with clearing Trump’s name is only likely to increase calls for reform and greater transparency.Įthics and transparency advocates have been calling for the office to be reformed for years, and some are hoping that the latest revelation about how it operated during the Trump administration will provide some momentum. A small but powerful section of the Department of Justice (DOJ) is under renewed scrutiny after a federal judge tore into former Attorney General William Barr and ordered the DOJ to release a memo that let former President Trump claim he was exonerated by the Mueller probe.Ĭritics of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which provides legal advice to the White House and Cabinet agencies, have long argued it acts as a rubber stamp for the president and essentially drafts laws behind closed doors.
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