Jennifer Koester Hardy

Scott Horton reads the heavily and incompetently censored OPR report:

A good example of potentially illegitimate redactions are those concerning repeated discussions about drafting the torture memoranda, which involve an unnamed OLC lawyer in addition to John Yoo and Jay Bybee. On p. 258, we learn that this lawyer “was a relatively inexperienced attorney when the Bybee and Yoo memos were being drafted. Although she appears to have made errors of research and analysis in drafting portions of the Bybee and Yoo memos, her work was subject to Yoo’s and Bybee’s review and approval. We therefore conclude that she should not be held professionally responsible for the incomplete and one-sided legal advice in the memoranda.” One woman working directly with John Yoo at OLC at this time was Jennifer Koester Hardy, now a partner in the Washington office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP.

In an apparent redaction oversight, Hardy is mentioned by name in a footnote. Why was Hardy’s name redacted? She played an obvious and important role in the production of the documents. She made serious errors, which appear to be driven less by flaws in research than by a desire to produce an opinion that had the conclusions that David Addington wanted. The failure to identify key precedents and the malicious misconstruction of precedent is as much her fault as that of Bybee and Yoo.

Emily Bazelon and TPM have more on Hardy.