The Next Attack: Holder’s Amicus Curiae Brief Against Unlimited Presidential Power
As Jake Tapper reports, the next attack the McCarthyites have planned is on Eric Holder, for once saying in an amicus curiae brief that it’s possible following the Constitution will make it harder to detain potential terrorists.
In 2004 Attorney General Eric Holder was one of four former Clinton administration officials offering an amicus brief questioning President Bush’s assertion that he had the inherent authority to indefinitely detain as “enemy combatants” American citizens captured in the US.
The brief, offered in the case Donald Rumsfeld v Jose Padilla, can be read HERE. Holder’s co-authors include former Attorney General Janet Reno, former deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann, and the former counsel for the CIA Jeffrey Smith.
A Republican official on the Senate Judiciary Committee tells ABC News that Holder did not disclose this amicus brief before his confirmation hearings.
The brief is actually refreshing in its simplicity. It recites all the means the executive branch has to combat terrorism, then says the President doesn’t also need the power to detain Americans without any judicial oversight. I can see why and how the Republicans will make a stink of it, but that doesn’t mean they are right.
But there’s a part of the brief that deserves particularly close attention–because it raises the implicit question of why the Bush Administration didn’t just charge Jose Padilla, if they could back up the claims they made about him.
When Padilla was arrested pursuant to the material witness warrant, his terrorist plans were thwarted. He was then available to be questioned to the same extent as any other citizen suspected of criminal activity. Moreover, the facts set forth in the President’s findings, and the facts presented to the District Court, are more than sufficient to support criminal charges against Padilla, including providing material support to designated terrorist organizations, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B; providing material support to terrorists, id. § 2339A; conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, 18 U.S.C. § 2332a; and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, id. § 2332a(a)(1).36 Read more →