Bush 'torture memo' author nominated for Trump administration post

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

published 6 June 2017

President Trump has nominated Steven Bradbury, an attorney who along with John Yoo and Jay Bybee crafted "torture memos" for the George W. Bush administration, to the role of general counsel of transportation.

Bradbury's arguments supporting "enhanced interrogation" authorized torture techniques including "dietary manipulation, facial slap or insult slap, cramped confinement, water dousing, and waterboarding," Politico reports. The Trump White House statement announcing his nomination described his work for Bush as advising "the executive branch on a wide range of constitutional and statutory questions."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.