Here\u2019s Yoo, making the pitch to anchor Gillian Turner:<\/p>\n John Yoo says the DOJ should investigate Mamdani for his comments on possibly arresting Netanyahu pic.twitter.com\/I8MQiIgFlY<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Acyn (@Acyn) July 20, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n The mayor is violating the American Servicemen Protection Act, passed in 2002, and the Justice Department should be investigating him. And the president, under that law, is authorized to use all necessary means to prevent any American or ally from being handed over to that court. So if Mayor Mamdani wants to spend a lot of time dealing with FBI agents and Justice Department investigators, well, he just started that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of note, it\u2019s the American Service-Members\u2019 Protection Act<\/em> \u2014 hyphen and all \u2014 so Yoo can\u2019t even correctly identify the one statute he\u2019s pegged his baseless legal threat upon. An extra rough look given that, moments earlier, he\u2019d bragged to everyone that he helped pass it back when he was gleefully playing legal Mad Libs to build a case for presidents having unaccountable authority to crush prison testicles\u2026 for freedom!<\/p>\n And it is fair to call this a threat, because Yoo has taken on a new role<\/a> in the administration gray zone, helping Joe DiGenova brainstorm criminal charges that the DOJ can bring against Donald Trump\u2019s critics. It\u2019s clear to everyone paying attention that Yoo has the ear of the DOJ, even from his current role \u2014 which has all the legal clarity of the CIA black sites Yoo believes presidents can whisk people off to.<\/p>\n Despite not even knowing the name of the law he\u2019s talking about, Yoo isn\u2019t entirely<\/em> wrong.<\/p>\n The ASPA \u2014 which, for all the talk about its proper title, would much more accurately be called The War Crimes Protection Act \u2014 passed in 2002 to shield Americans from war crime prosecutions. Because, in 2002, the W. Bush administration really<\/em> wanted to do some war criming. The statute does unambiguously bar federal, state, and local officials from cooperating with the International Criminal Court. The law is also sometimes called the \u201cHague Invasion Act,\u201d<\/a> because it ostensibly authorizes the president to use the military to spring any American or ally out of a Dutch jail cell. While incredibly stupid and probably a violation of our NATO obligations, the law exists.<\/p>\n Though we really don\u2019t have to reach this law since Netanyahu, as a foreign head of government attending a UN meeting, would carry diplomatic immunity anyway.<\/p>\n In either event, Mamdani arresting Netanyahu would be illegal. But the thing is\u2026 Mamdani has not arrested Netanyahu. <\/p>\n The ASPA does not really lend itself to penalizing inchoate conduct. It\u2019s a leash on government officials. And even if it somehow could support a conspiracy charge, \u201cI asked my lawyers about my legal options\u201d is not a predicate act in any theory of conspiracy or attempt an American court has ever recognized. Asking whether a thing is legal is the opposite of doing an illegal thing. In fact, if checking with lawyers counted as a predicate act to support a conspiracy, the incentive would be to never talk to lawyers<\/em>, which is exactly what the law hopes to discourage.<\/p>\n Theoretically, Yoo understands that this is utter nonsense. But he\u2019s a partisan thug whose current job is ginning up ways to use the Justice Department to exact retribution against Trump\u2019s enemies, and he knows how to chill an administration critic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s telling that Yoo declares, \u201cif Mayor Mamdani wants to spend a lot of time dealing with FBI agents and Justice Department investigators, well, he\u2019s just launched that process,\u201d in the same register as \u201cnice little city you got here, shame if anything happened to it.\u201d And he\u2019s sending the signal that this process is \u201claunched\u201d by merely pointing out to the public that Netanyahu is wanted by The Hague for war crimes. And, for what it\u2019s worth, Yoo thinks the administration should be entirely unaccountable<\/a>, adding an ominous twist to this strategy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not limited to Mamdani, because Yoo is telling everyone<\/em> that if you mouth off about Trump and his friends, FBI agents will bang on your door, waste several days of your life, and leave you in limbo worried about charges that will almost certainly never come because they would be both frivolous and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n In the spirit of \u201cnot trying to exaggerate,\u201d siccing the FBI on a guy for making a phone call to his own lawyers is Third World shit. Then again, so is torture, and we know that gets Yoo all lathered up too.<\/p>\n The post John Yoo Wants DOJ To Investigate Mamdani For Crime He Literally Did Not Commit<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n John Yoo is back on his bullshit. <\/p>\n The man best known for authoring vaguely legal-sounding memos turning the U.S. into a torture state went on Fox News yesterday to muse that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani should be investigated by the Trump Justice Department. Yoo explained that he was \u201cnot trying to exaggerate\u201d as he effortlessly exaggerated potential criminality based on Mamdani asking his own city lawyers<\/a> if New York can do anything about the International Criminal Court\u2019s arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister comes to town for the U.N. General Assembly this fall.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s Yoo, making the pitch to anchor Gillian Turner:<\/p>\n John Yoo says the DOJ should investigate Mamdani for his comments on possibly arresting Netanyahu pic.twitter.com\/I8MQiIgFlY<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Acyn (@Acyn) July 20, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n The mayor is violating the American Servicemen Protection Act, passed in 2002, and the Justice Department should be investigating him. And the president, under that law, is authorized to use all necessary means to prevent any American or ally from being handed over to that court. So if Mayor Mamdani wants to spend a lot of time dealing with FBI agents and Justice Department investigators, well, he just started that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Of note, it\u2019s the American Service-Members\u2019 Protection Act<\/em> \u2014 hyphen and all \u2014 so Yoo can\u2019t even correctly identify the one statute he\u2019s pegged his baseless legal threat upon. An extra rough look given that, moments earlier, he\u2019d bragged to everyone that he helped pass it back when he was gleefully playing legal Mad Libs to build a case for presidents having unaccountable authority to crush prison testicles\u2026 for freedom!<\/p>\n And it is fair to call this a threat, because Yoo has taken on a new role<\/a> in the administration gray zone, helping Joe DiGenova brainstorm criminal charges that the DOJ can bring against Donald Trump\u2019s critics. It\u2019s clear to everyone paying attention that Yoo has the ear of the DOJ, even from his current role \u2014 which has all the legal clarity of the CIA black sites Yoo believes presidents can whisk people off to.<\/p>\n Despite not even knowing the name of the law he\u2019s talking about, Yoo isn\u2019t entirely<\/em> wrong.<\/p>\n The ASPA \u2014 which, for all the talk about its proper title, would much more accurately be called The War Crimes Protection Act \u2014 passed in 2002 to shield Americans from war crime prosecutions. Because, in 2002, the W. Bush administration really<\/em> wanted to do some war criming. The statute does unambiguously bar federal, state, and local officials from cooperating with the International Criminal Court. The law is also sometimes called the \u201cHague Invasion Act,\u201d<\/a> because it ostensibly authorizes the president to use the military to spring any American or ally out of a Dutch jail cell. While incredibly stupid and probably a violation of our NATO obligations, the law exists.<\/p>\n Though we really don\u2019t have to reach this law since Netanyahu, as a foreign head of government attending a UN meeting, would carry diplomatic immunity anyway.<\/p>\n In either event, Mamdani arresting Netanyahu would be illegal. But the thing is\u2026 Mamdani has not arrested Netanyahu. <\/p>\n The ASPA does not really lend itself to penalizing inchoate conduct. It\u2019s a leash on government officials. And even if it somehow could support a conspiracy charge, \u201cI asked my lawyers about my legal options\u201d is not a predicate act in any theory of conspiracy or attempt an American court has ever recognized. Asking whether a thing is legal is the opposite of doing an illegal thing. In fact, if checking with lawyers counted as a predicate act to support a conspiracy, the incentive would be to never talk to lawyers<\/em>, which is exactly what the law hopes to discourage.<\/p>\n Theoretically, Yoo understands that this is utter nonsense. But he\u2019s a partisan thug whose current job is ginning up ways to use the Justice Department to exact retribution against Trump\u2019s enemies, and he knows how to chill an administration critic.<\/p>\n It\u2019s telling that Yoo declares, \u201cif Mayor Mamdani wants to spend a lot of time dealing with FBI agents and Justice Department investigators, well, he\u2019s just launched that process,\u201d in the same register as \u201cnice little city you got here, shame if anything happened to it.\u201d And he\u2019s sending the signal that this process is \u201claunched\u201d by merely pointing out to the public that Netanyahu is wanted by The Hague for war crimes. And, for what it\u2019s worth, Yoo thinks the administration should be entirely unaccountable<\/a>, adding an ominous twist to this strategy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not limited to Mamdani, because Yoo is telling everyone<\/em> that if you mouth off about Trump and his friends, FBI agents will bang on your door, waste several days of your life, and leave you in limbo worried about charges that will almost certainly never come because they would be both frivolous and unconstitutional.<\/p>\n In the spirit of \u201cnot trying to exaggerate,\u201d siccing the FBI on a guy for making a phone call to his own lawyers is Third World shit. Then again, so is torture, and we know that gets Yoo all lathered up too.<\/p>\n The post John Yoo Wants DOJ To Investigate Mamdani For Crime He Literally Did Not Commit<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Yoo is back on his bullshit. The man best known for authoring vaguely legal-sounding memos turning the U.S. into a torture state went on Fox News yesterday to muse that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani should be investigated by the Trump Justice Department. Yoo explained that he was \u201cnot trying to exaggerate\u201d as he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":157699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Headshot-300x200-Sg62vK.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg?resize=188%2C125&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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\nJoe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n