John Yoo — a well-known and, in some legal and political circles, infamous conservative lawyer — will assist a Justice Department investigation that has theorized a yearslong conspiracy against President Donald Trump and is looking at several former high-ranking federal officials.
Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush during September 11, 2001, and is most known for authoring the “torture memos” used for detainees after the attacks. He is also a national security specialist with experience on the law around presidential power and a proponent of expanding authority for the executive branch.
Yoo is set to advise Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, two longtime conservative attorneys who are acting as prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida and are looking at possible cases against Trump foes. Though he hasn’t started yet, Yoo will act as an intermittent consultant, or special government employee, on constitutional issues.
The addition of Yoo to the Miami-based investigation is likely to raise new questions about where DiGenova’s work, in particular, may aim — with some sources describing it as a grand conspiracy stretching from the investigation into Russian election interference in 2016 to the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022.
