Head of Obama's transition team calls for Bybee impeachment

Raw Story

Another voice has joined the chorus calling for federal judge and ‘torture memo’ author Jay Bybee to either resign or be impeached.

John Podesta, who oversaw Obama’s transition team and was former president Clinton’s chief of staff, said Sunday that "a simple matter would be to remove [Bybee] from office." Support for impeachment from Podesta, who heads the Center for American Progress Action, a think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, could foreshadow support for such a step from the president himself.

Speaking on CNN’s "State of the Union" program Sunday morning, Podesta said: "…[T]here is a distinction between going back and prosecuting in the criminal courts the actors who were involved in these memos and letting Judge Bybee continue to sit on a court one step removed from the Supreme Court. He’s acting and listening to cases and making judgments of others, and we know that he authorized things that were illegal under U.S. law and violated the U.S. obligations under international treaties…"

The other panelists on the show, David Gergen and former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, disagreed with Podesta’s call for impeachment; pressed by show host John King about whether the Obama administration would support impeachment proceedings, Podesta said "You’ll have to ask them, but I suspect they don’t."

Obama this week signaled his openness to the possibility of prosecutions of Bush officials who wrote legal opinions supporting torture, even while voicing his opposition to a special congressional investigation into the matter.

The Center for American Progress is petitioning for Bybee’s impeachment; Podesta this morning sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), laying out the case for impeaching Bybee. The letter (PDF link), reprinted below, includes the names of nearly 20,000 people who have signed the petition.

On Tuesday, Senator Pat Leahy (D-VT), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Bybee to resign, while deferring to the House of Representatives on the question of impeachment. (Also on Tuesday, Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) suggested that the torture memos may provide "grounds for impeachment" of Bybee.) Under the Constitution, the House has the sole power to initiate impeachment proceedings.

The video below aired Sunday, April 26, on CNN’s "State of the Union."

-Jeremy Gantz