Jan Crawford Greenburg over at the ABC News Blog, writes:

“News reports yesterday made much out of the fact that a draft report about the so-called “torture memos” doesn’t recommend criminal prosecution for DOJ officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee, but instead would only refer them to their state bars for disciplinary proceedings.

Setting aside that my friend Mike Isikoff reported this back in February, the flurry of reporting is baffling for another reason: It appears John Yoo cannot be disciplined or disbarred for writing those memos, even if the Office of Professional Responsibility says it has evidence he should be.

That’s because OPR’s five-year investigation—carefully timed for release only as Bush was leaving the White House and Obama was coming in—dragged on too long. As a result of that timing, OPR blew the deadline for referring possible misconduct allegations against Yoo.

John Yoo is admitted to the bar in Pennsylvania. But the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board, which would investigate any complaints against him, imposes a four-year limitation for complaints.

Yoo wrote the memos in 2002 and 2003. This is 2009. You do the math.”

As Andrew McCarthy, former DOJer writes:

“OPR, like the Civil [ACM CORRECTION:] RIGHTS Division, is largely a bastion of the Left at DOJ. But to get some things done, the career lawyers need sign-offs from political appointees, so they butt heads with the brass from time to time if a Republican administration is in power. Patently, they slow-walked the ethics investigation of Yoo and Bybee for years, waiting for President Bush to be on his way out and a more agreeable Democrat administration to come in. In the waning weeks of the Bush administration, they tried to slide their report by AG Michael Mukasey — perhaps figuring he was on his way out the door and wouldn’t pay it much attention.

…When Mukasey read the report, he was so dissatisfied, he demanded Yoo and Bybee be allowed to comment—as [Michael] Isikoff also reported back in February.

Mukasey then wrote a detailed response, also signed by Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, that was harshly critical of OPR’s efforts, which he said veered far afield into matters that were irrelevant to whether Yoo and Bybee gave bad legal advice. What would be the relevance, for example, of details of at least one CIA interrogation that went horribly wrong—if that interrogation had gone beyond what the memos approved in the first place?

So all the talk about referrals, all the leaks about how the two men erred in judgment, starts to feel a little bit like old-fashioned politics. Especially when you think about the timing of the report—as Mukasey was packing up his office and a new administration coming in—and big-time blown deadlines.”

A little more than that. We might need to know who was withholding the report. Was it Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Chairman – you know like another Rockefeller memo?

We might not know for a while, but something is for sure, someone was coordinating this. Just who?

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