Bob Egelko reports:
After years of wrangling over legal procedures, the lawyer for a defunct Islamic charity laid out his case Wednesday that former President George W. Bush’s secret wiretapping program was illegal – an argument that an Obama administration attorney refused to discuss.
“May the president of the United States break the law in the name of national security? … We’re asking this court to say, ‘no,’ ” Jon Eisenberg, lawyer for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, told a federal judge in San Francisco.
[…]
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who has rebuffed Bush and Obama administration requests to dismiss the suit, did not reveal his views on the legality of the program. But he told a government lawyer that Al-Haramain had presented strong evidence that it had been wiretapped and had the right to sue.
Read more on SFGate. Paul Elias of Associated Press provides additional background on the case.
Court-related documents and files can be found on EFF’s site.
Photo credit: Lea Suzuki/Chronicle