Professor known for 'torture memos' will advise conspiracy probe focused on perceived Trump foes

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 26, 2008.

WASHINGTON — A conservative law professor known for his expansive views of presidential power and for decades-old memos that justified harsh interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks says he will be advising a team of prosecutors investigating whether former law enforcement and intelligence officials conspired against U.S. President Donald Trump.

John Yoo confirmed in an email to The Associated Press on Monday that he would be assisting Joe diGenova, the former Justice Department prosecutor who was assigned in April to investigate whether officials, who over the last decade scrutinized Trump, participated in a criminal conspiracy against the Republican president.

“He’s a lawyer. He’s going to be helping us,” diGenova said in a brief telephone interview about Yoo. He did not elaborate.

A law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Yoo was a senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration who served as a lead author of the so-called “torture memos” that government officials used to justify using “enhanced interrogation” techniques on potential terror suspects. The Justice Department later rescinded the memos.

In the years since, he’s remained a prominent proponent of broad executive authority, telling the AP in a 2020 interview that he had told Trump administration officials multiple times that a Supreme Court ruling which rejected Trump’s effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, opened the door to enormous new presidential power.

The conspiracy investigation is being conducted in Florida, but the scope is unclear, as is whether any criminal charges will be brought.

Prosecutors have centered at least part of the probe on the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Investigators have issued a broad swath of subpoenas for records and conducted interviews related to the creation of an intelligence community assessment, released in January 2017, that found that Russia engaged in wide-ranging election interference to boost Trump over his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

A 2019 report by special counsel Robert Mueller affirmed that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf and that the Trump campaign repeatedly welcomed the assistance, but it did not find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Moscow and the campaign.

Several subsequent investigations into the Russia probe have identified multiple errors into how it was conducted, and a former FBI lawyer pleaded guilty in 2020 to doctoring an email during the course of the inquiry. But none of the reviews have identified criminal misconduct by any senior law enforcement or intelligence official involved in the investigation.

Trump has nonetheless continued to demand retribution and has sought to punish top officials from that time at the FBI and CIA.

Asked in a Fox News Channel interview in May what the Justice Department had done to address claims of a long-running conspiracy to bring down Trump, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “That’s exactly what we’re investigating right now.”

Yoo’s involvement in the investigation was earlier reported by Politico and CNN.

Eric Tucker, The Associated Press