John Yoo Biography
John Yoo( Full name: John Choon Yoo) is a Korean-American attorney, law professor, former government official, and author.
He is currently the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Previously, he served as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) of the Department of Justice, during the George W. Bush administration.
Yoo is best known for his opinions concerning the Geneva Conventions that attempted to legitimize the War on Terror by the United States. He also authored the so-called Torture Memos, which concerned the use of what the Central Intelligence Agency called enhanced interrogation techniques including waterboarding.
In 2009, two days after taking office, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13491, repudiating and revoking all legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the Office of Legal Counsel between September 11. 2001, and January 20. 2009.
Yoo was a law clerk for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He also served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yoo has been a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law since 1993. He has written two books on presidential power and the war on terrorism and many articles in scholarly journals and newspapers.
He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Trento and has been a visiting law professor at the Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Chicago, and Chapman University School of Law. Since 2003, Yoo has also been a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. He writes a monthly column, entitled “Closing Arguments”, for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He wrote and continues to write academic books including Crisis and Command.
Yoo has been principally associated with his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under Attorney General John Ashcroft during the George W. Bush Administration. Yoo’s expansive view of presidential power led to a close relationship with Vice President Dick Cheney’s office.
He played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration’s policy in the war on terrorism, arguing that prisoner of war status under the Geneva Conventions does not apply to “enemy combatants” captured during the war in Afghanistan and held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp.
In addition, in what was known as the Bybee memo, Yoo asserted that executive authority during wartime allows waterboarding and other forms of torture, which were euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. He argued in his legal opinion that the president was not bound by the War Crimes Act. In addition, he provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration’s warrantless wiretapping program.
Yoo’s legal opinions were not shared by everyone within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State Colin Powell strongly opposed what he saw as an invalidation of the Geneva Conventions, while U.S. Navy general counsel Alberto Mora campaigned internally against what he saw as the “catastrophically poor legal reasoning” and dangerous extremism of Yoo’s opinions.
In December 2003, Yoo’s memo on permissible interrogation techniques, also known as the Bybee memo, was repudiated as legally unsound by the OLC, then under the direction of Jack Goldsmith. In June 2004, another of Yoo’s memos on interrogation techniques was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC.
Yoo’s contribution to these memos has remained a source of controversy following his departure from the Justice Department; he was called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in 2008 in defense of his role. The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) began investigating Yoo’s work in 2004 and in July 2009 completed a report that was sharply critical of his legal justification for waterboarding and other interrogation techniques.
The OPR report cites testimony Yoo gave to Justice Department investigators in which he claims that the “president’s war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be ‘massacred.’
“The OPR report concluded that Yoo had “committed ‘intentional professional misconduct’ when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against Al Qaeda suspects,” although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice Department lawyer.
In 2019, on Fox News, Yoo made the comment “Some might call that espionage” when discussing Active Military Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council. Vindman served for over two decades in the United States Army. He was awarded a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack while he served in Iraq. Vindman was set to testify in front of Congress the next day.
John Yoo Age
John Choon Yoo is a Korean-American attorney, law professor, former government official, and author. He was born on 10th July 1967 in Seoul, South Korea. Yoo is 52 years old as of 2019.
John Yoo Family
John Yoo was born “Yu Choon” (Korean: Yu Jun 유준) in Seoul, South Korea, and later immigrated as a child with his parents to the United States. He grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from the Episcopal Academy in 1985.
He earned a B.A. degree summa cum laude in American history from Harvard University in 1989 and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1992, where he co-authored a paper with Harold Hongju Koh. Yoo was admitted to practice law in Pennsylvania in 1993.
John Yoo Net Worth
John Yoo, the Berkeley law professor, and former Justice Department attorney have remained in the headwinds of mainstream media as the debate raged over whether he acted ethically in drafting the memos. He has an estimated Net Worth of $10 Million dollars as of 2019.
John Yoo Wife | John Yoo Elsa Arnett
He is married to Elsa Arnett, the daughter of journalist Peter Arnett.
In Berkeley, Yoo feels at home as a stranger in a strange land
John Yoo: An article in Section A on March 29 about legal guidance written by UC Berkeley law professor John C. Yoo and Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee when they were Justice Department lawyers in the George W. Bush administration said their advice “redefined torture as pain resulting in organ failure or death.” Their guidance defined torture as pain that “must rise to the level of death, organ failure,” but did not restrict it to acts that would actually result in organ failure or death. —
The former Bush administration lawyer who drafted what his critics call the “torture memos” is reviled by many in this liberal East Bay academic enclave, a feeling that is mutual though not, Yoo insists, wholly unpleasant.
“I think of myself as being West Berlin during the Cold War, a shining beacon of capitalism and democracy surrounded by a sea of Marxism,” Yoo observes, sipping iced tea in the faculty club lounge, a wan smile registering the discomfort of colleagues walking by en route to the bar.
He sees his neighbors as the human figures of “a natural history museum of the 1960s,” the Telegraph Avenue tableau of a graying, long-haired, pot-smoking counterculture stuck in the ideology’s half-century-old heyday.
“It’s like looking at the panoramic displays of troglodytes sitting around the campfire with their clubs. Here, it’s tie-dye and marijuana. It’s just like the 1960s, with the Vietnam War still to protest.”
Yoo, 42, is unrepentant about his role in providing the CIA and other agencies with legal cover to conduct harsh interrogation of terror suspects with techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning. In legal guidance he provided to the past administration, Yoo redefined torture as pain resulting in organ failure or death.
Calls for his ouster haven’t subsided despite a Department of Justice decision in February that neither Yoo nor his former boss in the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel, federal Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, will face prosecution for advice to the administration that showed “poor judgment” but not the willful breaking of the law.
Liberal civil rights advocates like the Center for Constitutional Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Alliance for Justice have demanded a full, independent investigation of Yoo and Bybee for their roles in the sanctioning of interrogation tactics the Obama administration has outlawed as violations of international treaties and U.S. moral values.
“I feel vindicated,” Yoo said of the Justice Department internal affairs report that concluded a five-year investigation and dropped an earlier recommendation that he and Bybee be subjected to disciplinary action by their respective state bar associations.
Yoo sees the investigation as political score-settling by those who disagreed with the tough war-on-terror policies of the Bush White House.
“Someday the Republicans will be in charge again, and would you want to see them conducting ethics and criminal investigations into the Obama administration?” he says. “I wouldn’t want to see that. So I hope that this closes this chapter in trying to use criminal and ethical charges to carry out political fights against the policy of a past administration.”
He sees the persistent protests of his fitness to teach law as the campaign of a radical community intolerant of views that don’t accord with their own.
After disclosure of the memos last year, Christopher Edley, the law school’s dean, deflected demands that he fire Yoo, saying that he and other university administrators would wait for the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibilities report and then “review it carefully and consider whether there are implications for this campus.”
Edley has said little since the Feb. 19 report that both detailed Yoo’s and Bybee’s misdeeds and eliminated an earlier finding that the lawyers had engaged in professional misconduct.
“I hope these new developments will end the arguments about faculty sanctions, but we should and will continue to argue about what is right or wrong, legal or illegal, in combating terrorism. That’s why we are here,” Edley said in a statement after the report was released.
Though Berkeley’s faculty remains predominantly liberal, it has become more ideologically diverse over the years as the best minds, regardless of political bent, have been picked to build the nation’s well-respected computer science program, engineering school, and law school, which is considered one of the best in the country.
Many of Yoo’s faculty colleagues have spoken out on the need for representing a wide range of viewpoints. Among those deflecting calls for Yoo’s dismissal was fellow law professor Goodwin Liu, whom Obama has nominated for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Students also represent a broad array of political outlooks, although critics of Yoo’s work for the Bush administration have dominated the debate over his tenured position.
“We don’t want someone like that teaching us about the law and how to apply the law. It’s a humiliation for the law school and a huge disservice to the law students,” said Liz Jackson, co-chair of the Boalt Hall chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. “We are a very prestigious place to be, and he gets a lot of legitimacy from being here and having a respected platform from which to speak.”
Yoo carries on cheerfully with his constitutional law class and a seminar on which he has bestowed the assignment to write a manual for delegates to a state constitutional convention, should one be called.
He points out that 180 students enrolled in his civil procedure class last semester, as evidence that he is hardly being shunned by the students. Critics contend, though, that only two professors offered the course and that it was the last opportunity for this year’s graduates to take the class.
John Yoo Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart Got Owned by John Yoo
When Comedy Central Host Jon Stewart invites a right-leaning guest on his show, viewers gear up for a showdown. Stewart relishes a verbal scrap and his opponents rarely leave the show unscathed.
But last night, Stewart was the one licking his wounds. In a face-to-face with John Yoo, the legal architect of the Bush administration’s war on terror, Stewart found himself at a loss for words. Today pundits on the left acknowledged that both rhetorically and comedically, Stewart came up short.
Yoo Looked Good, concedes Adam Serwer at The American Prospect: “Stewart found himself completely outmatched by a charming, tactful Yoo who seemed far better prepared to defend granting virtually unlimited powers to the executive branch than ever before. Put simply, Stewart failed to make Yoo look like he had done anything wrong. In fact, he made him look entirely reasonable.”
A Deflection Master, notes Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent: “Stewart has a great command of the facts and of his medium. Still, maybe it shouldn’t disappoint us to recognize that Yoo skillfully deflected most of Stewart’s assaults.”
Touché, Professor, writes Annie Lowrey at Foreign Policy: “Stewart couldn’t catch Yoo in a lie, couldn’t call his arguments what they were, and clearly seemed frustrated. He had brushed up on Yoo’s infamous briefs.
He wanted to engage Yoo. But the lawyer — as brilliant a legal mind as there is in the United States, some insist, dressed in a gray wool suit, looking every bit the professor — simply explained away.”
John Yoo Books
Defender in Chief: How Donald Trump Is Fighting for the Constitution 2020
Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War 2017
Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare 2014
Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order 2012
Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security 2011
War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror 2006
The powers of war and peace 2005
John Yoo Twitter
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John Yoo New York Times | John Yoo Fox News
Fox News Guest John Yoo Accuses Vindman Of ‘Espionage’ Ahead Of Testimony To Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Investigators
Former Justice Department official John Yoo has claimed that Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman—set to testify on Tuesday to House impeachment investigators over President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal—could have engaged in espionage.
Vindman is an officer in the U.S. Army and a Purple Heart recipient. He is also the director for European affairs on the National Security Council and was part of the U.S. delegation that traveled to Kiev for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May.
A Ukrainian-American whose family moved to the U.S. when he was a young boy, Vindman is also fluent in Russian and Ukrainian. Observers have lauded Vindman’s credentials, suggesting his testimony will carry extra weight given his impeccable resume. However, participants in a panel discussion on Monday’s The Ingraham Angle suggested that Vindman’s background could be a cause for suspicion.
Host Laura Ingraham noted that Vindman is “a decorated colonel, by the way, in the Iraq War.” Vindman was wounded when the vehicle he was traveling in was hit by an IED.
She also noted that his language skills made him a valuable partner for Ukrainian officials, who were trying to negotiate the White House’s confusing diplomacy with Zelenskiy’s new government.
Ingraham cited a report by The New York Times, which explained that Vindman emigrated from Ukraine along with his family when he was a child. As such, he is fluent in Ukrainian and Russian.
The Times reported that Ukrainian officials often sought advice from Vindman about how to deal with Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani and that they generally communicated in English. Seemingly incredulous, Ingraham claimed this detail has gone under-reported.
“Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president’s interest, and usually, they spoke in English. Isn’t that kind of an interesting angle on this story?” Ingraham asked the panel.
Guest John Yoo said he found the detail “astounding.” As deputy assistant U.S. attorney general, Yoo penned the infamous “Torture Memos” which informed President George W. Bush and his administration that torture during the War on Terror may be legally permissible.
“You know, some people might call that espionage,” Yoo added.
Vindman’s opening statement has already leaked to the press and explains that he was so concerned by Trump’s conduct during the Zelenskiy call that he reported it to a superior.
The president is accused of offering a quid pro quo of military aid for a Ukrainian investigation into 2020 rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter, related to the latter’s work with the Burisma natural gas company.
“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” the statement explains.
“I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained,” the statement continues.
But Yoo argued that none of the news around Vindman’s appearance is “breaking news,” suggesting it does not add “any new facts.”
He added that we can “all make our judgment” on the phone call between the two leaders. “I think that is something the American people should decide rather than just the House,” Yoo continued. “And that is the next election.”
The White House has released a memo detailing parts of the call, but the full transcript has not been made public. Yoo did not acknowledge that Vindman sat in on the call, making him one of the few people who knows exactly what was said.
John Yoo Supreme Court
John Yoo: Supreme Court makes the right decision allowing Trump asylum policy to take effect
The Supreme Court was right Wednesday to stop a lone federal district court judge in San Francisco from blocking a Trump administration policy designed to limit the ability of Central American migrants to seek asylum in the U.S.
The new Trump administration policy requires migrants from Central America and elsewhere who first travel through Mexico to seek asylum there before seeking asylum in the U.S.
Under the policy, a migrant first has to be refused asylum in Mexico before he or she could seek asylum here. The Trump administration policy also applies to migrants who travel through other third countries before seeking U.S. asylum.
Supreme Court Allows Trump Asylum Restrictions To Take Effect, Ending 9th Circuit Injunctions
But a larger issue is at stake: whether a single federal judge can issue a nationwide order blocking presidential action or even legislation passed by Congress.
Importantly, Wednesday’s Supreme Court order wasn’t a final ruling on the merits of the new Trump asylum policy. The high court simply ruled that an order by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar blocking the new policy cannot take effect until the Supreme Court rules on the merits of the asylum policy.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – which has jurisdiction over federal courts in Alaska, Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state – had earlier ruled that Tigar’s order blocking implementation of the Trump asylum policy could only take effect in those states and Guam, but not nationwide.
However, the Supreme Court ruling Wednesday overturned even that narrower appellate court decision, effectively blocking Tigar’s order from going into effect anywhere until a final high court ruling.
Judges like Tigar have produced a system of legal roulette, where any opponent of a president can simply shop around for the friendliest courts from which to challenge all of the federal government’s policies.
In a statement Wednesday night, the U.S. Justice Department said it “is pleased that the Supreme Court intervened in this case, which enables full implementation of this important immigration rule across the entire southern border. This action will assist the Administration in its objectives to bring order to the crisis at the southern border, close loopholes in our immigration system, and discourage frivolous claims.”
And President Trump tweeted that the high court ruling was a “BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!”
Tigar’s order – known as an injunction – marked the second time that the judge stopped the Trump policy. The president’s asylum policy was designed to reduce the number of Central Americans illegally crossing our southern border – a situation President Trump has designated as a national emergency, as is his right under the law.
This case shows how a single judge in a “resistance” court like the San Francisco federal district court can bring the entire U.S. government to a grinding halt – even when the judge is wrong on the law.
There can be little doubt that nationwide injunctions like the one issued by Tigar have become the latest tool to stop President Trump from exercising the legal authority at his disposal.
In eight years, the Obama administration faced just 20 nationwide injunctions. In less than three years, the Trump administration has faced 40. This is a dramatic increase.
Judges like Tigar have produced a system of legal roulette, where any opponent of a president can simply shop around for the friendliest courts from which to challenge all of the federal government’s policies.
Tigar’s first nationwide injunction, imposed in July, was even too much for the famously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That’s why the appeals court overturned Tigar’s order and limited his decision to only the states in its territory.
But Tigar wouldn’t give up. He reimposed his nationwide injunction because he held that several of the parties involved in the lawsuit operated in other states or even other countries. Part of the fault lies with the appeals court judges, who said that the district court could reimpose the nationwide injunction if it made the right findings. Tigar jumped at the opportunity.
Under normal circumstances, a district court judge would hold off imposing such a sweeping order, in order to allow the federal government to appeal his or her ruling and permit other courts to consider the issue. Indeed, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., had already reached the opposite conclusion and upheld the asylum plan.
Tigar’s nationwide injunction prevents the federal government from addressing the crisis at the southern border and undermines the ability of the president and Congress to reach a political solution.
And a nationwide injunction is particularly damaging when the federal government is likely to win its case on appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Trump policy seeks to reduce groundless asylum claims, which according to the government constitute the great majority of such claims. Rather than fearing persecution in their home countries – as they claim when seeking asylum – most of the asylum seekers are actually economic migrants, seeking to game their way into the United States to get jobs and earn more money than they could at home.
Tigar absurdly found that the federal government had no foreign relations or national security reasons to issue its asylum order, and ruled that as a result, the asylum policy had to go through a longer period of administrative development. This defies common sense.
Tigar also held that immigration law precludes the federal government from including additional qualifications for asylum, even though the law actually says the exact opposite.
In last year’s case of Hawaii v. Trump, the Supreme Court rejected almost identical arguments to uphold the Trump administration’s “travel ban” involving migrants from countries where terrorism could threaten the U.S.