Maris Taylor has an important update on the OLC exigent letter opinion. Last year, DOJ’s now-retired Inspector General Glenn Fine released a report revealing how the FBI had used exigent letters to get call data information from telecoms with no oversight. Ryan Singel noted a reference to an OLC opinion that basically melted away the problems created by use of these exigent letters (see pages 264-266 of the report).

Well, it looks like the expansive executive branch doesn’t have Glenn Fine to worry about anymore.

The Treasury Department has released its latest set of HAMP data for August, and the program is winding down with very few new trial modifications, and less in the system.

There’s an interesting detail in the IG Report on FBI’s investigations of peace groups that suggests FBI was asking OLC for an interpretation of the approval required before conducting a riot-related investigation.

Would that the Attorney General cared more about that rule of law than chumming up to the opposition party.

Main Justice reports that Pat Leahy and DOJ’s Inspector General Glenn Fine have been chatting about further IG review of the FBI’s use of the several PATRIOT provisions that were contentious issues in last years attempt to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. This means that Fine is going to do what the legislation would have mandated — conduct further reviews of these authorities — on his own. But I’m also interested in the scope Fine lays out for his review in his response to Leahy.

Remember the OPR Report? No, not the OPR Report on John Yoo’s laughably bad torture memos. I’m talking about the OPR Report on John Yoo’s even worse memo(s) authorizing domestic surveillance. The Torture OPR Report notes that it was the domestic surveillance memo, and not the torture memos, that first clued Jack Goldsmith into how dangerous John Yoo was. So where is it?