The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a letter this week to the Justice Department pressing for details on how it advised the administration in the controversial swap of Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
The request comes amid speculation that the administration might make another unilateral move to close Gitmo through an executive order without the approval of Congress.
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Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked in the letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the department to release its legal counsel to the administration over the prisoner swap, which critics say was against the law since it did not provide the required notification to Congress.
“The public interest in understanding the facts on which the department based its legal advice is just as important as the advice itself, given the shifting nature of the administration’s justifications for failing to notify Congress,” Grassley wrote in a letter dated Nov. 10.
The president released five senior Taliban officials in 2014 in exchange for the safe return of Bergdahl, who had been taken as a prisoner of war when he left his post in Afghanistan.
The swap was controversial because the administration released the prisoners without notifying Congress 30 days prior, as required by law. The release became even more controversial once allegations began to surface suggesting Bergdahl had actually deserted his post before being captured. He is awaiting a decision on whether his case will proceed to a court-martial.
The Government Accountability Office found that the administration did break the law by not following notification procedures for Congress.
Grassley had asked the Justice Department and Office of Legal Counsel to release their advice to the administration regarding the prisoner swap and said the department’s response denying to release it “does not withstand the most basic scrutiny.”
The senator pointed to several cases where the department had revealed its internal advice to the administration when it has been to their benefit, including regarding the president’s executive order on immigration.
“This kind of selective transparency casts doubt on the soundness of the [Office of Legal Counsel’s] legal advice, especially where that advice is not made public in spite of the clear direction in OLC’s own guidance to do so,” Grassley wrote.
