Obama’s December Gitmo surprise — and the Covington & Burling connection revisited
Don’t you love our open, transparent, most ethical ever White House?
Team Obama chose the weekend before Christmas, with Americans wrapped up in the holidays and the Senate occupied with its dead-of-night Demcare deal, to release 12 Gitmo detainees back to their home countries:
The Justice Department identified those sent home as:
_Afghans Abdul Hafiz, Sharifullah, Mohamed Rahim and Mohammed Hashim.
_Somali detainees Mohammed Soliman Barre and Ismael Arale.
_Yemenis Jamal Muhammad Alawi Mari, Farouq Ali Ahmed, Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi, Muhammaed Yasir Ahmed Taher, Fayad Yahya Ahmed al Rami and Riyad Atiq Ali Abdu al Haf.
Mohammed Albasha, Yemen’s embassy spokesman, said his embassy “hails the release and transfer of six of its citizens from Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. Yemen will continue its diplomatic dialogue with the United States Government to repatriate the remaining Yemeni detainees.”
The administration has announced that five Guantanamo detainees will be tried in a New York federal court and more are likely to be tried in this country.
Up to 100 detainees will be sent to a nearly empty prison in Thomson, Ill.
Gird your loin for more bloody Gitmo recidivism.
***
Ed Morrissey notes that the Somalis were sent back to their terror-friendly regime, whose government we don’t even recognize.
As I’ve noted in Culture of Corruption and many times on this blog, corruptocrat AG Eric Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, represents or has represented more than dozen Gitmo detainees from Yemen.
Reminder from CoC:
Putting on the best terrorist defense is a Covington & Burling specialty. Among the firm’s other celebrity terrorist clients: 17 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The law firm employed dozens of radical attorneys such as David Remes and Marc Falkoff to provide the enemy combatants with more than 3,000 hours of pro bono representation. Covington & Burling co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in the Boumediene v. Bush detainee case, and secured victories for several other Gitmo enemy combatants in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Falkoff went on to publish a book of poetry, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, which he dedicated to the suspected terrorists: “For my friends inside the wire, Mahmoad, Majid, Yasein, Saeed, Abdulsalam, Mohammed, Adnan, Jamal, Othman, Adil, Mohamed, Abdulmalik, Areef, Adeq, Farouk, Salman, and Makhtar. Inshallah, we will next meet over coffee in your homes in Yemen.”
How sweet. One of the class of Yemeni Gitmo detainees that Falkoff described as “gentle, thoughtful young men” was released in 2005—only to blow himself up (gently and thoughtfully, of course) in a truck bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in 2008, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.
The Senate shrugged at the glaring conflict of interest Attorney General Holder presents in handling Gitmo legal issues. Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu, author of Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay, makes the ethical problem plain:
As a senior partner, he undoubtedly had significant input on what kind of charity cases his firm picked up. He surely knew that dozens of lawyers from his firm were among the 500-plus civilian lawyers representing the 244 or so remaining detainees (on top of military-court-appointed defenders). Even now, his Covington colleagues continue to allege rampant torture at Gitmo. They’re fighting hard to have detainees tried through the US court system—essentially given the same rights as US citizens. And their arguments and plans hinge largely on having Holder issue a bad report card.
Recent polls indicate that at least half of Americans disagree with affording the detainees legal rights on US soil. Will they have the same access to Holder’s ears as his former colleagues do?
The White House says that Holder will formally recuse himself from charging decisions and prosecutions affecting any of Covington & Burling’s clients, but he will have unfettered oversight over Obama’s order to close the facility within a year. Moreover, there’s a gaping loophole in the Obama administration ethics rules that will allow Holder to participate in decision-making despite his conflicts of interests if he can show that his participation in a matter outweighs an appearance or actual conflict of interest…
From Falkoff’s drippy dedication list, it looks like at least three of the Yemenis released by the White House may have been represented by Covington & Burling at some point.
Defend Our Defenders is on the case.
Related: GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions pushes the administration to halt Gitmo returns to Saudi Arabia.
Related: House GOP leader John Bohner vows Republicans will block Thomson transfer.
Related: GOP Rep. Frank Wolf calls for release of Gitmo recidivism report.
***
Reminder: Former Covington & Burling lawyer David Remes is the one who dropped his trousers in a p.r. stunt to drum up sympathy for his Gitmo clients from Yemen last year:
Obama’s December Gitmo surprise leaves America caught with its security pants down.
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Yo dude! (averts eyes)
That’s no place to keep your Pez dispenser!
No wonder they think we are weak. We are, with this government. For those who remember Vietnam, it’s just as frustrating. It will end the same; withdrawal through some ridiculous “understanding”, with Americans watching the terrorists cheering in the streets.
if we free all the terrorists from Gitmo, can we then put lawyers there?
You can see from David Remes photo in his undies why he wants to represent Gitmo detainees. Just look at Remes. His body is nothing but fat. His legs are chicken legs. You can see that Remes never did an athletic thing in his life. And in his day to day law practice, there is no excitement. It is lucrative for sure but the actual work he does is dry as dust. And you can’t go to to the country club on Sunday and brag about writing the second draft of a brief about radio licenses to the FCC. It is just dull. But when Remes goes down to GITMO and gets to trash talk American soldiers and gets to hang out with Islamic terrorists, well that makes a guy like Remes get positively jiggy. You can only imagine Remes telling his fellow white shoe lawyers how he was down for the struggle, staring down US Marines and praying with Yemenite Muslims. Now Remes has something to tell his colleagues for sure. No FCC brief for Remes. Remes is down for the struggle.
I actually feel a little sorry for pathetic characters like Attorney Remes.
It would never work there is not enough room there to store all the slimy lawyers in this country.
It is O-dumbo’s way of celebrating the 12 days of christmas.
On the twelfth day of christmas my Boy Queen gave to me; 12 released terrorists…
Booomer: If we stack them like cordwood, we could get quite a few in there!
Tops on my Christmas wish list is the “secret” grand jury in NYC failing to indict KSM and the other four. TOTUS does not have a Plan B.
Ever try and stack something slimy?
My goodness, I never realized that that was the way lawyers filed their briefs! Who would have thought?
yessir; by the state of the union address the dear one will have kept all his promises and goals. close gitmo, just let the terrorists our soldiers have captured go! change healthcare, the dems may have had to bribe half their caucus, but oh well the taxpayers will fork over the money or the irs will confiscate their house. reparations to blacks, “jobs bill” check. reparations to unions, “ditto” check. reparations to gays, ah so i missed that one. that’s for my second year, along with illegal alien amnesty and cap and tax for my wall street trader buds just in time for the next election cash infusion. IT’S ALL GOOD!
From that looks of that I’d have to say that apparently those that can’t fill ‘em fil ‘em.
Can’t we SELL the detainees back to their home countries?
For cryin’ out loud Michelle! Not while I’m eating lunch!
!!BLEEEECH!!
But, it’s further proof that Duh One has a pre-12/7/1941 mentality.
Doesn’t Code Pink have an opening in their Ugly Chorus? BTW – what is it about Libs that they want to disrobe in public?
All a lawyer can manage is “fine print”….
He’s probably wearinng panties under the briefs.
Never, never, ever let the prosecution see your shortcomings.
The ones going back to Afghanistan should be training aids for sniper teams.
The two Somali fanatics were sent to Somaliland, a “nation” the USA has NO contact with, and the powers that be in that toilet-state immediately freed them both. Excellent move, Obama. Like all your other blathery, overwrought, overthought failures.
More like a pre-1776 mentality, or a pre-1863 mentality. War CAN and HAS happened in our country. Whenever we are threatened with tyranny and divisiveness, we fight. We are patriots and patriots don’t let their country be destroyed by power-mad zealots. THEY.HAVE.NO.RIGHT to do this to the citizens of this country, and the sooner we make that abundantely clear, the sooner we can get on with healing our land.
What are 100 leftwing lawyers
at the bottom of the oceanimprisioned in Gitmo called?A good start!
Regarding the photo—W. W. T. M. I.
Way, way too much information.
Time for Chapoclown to chime in to explain why Holder doesn’t have any conflict of interest and besides, Cheney did it first.
Well, that is not a pretty picture but it is not as frightening as some of the pictures used here recently…
I think if I had a family member injured because of one of the jihadi’s gotten off by these shysters, I would be looking to sue them.
During an exit exam, under the guise of immune hots, implant these clowns with GPS tracking. Then let them go find their niche….
perhaps obummer is practicing chicago style justice ala capone?
This is SO DISGUSTING on so many levels! I agree with Republicanvet–start suing their sorry a—s and watch what happens. Anybody who thinks that Obeyme is not a sympathizer of Islamic terrorists isn’t paying attention.