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KoKo

(84,711 posts)
Mon May 5, 2014, 07:47 PM May 2014

Uh Oh...ACLU/Leahy/Feinstein Supporting Rand Paul "Hold" on David Barron (Secret BinLaden Kill Memo)


Sen. Rand Paul has warned Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that he will place a hold on one of President Obama’s appellate court nominees because of his role in crafting the legal basis for Obama’s drone policy.

Paul, the junior Republican senator from Kentucky, has informed Reid he will object to David Barron’s nomination to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals, unless the Justice Department makes public the memos he authored justifying the killing of an American citizen in Yemen.

The American Civil Liberties Union supports Paul’s objection, giving some Democratic lawmakers extra incentive to support a delay to Barron’s nomination, which could come to the floor in the next two weeks.

Barron, formerly a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, penned at least one secret legal memo approving the September 2011 drone strike that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric whom intelligence officials accused of planning terrorist attacks against the United States.

The attack also killed another American citizen, Samir Khan, the creator of an online magazine catering to jihadists.

Paul says the DOJ must show Barron’s memo before he will consider lifting the hold.


“The constitutionality of this policy has been the subject of intense debate in our country since its implementation,” Paul wrote in an April 30 letter obtained by The Hill.

“The disclosure of this document will not only clarify that debate, it will also allow the Senate to gain critical insight into David Barron’s judicial philosophy,” he added.

Paul waged a 13-hour filibuster in March 2013, delaying the nomination of John Brennan to serve as director of the Central Intelligence Agency to protest the Obama administration’s drone policy.

During his filibuster, Paul demanded that Attorney General Eric Holder clarify whether U.S. citizens on American soil could be the targets of drone attacks. Holder ruled out the possibility in a letter dated March 7, 2013.


The ACLU has sided with Paul, who has a handful of Democratic allies.

“No senator should be voting on this nomination until they have an opportunity to read all of the OLC opinions he has written on targeted killing,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) joined Paul’s filibuster of Brennan’s nomination last year.

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Leahy said in prepared remarks at a hearing on drones on April 23, 2013, that he had, for more than a year, sought access to the complete legal justification prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel supporting the targeted killing of Americans.

Public critics of the administration’s drone program know from the Times’s lawsuit that Barron signed a 50-page memo justifying the strike on al-Awlaki but suspect he might have authored and signed several others.

“There truly are very few legal opinions put out by the Justice Department that have been as significant or consequential as these OLC opinions authored by David Barron,” said the ACLU’s Anders.


Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in February of last year that her staff was aware of nine OLC memos laying out the legal argument for killing al-Awlaki without a trial but had only seen four of those documents.
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Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/205105-paul-starts-new-drone-war#ixzz30t4gSqry
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Uh Oh...ACLU/Leahy/Feinstein Supporting Rand Paul "Hold" on David Barron (Secret BinLaden Kill Memo) (Original Post) KoKo May 2014 OP
Kick for a curious development KoKo May 2014 #1
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