John Yoo ~ The Liberty Forum ~ 9-8-2020

John Yoo

Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Former advisor in the Office of Legal Council for the US Department of Justice

"Defender-in-Chief: Trump's Constitutional Battles"

Donald Trump isn't shredding the Constitution - he's its greatest defender

Berkeley Law professor John Yoo is very comfortable around controversy, but voting for Donald Trump in 2016 was a step too far. Now he realizes he was wrong - that Trump campaigns like a populist but governs like a constitutional conservative. Despite constant criticism that Trump was destroying the Constitution, he was actually supporting it, and using it to defend the presidency. He has returned to the Framers’ original vision of the presidency as an office of unity, vigor, and independence. In securing the benefits of an energetic executive for his successors, Trump may have done the nation his greatest service.

John Yoo has served in all three branches of government. He worked in the Department of Justice on national security and terrorism issues after the September 11 attacks. He served as general counsel of the US Senate Judiciary Committee under chairman Orrin Hatch. And he has been a law clerk for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. Yoo is the author of a number of books, most recently Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War. His latest book, Defender-in-Chief: Trump’s Battles for Presidential Power, is now available on Amazon and elsewhere. John Yoo co-hosts the Pacific Century podcast with Michael Auslin, broadly addressing developments in China and Asia. He also co-hosts LawTalk with Richard Epstein and Troy Senik, discussing the latest developments in law and politics.