Mukasey

Word on the street is that Michael Mukasey may be the next attorney general.  From what we've heard lately, that's about the best choice Bush could make.

The New York Times' David Johnston writes:

The former judge, Michael B. Mukasey, has been cited as a candidate since Mr. Gonzales announced his resignation. Mr. Mukasey is a respected jurist but is not well known in Washington legal circles, and some Republicans say he seems too close to Democrats who have been fierce administration critics...

...Mr. Mukasey would bring a familiarity with legal issues surrounding terrorism. In 1993, he presided over the prosecution of Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called Blind Sheik, whom he sentenced to life in prison for his role in a plot to blow up New York landmarks and tunnels. In 2003, as chief judge, he ruled that Jose Padilla was an enemy combatant but entitled to access to his lawyers.

Some Republican lawyers have privately bristled that lawmakers like Charles E. Schumer, the Democratic senator from New York who led the effort to oust Mr. Gonzales, has publicly suggested that Mr. Mukasey would be a credible candidate. Mr. Schumer said in March that Mr. Mukasey, among others, were “conservative Republicans, but they put the rule of law first.”

Glenn Greenwald allows as how Mukasey is about as far right as you can get when it comes to judicial theory and still have blood in your veins, but he really, really believes in the law.

I want to highlight one extremely relevant consideration concerning Judge Mukasey -- the impressive role he played in presiding over the Jose Padilla case in its earliest stages. After Padilla was first detained in April 2002 and declared an "enemy combatant," he was held incommunicado, denied all access to the outside the world, including counsel, and the Bush administration refused to charge him with any crimes. A lawsuit was filed on Padilla's behalf by a New York criminal defense lawyer, Donna Newman, demanding that Padilla be accorded the right to petition for habeas corpus and that, first, he be allowed access to a lawyer. That lawsuit was assigned to Judge Mukasey, which almost certainly made the Bush DOJ happy.

But any such happiness proved to be unwarranted. Judge Mukasey repeatedly defied the demands of the Bush administration, ruled against them, excoriated them on multiple occasions for failing to comply with his legally issued orders, and ruled that Padilla was entitled to contest the factual claims of the government and to have access to lawyers. He issued these rulings in 2002 and 2003, when virtually nobody was defying the Bush administration on anything, let alone on assertions of executive power to combat the Terrorists. And he made these rulings in the face of what was became the standard Bush claim that unless there was complete acquiescence to all claimed powers by the President, a Terrorist attack would occur and the blood would be on the hands of those who impeded the President.

More troubling though is Mukasey's close -- very close -- relationship with Rudy Giuliani.

Comments

[Michael B. Mukasey]

Michael Mukasey will make a great attorney general.