Hi,
A secretive legal office in the federal government helped shield Trump
from legal accountability for his crimes and abuses of power.
So long as this powerful office, the Department of Justice’s Office of
Legal Counsel (OLC), is permitted to keep so much of its legal work
secret, our democracy will be at risk. The Senate must pass legislation to
increase OLC transparency.
[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition: Secret laws threaten democracy. The Senate must pass
the DOJ OLC Transparency Amendment to the NDAA, requiring OLC to publicly
disclose all past legal opinions and any it produces moving forward!
ADD YOUR NAME
One former employee of the Office of Legal Counsel said that her job
sometimes felt like she and her OLC colleagues were “using the law to
legitimize lies.”^1
In recent years, OLC has released memos trying to:
* Block Congress from obtaining Trump’s tax returns and block Biden from
accessing Trump’s presidential records
* Argue nepotism rules blocking government officials from hiring friends
and family don’t apply to the White House
* Unconstitutionally expand the president’s power to unilaterally wage
war
* Undermine gender equality, the separation of church and state, and
reproductive freedoms.^1,2
And those are just the ones we know about. The public has a right to know
what laws are currently in place and Congress needs to be able to do its
oversight job under the Constitution. That way, we can pressure our
elected officials to undo the damage done by years of secrecy and rebuild
our democracy.
Congress must act now to ensure these secret laws don’t undermine our
democracy any further. All OLC memos must be disclosed immediately to
eliminate secret law!
[ [link removed] ]Sign the petition: Secret laws threaten democracy. The Senate must pass
the DOJ OLC Transparency Amendment to the NDAA, requiring OLC to publicly
disclose all past legal opinions and any it produces moving forward!
Thanks for taking action,
Izzi and the team at Demand Progress
[ [link removed] ]DONATE
Sources:
1. American Prospect, “Garland Has Yet to De-Trumpify His Office of Legal
Counsel,” [ [link removed] ]January 31, 2022.
2. New York Times, “U.S. Discloses Decades of Memos on Presidential War
Powers,” [ [link removed] ]September 16, 2022.
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