Conservative Legal Superstar John Yoo: Trump Suspending Habeas Corpus Would Be ‘Grounds for Impeachment’
LEFT: John Yoo (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) RIGHT: Donald Trump (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Conservative legal superstar John Yoo believes that if President Donald Trump suspends the writ of habeas corpus — or the right of prisoners to challenge the legality of their detention — it would be “grounds for impeachment.”
Last week, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller flirted with the idea, telling reporters “that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” and that it is “an option we’re actively looking at” in order to address illegal immigration.
“Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not. At the end of the day, Congress passed a body of law, known as the Immigration and Nationality Act, which stripped Article III courts, that’s the judicial branch, of jurisdiction over immigration cases,” continued Miller. “So, Congress actually passed, it’s called jurisdiction-stripping legislation. It passed a number of laws that say that the Article III courts aren’t even allowed to be involved in immigration cases.”
Yoo, an ex-clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, a former Bush Department of Justice official, and frequent Fox News guest, poured cold water all over the idea in an interview with The Dispatch’s John McCormack.
About the constitutional provision that allows habeas corpus to be suspended “in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion,” Yoo stated, “It wouldn’t apply to a case of immigration at all. There’s zero chance that that would fly in the courts.”
“Here you would have plausible grounds for impeachment,” argued Yoo. “You would have a president who arguably arrogated the powers of another branch at a time when the provision doesn’t even apply—so much stronger ground for impeachment than Trump’s first two rides on that rodeo.”
He also told McCormack:
If you suspend habeas corpus, and you put these aliens … into the hands of the military, does the president really want to raise doubts about the military’s willingness to follow the commander in chief? You could see officers refusing to hold people in violation of habeas corpus.
“It would really be a mistake to cause those dominos to start falling,” concluded Yoo.
