Noah Feldman, Columnist

Justice Department Independence? Not With Trump

The nonpartisan Office of Legal Counsel appears to be working closely with the president’s personal lawyers.

January 22, 2020 at 11:30 AM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Just a part of the White House, now.
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

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President Donald Trump’s legal defense is putting a lot of weight on a brand-new memo from the Office of Legal Counsel. In fact, the memo appears to have been written specifically as part of the president’s defense strategy. That’s noteworthy because the OLC is part of the Department of Justice: It’s supposed to be legally independent, not partisan, and certainly not part of the president’s defense team.

The memo’s reasoning borders on egregious. It concocts a technicality to invalidate the subpoenas issued by the House of Representatives during the impeachment inquiry, making it somehow legitimate for Trump to have obstructed Congress — the basis of one of the articles of impeachment the president faces.