You all remember Jay Bybee don’t you? He was “the former head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) who signed two infamous August 2002 legal memos which gave CIA interrogators the green light to torture ‘war on terror’ prisoners,” then admitted that some techniques were not approved by the DoJ.

Who better than a pro-torture Bushie lawyer-turned-judge to receive millions of dollars of free legal help in squirming out of ethics issues? L.A. Times:

U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay S. Bybee accepted more than $3.2 million in free legal services from a Los Angeles-based firm to fight allegations of ethics violations for providing the Bush administration legal justification to use harsh interrogation tactics that critics called torture, his financial disclosure reports reveal.

In his latest report to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Bybee reported gifts from the Latham & Watkins firm that bring the total of its free legal assistance to the judge to $3,251,893 since 2007. [...]

Bybee did not respond to an emailed question about whether and for how long he considers it necessary to withdraw from any cases involving Latham attorneys to avoid any appearance of potential bias.

Isn’t that just like the guy?

Think Progress also posted about this.